Francis, Duc de La Rochefoucauld:
(1613-1680)
- Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.
- We have all sufficient strength to endure the misfortunes of others. (Maxim 19)
- Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. (Maxim 22)
- We need greater virtues to sustain good than evil fortune. (Maxim 25)
- Neither the sun nor death can be looked at with a steady eye. (Maxim 26)
- Interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness. (Maxim 39)
- We are never so happy or so unhappy as we suppose. (Maxim 48)
- There are few people who would not be ashamed of being loved when they love no longer. (Maxim 71)
- True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen. (Maxim 76)
- The love of justice is simply, in the majority of men, the fear of suffering injustice. (Maxim 78)
- Silence is the best resolve for him who distrusts himself. (Maxim 79)
- Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something. (Maxim 83)
- Nothing is given so profusely as advice. (Maxim 110)
- The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others. (Maxim 127)
(Maxim 19) Usually we praise only to be praised. (Maxim 146)
- Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence. (Maxim 180)
- Most people judge men only by success or by fortune. (Maxim 212)
- Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. (Maxim 218)
- Too great haste to repay an obligation is a kind of ingratitude. (Maxim 226)
- There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one's ability. (Maxim 245)
- The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire. (Maxim 259)
- We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire. (Maxim 294)
- The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits. (Maxim 298)
- Lovers are never tired of each other, though they always speak of themselves. (Maxim 312)
- We pardon in the degree that we love. (Maxim 330)
- We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with with us. (Maxim 347)
- The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark. (Maxim 377)
- We may give advice, but we cannot inspire the conduct. (Maxim 378)
- The veracity which increases with old age is not far from folly. (Maxim 416)
- Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side. (Maxim 496)
- In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that is not exactly displeasing.
Francis Rabelais:
(1495-1553)
- He left a paper sealed up, wherein were found three articles as his last will: "I owe much; I have nothing; I give the rest to the poor."
- One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span,
Because to laugh is proper to the man.
- I drink no more than a sponge.
- Thought the moon was made of green cheese.
- He always looked a given horse in the mouth.
- By robbing Peter he paid Paul.
- Corn is the sinews of war.
- Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money.
- How well I feathered my nest.
- So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.
- Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that the one half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth.
- You have there hit the nail on the head.
- He that has patience may compass anything.
- We will take the good will for the deed.
- Plain as a nose in a man's face.
- Nothing is so dear and precious as time.
- We have here other fish to fry.
- What cannot be cured must be endured.
- Thought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free.
- It is enough to fright you out of your seven senses.
- Necessity has no law.
- I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.
Martin Luther
(1483-1546)
- A faithful and good servant is a real godsend; but truly 't is a rare bird in the land.
Omar Khayyám
(Translated by Edward Fitzgerald.)
- I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Cćsar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
-- Rubáiyát. Stanza xix.
- A Moment's Halt--a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste--
And, Lo! the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The NOTHING it set out from. Oh, make haste!
-- Rubáiyát. Stanza xlviii.
- Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire.
-- Rubáiyát. Stanza lxvii.
- The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
-- Rubáiyát. Stanza lxxi.
- And this I know: whether the one True Light
Kindle to Love, or Wrath-consume me quite,
One Flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.
-- Rubáiyát. Stanza lxxvii.
- And when like her, O Sáki, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And in your blissful errand reach the spot
Where I made One--turn down an empty Glass.
-- Rubáiyát. Stanza ci.
- As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are the more leisure we have.
-- William Hazlitt
- The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they can organize for action; give them more and it may become injurious. Some men are heavy and stupid from undigested learning.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
- My Alma mater was books, a good library . . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
-- Malcolm X (1925-1965) U.S. political activist and civil rights leader
- History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.
-- Malcolm X
- Truth is on the side of the oppressed.
-- Malcolm X
- Early in life I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.
-- Malcolm X
- Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe that everyone in here is a friend and I don't want to leave anybody out.
-- Malcolm X
- That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English economist, philosopher
- The great creative individual . . . is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.
-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English economist, philosopher
- They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.
-- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English economist, philosopher
- Misers are very kind people: they amass wealth for those who wish their death.
-- Leszczynski Stanislaus (1677-1766)
- Any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: I served in the United States Navy.
John F. Kennedy
- A man's character is his fate.
Heraclitus
- My ideas are beyond the comprehension of ordinary mortals. The brilliance of my mind can only be described as dazzling. Even I am impressed by it.
-- Armand Hammer
- Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love."
- Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
Fred Hoyle, 1979
- I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
-- Randell Jarrell
- Science is the systematic classification of experience.
-- George Henry Lewes (1817-1878) English philosopher, critic, dramatist, scientist
- The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.
-- George Henry Lewes
- We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.
-- George Henry Lewes
- Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.
-- George Henry Lewes
- The only cure for grief is action.
-- George Henry Lewes
- A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
-- Louis Nizer (1902-1994) English lawyer
- A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.
-- Louis Nizer
- Yes, there's such a thing as luck in trial law but it only comes at 3 o'clock in the morning. . . . You'll still find me in the library looking for luck at 3 o'clock in the morning.
-- Louis Nizer
- I know of no higher fortitude than stubbornness in the face of overwhelming odds.
-- Louis Nizer
- It is the mind that makes the man, and our vigour is in our immortal soul.
-- Ovid
- In some crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite
extinguish, the physicists have know sin and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer, Lecture, 1947
- It is insufficiently considered that men more often require to be reminded than informed.
-- Samuel Johnson
- He who knows only his own generation remains always a child.
-- George Norlin
- To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.
-- Plutarch
- Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
-- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
- The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us.
-- Franklin D Roosevelt, campaign address, Detroit, Michigan, October 2, 1932
- It is said that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo because he forgot his infantry---he staked too much upon the more spectacular but less substantial cavalry. The present administration in Washington provides a close parallel. It has either forgotten or it does not want to remember the infantry of our economic army. These unhappy times call for building of plans...that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Radio Address on the National Economic Emergency, April 7, 1932
- Nothing is more useful than silence.
-- Menander (B.C. 342-291)
- From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
-- Cornish
- When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- Happiness is merely the remission of pain.
- Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
- Sometimes too much drink is not enough.
- All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
- Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
- The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant.
- The careful application of terror is also a form of communication.
- Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.
- I have seen the truth -- and it makes no sense.
- Suicide is the most sincere form of self-criticism.
- One-seventh of your life is spent on Monday.
- All things being equal, fat people use more soap.
- Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
- The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets.
- Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
- Black holes are bugs in nature's software.
- Democracy is where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
- Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
-- A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
- Without trust, words become the hollow sound of a wooden gong. With trust, words become life itself.
-- John Harold
- All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
- A faithful dog will always stay with you
- And laugh with you --or cry--
- He'll gladly starve to stay with you
- Nor ever reason why.
- And when you re feeling out of sorts
- Somehow, he ll understand. He ll watch you with his shining
- Eyes and try to lick your hand.
- His blind implicit faith in you
- Is matched by his great love.
- The kind that all of us should have
- In the Master, up above.
- When everything is said and done
- I guess this isn t odd.
- For when you spell Dog backwards
- You will get the name of God.
-- Anon.
- Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
-- Robert Firth
- Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline).
-- First Law of Procrastination
- Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do.
-- Fifth Law of Procrastination
- I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't.
-- Lucille Ball
- A figment of the imagination is just a harmless illusion--unless you are a victim of it.
-- Cullen Hightower
- A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
-- Joseph Conrad
- Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.
-- Jules Feiffer, _Crawling Arnold_
- In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.
-- Albert Camus, _The Notebooks_
- If you want to know what is actually occurring inside, underneath, at the center, at any given moment, art is a truer guide than 'politics,' more often than not.
--Percy Wyndham Lewis, _Time and the Western Man_
- Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by so
quick you hardly catch it going.
-- Tennessee Williams
- I attribute my success to ambition, determination, guts, integrity, fairness, honesty, and having enough money to buy people with those qualities.
-- Lord Julius
- Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.
-- Gustave Flaubert
- There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.
-- A. Whitney Brown, _The Big Picture_
- I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.
-- Konrad
- Fear nothing, for every renewed effort raises all former failures into lessons, all sins into experiences.
-- Katherine Tingley
- Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs at one go.
-- Truman Capote
- Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It
trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.
-- Anthony Burgess, _Inside Mr. Enderby_
- London is chaos incorporated.
-- George Mikes, _Down With Everybody_
- To Europe she was America, to America she was the gateway of the earth. But to tell the story of New York would be to write a social history of the world.
-- H.G. Wells, _The War in the Air_
- I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
-- Saul Bellow
- If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
- If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
- The truth is that the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.
-- Yoshida Kenko, _Life (Frail and Fleeting)_
- Our society has passed from a period which was ignorant of adolescence to a
period in which adolescence is the favorite age. We now want to come to it
early and linger in it as long as possible.
-- Philippe Aries, _Centuries of Childhood_
- Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate.
(Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.)
-- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
- If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.
-- W.C. Fields
- No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
-- Scott's First Law
- All prosperity begins in the mind and is dependent only on the full use of our creative imagination."
-- Ruth Ross
- Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
-- The Tenth Law of Computer Programming
- Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is right. It consists of repacing a theory that is wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.
-- Hawkin's Theory of Progress
- Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.
-- Marjory Stoneman Douglas, B. 1890 American Conservationist
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