- I say, if your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.
-- Calvin and Hobbes
- I'm not dumb, I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.
-- Calvin and Hobbes
- There's no problem that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.
-- Calvin and Hobbes
- Calvin: Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?
Hobbes: I'm not sure man needs the help.
-- Calvin and Hobbes
- My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four, unless there are three other people.
-- Orson Welles
- Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life.
-- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
- Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.
-- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
- After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true.
-- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
- No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
-- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
- The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.
-- Marcel Duchamp
- I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.
-- Marcel Duchamp
- The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem...
-- Marcel Duchamp
- I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
-- Marcel Duchamp
- The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
-- Marcel Duchamp
- The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form [and] knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration.
-- Henry Moore
- I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.
-- Henry Moore
- The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.
-- Henry Moore
- There is a right physical size for every idea.
-- Henry Moore
- It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.
-- Henry Moore
- Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.
-- Don Marquis
- The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
-- Don Marquis
- An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.
-- Don Marquis
- Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
-- Don Marquis
- Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
-- Don Marquis
- Liberalism seems to be related to the distance people are from the problem.
-- Whitney M. Young, Jr.
- Our ability to create has outreached our ability to use wisely the products of our invention.
-- Whitney M. Young, Jr.
- The hardest work in the world is being out of work.
-- Whitney M. Young, Jr.
- Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.
-- Whitney M. Young, Jr.
- The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.
-- Maria Mitchell
- We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.
-- Maria Mitchell
- Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.
-- Maria Mitchell
- When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests.
-- Maria Mitchell
- People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear.
-- Maria Mitchell
- The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
-- James Baldwin
- The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.
-- James Baldwin
- Life is more important than art; that's what makes art important.
-- James Baldwin
- Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
-- James Baldwin
- You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
-- James Baldwin
- The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.
-- Stanley Baldwin
- A platitude is simply a truth repeated until people get tired of hearing it.
-- Stanley Baldwin
- The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion.
-- Stanley Baldwin
- Just as the results of inebriety are most painful to the habitually sober, and just as the greatest saints have often been the greatest sinners, so, when the first class brain does something stupid, the stupidity of that occasion is colossal.
-- Stanley Baldwin
- A statesman wants courage and a statesman wants vision; but believe me, after six months' experience, he wants first, second, third and all the time - patience.
-- Stanley Baldwin
- Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
-- Anais Nin
- The rule is perfect: In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
-- Mark Twain, Lecture on Christian Science (1899)
- Ability is nothing without opportunity.
--Napoleon I
- Imagination rules the world.
--Napoleon I
- Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
--Napoleon I
- It is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
--Napoleon I
- You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.
--Napoleon I
- Minds that are great and free,
should not on fortune pause:
'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause."
-- _An Ode to Himself_, Ben Jonson (1573-1637)
- When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin, _The Left Hand of Darkness_
- Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear long the burden of great joys.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
- Simple pleasure are the last refuge of the complex.
-- Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
- All the great pleasures of life are silent.
-- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
- The happiest moments of my life have a been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
-- Thomas Jefferson
- I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing.
-- Mae West
- I believe in censorship. After all, I made a fortune out of it.
-- Mae West
- Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
-- John Galsworthy
- A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
-- John Galsworthy
- One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth what one becomes.
-- John Galsworthy
- The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.
-- John Galsworthy
- If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
-- John Galsworthy
- To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is being educated.
-- Edith Hamilton
- When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.
-- Edith Hamilton
- Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.
-- Edith Hamilton
- Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.
-- Edith Hamilton
- The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.
-- Edith Hamilton
- Learn to love good books. There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
- Reason, Observation, and Experience -- the Holy Trinity of Science.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
- In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
- The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
- Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
- The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
-- Arnold Toynbee
- Small nations are like indecently dressed women--they tempt the evil-minded.
-- Julius Nyerere, President of Tanganyika, Quoted in "The Reporter," April 9, 1964
- Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900),"Beyond Good and Evil," 1886
- It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.
-- George Eliot
- Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes exactely the right measure of himself, and holds a just balance between what he can acquire and what he can use.
-- Peter Mere Latham
- Man always travels along precipices. His truest obligation is to keep his balance.
-- Jose Ortega Gasset
- What I dream is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubeling and depressing subject matter...a shooting, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
-- Henry Matisse
- Life is a difficult in the country, and it requires a good deal of forethought to steer the ship, when you are twelve miles from a lemon.
-- Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman and essayist
- Madam, I have been looking for person that dislikes gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.
-- Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman and essayist
- Soup and fish explain half the emotions in life.
-- Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman and essayist
- Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea!
-- Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman and essayist
- Church ain't over till the fat lady sings.
-- Fabia Rue Smith and Charles Rayford, Southern Words and sayings [1976]
- The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings.
-- Daniel John Cook (1926- ) American sports editor Television newscast, San Antonio, TX [Apr. 1978] and In Washington Post [Jun. 3, 1978]
- It's not over till it's over.
-- Yogi Berra (1925- ) American beseball player and manager
- The sheep are happier of themselves than under the care of a wolf.
-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American statesman and third president, Letter to William Stevens Smith [Nov. 13, 1787]
- Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
-- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
- Give them pleasure -- the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.
-- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
- Self-plagiarism is style.
-- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
- The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
-- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
- There's nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.
-- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
- There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others.
-- Jean de LaBruyere
- Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.
-- Jean de LaBruyere
- It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.
-- Jean de LaBruyere
- Making a book is a craft, as is making a clock; it takes more than wit to become an author.
-- Jean de LaBruyere
- The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.
-- Jean de LaBruyere
- Silence is the perfectest herald of joy.
I were but little happy if I could say how much.
-- Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1564-1616)
- An horrible stilness first invades our ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.
-- John Dryden (1631-1700) English poet, critic, and playwright, Astrea Redux
- Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact.
-- George Eliot (1819-1880) English writer, Impressions of Theophratus Such
- Never forget that when we are silent, we are one. And when we speak we are two.
-- Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) Indian prime minister
- Silence is wonderful to listen to.
-- Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) English novelist and poet
- A man is known by the silence he keeps.
-- Oliver Herford
- You can't improve on saying nothing.
-- Golda Meir (1898-1978) Israeli prime minister
- The mouth keeps silent to hear the heart speak.
-- Alfred De Musset (1810-1857) French poet and playwright, La Nuit de Mai
- If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French mathematician, physicist, and moralist, Pensee
- Universal silence must be taken to imply the consent of the people.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) French philosopher and novleist, Du Contrat Social
- Where silence is not allowed, what then is permissible?
-- Seneca (4 BCE-CE 65) Roman philosopher and poet, Oedipus
- Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamor of silence.
-- Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Indian writer and philosopher
- He who belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent.
-- Proverbs 11:12
- Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
-- Proverbs 17:28
- He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent.
-- Marcus Porcius Cato, (234-149 BC), Roman statesman
- Silence is a friend who will never betray.
-- Confucius, (551-479 BC), Chinese sage, philosopher
- I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-- Publilius Syrus
- To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
-- attributed to Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865), 16th President of the U.S.
- The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
-- St Augustine.
- Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
- I would be virtuous for my own sake, though nobody were to know it; as I would be clean for my own sake, although nobody were to see me.
-- Shaftesbury
- A large part of virtue consists in good habits.
-- Barbara Paley
- Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.
-- George Eliot
- Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue.
-- Confucius
- If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.
-- Chinese Proverb
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