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Quotations

Here are some deep quotes I have come across, that you may find enlightening, thought provoking, amusing or controversial. Hope you enjoy them, and get the chance to use them!

Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
William Shakespeare

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.
Zeno (335 BC - 263 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Whoever is out of patience is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn into bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.
Francis Bacon

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968), Speech at St. Louis, March 22, 1964

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of the utmost insecurity.
Dag Hammarskjold

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.
George Elliot

There is a noble manner of being poor and who does not know it will never be rich.
Seneca

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
Maria Montessori

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Frank Leahy

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
Denis Waitley

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again--and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)


The people who oppose your ideas the most are those who represent the establishment that your ideas will upset.
Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak and the other to hear.
Henry David Thoreau

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Francis Bacon

Politicians are the same the world over: they promise to build a bridge even when there is no river.
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971)

You better live your best and act your best and think your best today, for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.
Harriet Marineau

He was a wise man who invented God.
Plato (427?-348? BC)

The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that we can succeed.
Nelson Boswell

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
William Penn

Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?
Martin Luther King

It is with a word as with an arrow - once let it loose and it does not return.
Unknown


Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and serenely...
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire

Never confuse motion with action.
Ben Franklin

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
Woodrow Wilson

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
Thomas Henry Huxley


It is easier to stay out than get out.
Mark Twain

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw


The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.
Plato (428 BC - 348 BC), The Republic

When I was one-and-twenty,
I heard a wise man say,
Give pounds and crowns and guineas,
But not your heart away."

Give pearls away and rubies,
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
A.E. Houseman

One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our need from our greed.
Author Unknown

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
John Locke

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Reprove thy friend privately; commend him publicly.
Solon

A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.
Andre Malraux

Eh! Je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre.
(Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them.)
Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin (1807-1874)

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde

Freedom also includes the right to mismanage your own affairs.
Author Unknown

Don't fear change, embrace it.
Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson


No man ever listened himself out of a job.
Calvin Coolidge


If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job.
Malcolm Forbes

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition,it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive
measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country
where everyone lives in fear.
President Harry S Truman, August 8, 1950

What was once thought can never be unthought.
Friedrich

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Christopher Morley

Never has a man who has bent himself been able to make others straight.
Mencius (372 BC - 289 BC)

Religions change; beer and wine remain.
Hervey Allen (1889-1949)

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
Benjamin Franklin

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P.J. O'Rourke

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
William James (1842-1910)

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change.
A.N. Whitehead

To get the attention of a large animal, be it an elephant or a bureaucracy, it helps to know what part of it feels pain. Be very sure, though, that you want its full attention.
Kelvin Throop

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of
things. Niccolo Machiavelli "The Prince" 1532