Following are
some favorite quotes. Some are financially related, but many aren't. These have
appeared in my newsletters over the years and the list will continue to grow.
Feel free to make suggestions. I hope you will enjoy this collection and find
some humor, pleasure or satisfaction in knowing that others have walked the same
path.
Remember that time is money. If you would like to know the value of money, go
and try to borrow some.
Benjamin Franklin
The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
Warren Buffett
There's many a pessimist who got that way by financing an optimist.
Anonymous
Learn to take losses quickly and cleanly.
There is something about inside information which seems to paralyze a man's
reasoning powers. Beware of barbers, beauticians, waiters - or anyone - bringing
gifts of 'inside' information or tips.
Don't try to be a jack of all investment. Stick to the field you know best.
Bernard Baruch
'Tis money that begets money.
Thomas Fuller
The stock market is but a mirror which provides an image of the underlying or
fundamental economic situation. Cause and effect run from the economy to the
stock market, never the reverse. In 1929 the economy was headed for trouble.
Eventually that trouble was violently reflected in Wall Street.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I find all this money a considerable burden.
John Paul Jr. Getty
If you don't know who you are, the stock market is an expensive place to find
out.
George Goodman
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A million dollars isn't what it used to be.
Howard Hughes
A billion dollars isn't what it used to be.
Nelson Bunker Hunt
The engine which drives Enterprise is not Thrift, but Profit.
John Maynard Keynes
All you need is look over the earnings forecasts publicly made a year ago to see
how much care you need to give to those being made now for next year.
Gerald Koeb
Spend at least as much time researching a stock as you would choosing a
refrigerator.
Peter Lynch
William Rini, you've beaten out all previous winners with our biggest prize ever
-- over $10,000,000.00.
Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes
A fool and her money are soon courted.
-Helen Rowland
Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm we of moderate means
do to ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter our own natures.
-Theodore Roosevelt
It is easy to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live
after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with
perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
-Emerson
Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow
sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's
mountains.
-John Muir
By this all men will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one
another.
-John 13:35
Never make forecasts, especially about the future.
-Samuel Goldwyn
The brave who stands on top of a hill with his mouth open, waits a long time
before a roasted goose flys in.
-Native American saying
Wall Street Lays an Egg. Headline announcing stock market crash [October 1929]
Sime Silverman
Risk: You can't live with it, you can't live without it.
T-Rowe Price advertisment
There are three types of statistics; lies, lies, and damned lies.
There are two times in a man's life when he should not
speculate; when he can't afford to and when he can.
Mark Twain
There's a fine line between eccentrics and geniuses. If you're a little ahead of
your time, you're an eccentric, and if you're too late, you're a failure, but if
you hit it right on the head, you're a genius.
Thomas J. Watson Jr.
You want to know a sure way to lose money? Buy what's popular and don't know
what you are investing in.
Whitman, Marty (Yale University Professor)
Risk is not a dirty word.
Walter Wriston
I don't think somebody suddenly goes from being a genius to being an idiot.
Donald Yacktman
Too many people are apt to redeem their profits too quickly. In a huge bull
market they wind up with piddling profits, only to watch their former holdings
soar. That usually prompts them into making mistakes later when, believing that
the market owes them some money, they buy at the wrong time at much higher
levels.
Martin Zweig
...a wise and frugral government, which shall restrain men from injuring one
another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread
it has earned.
-Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801
Talent is God-given, be humble;
Fame is man-given be thankful;
Conceit is self given, be careful.
-John Wooden
By the time a family pays off the mortgage for a home in the suburbs, the home
isn't home,and the suburbs aren't suburbs.
-Anonymous
It is within the power of every man to live nobly, but no man to live forever.
Yet so many of us hope that life will go on forever, and so few aspire to live
nobly.
-Seneca
Middle age is when your classmates are so gray, bald and wrinkled that they
don't recognize you.
-Bennet Cerf
In Wall Street the only thing that's hard to explain is next week.
-Louis Rukeyser
The superior man does not preach what he practices, until he has practiced what
he preaches.
-Confucious, 500 B.C.
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.
-Solomon, Proverbs 15:17
Get rich quick schemes make millionaires out of multi-millionaires.
-Anonymous
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the
children of men, as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the
long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
-Hellen Keller
I have been to the future and it works.
-Lincoln Steffans, American intellectual after trip to Russia, 1931.
And he called the people to him and said to them, "Hear and understand: not what
goes into the mouth defiles the man, but what comes out, this defiles a man."
-Jesus, Matthew 15:10,11
I resolve for 1920 to sit down all by myself and take a personal stock-taking
once a month. To be no more charitable in viewing my own faults than I am an
viewing the faults of others. To face the facts candidly and courageously. To
address myself carefully, prayerfully, to remedying defects.
-B.C. Forbes
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
The presence of a superior reasoning power...revealed in the incomprehensible
universe, forms my idea of God.
-all three by Albert Einstein
It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by
itself.
-Thomas Jefferson
Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord
by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring
forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is,
God with us.
- Matthew; 1:22-23 KJV
Restlessness is discontent - and discontent is the first necessity of progress.
Show me a thoroughly satisfied man- and I will show you a failure.
-Thomas Edison
When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with
him.
-Solomon, Proverbs 16:7
Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
-Benedict Spinoza - 1670
The difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes
only your skin.
-Mark Twain
Share prices fluctuate more than share values.
-John Templeton
Fortunes are made by buying low and selling too soon.
-Baron Rothschild
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it
expects what never was and never will be.
-Thomas Jefferson
Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.
-German saying
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for
thoughts.
-Samuel Johnson
The taxpayer: Someone who works for the government but doesn't have to take the
civil service exam.
-Ronald Reagan
Some men die in shrapnel, and some go down in flames. But most men perish inch
by inch, playing at little games.
-Anonymous
Money makes money. And the money that makes money makes more money.
-Benjamin Franklin
If you don't profit from your investment mistakes, someone else will.
-Yale Hirsch
The fire at the plant was due to the friction of a large inventory rubbing up
against an insurance policy.
-Southern saying
Steal away from Wall Street and every worldly care,and spend an hour about
mid-day in humble, hopeful prayer.
-Journal of Commerce 1857
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
-George Orwell, Animal Farm
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself
from within.
-Will & Ariel Durant
Failure can be bought on easy terms;
Success must be paid for in advance.
-Cullen Hightower
Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force;
that thoughts rule the world.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is
anything worthy of praise, think about theses things.
-Phillipians 4:8
The girl who can't dance says the band can't play.
-Yiddish saying
There are only two classes in society: those who get more than they earn, and
those who earn more than they get.
-Holbrook Jackson
I've found the best way to give advice to children is to find out what they want
to do, then advise them to do it.
-Harry S. Truman
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but
rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
-Kahlil Gibran
As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say, I just watch what they do.
-Andrew Carnegie
Moral reform is the most delicate branch of statesmanship; few rulers have
attempted it; most have left it to hypocrites and saints.
-Will & Ariel Durant
Better is the man of humble standing that works for himself than one who plays
the great man but lacks bread.
-Solomon, Proverbs 12:9
Granting our wish is one of Fate's saddest jokes.
-James Russell Lowell
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most
important of all lessons of history.
-Aldous Huxley
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
-Ambrose Bierce
One ship drives East and another West, while the self-same breezes blow:
`Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale, that bids them where to go.
-Anonymous
I know of no more sacred duty than to rear and educate a child.
-Beethoven
God's Law of Cause and Effect: Your rewards in life will always be equal to the
amount and quality of service rendered, in the long run.
-Denis Waitley
For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each
tree is known by its own fruit.
-Jesus, Luke 6:43-44
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us
or we will find it not.
-RW Emerson
I wish I were either rich enough or poor enough to do a lot of the things that
are impossible in my present comfortable circumstances.
-Don Herold
If you keep too busy learning the tricks of the trade, you may never learn the
trade.
-John Wooden
The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of masters and slaves.
And intends to be master.
-Ayn Rand (c.1955-1975)
Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offences.
-Proverbs 10:12
A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those that coerce him
do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
-Herbert Spencer
And he called the people to him and said to them, "Hear and understand: not what
goes into the mouth defiles the man, but what comes out, this defiles a man."
-Jesus, Matthew 15:10,11
It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by
itself.
-Thomas Jefferson
Anyone who marries for money earns every cent of it.
-Anonymous
Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts.
-Winston Churchill.
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the
irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose
that too.
-Somerset Maugham
The ballot is stonger than the bullet.
-Abraham Lincoln
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
-Buddhist Udana-Varga, 5, 8
What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowmen. That is the entire Law; all
the rest is commentary.
-Jewish:Talmud, -Shabbat, 31a
No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother what he desires for
himself.
-Islam: Sunnah
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them:
for this is the Law and the Prohets.
Christian: Matthew 7:12
Middle age is when your classmates are so gray and bald and wrinkled they don't
recognize you.
-Bennet Cerf
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who
are.
-C.S. Lewis
Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful.
Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.
-Ludwig Van Beethoven
Some choose to see what is unjust, and their life is to challenge it.
I choose to see what is just, and my challenge is to live it.
-MWB
The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty
comes surely to poverty.
-Proverbs 21:5
When you come to a fork in the road - take it.
-Yogi Berra
The more laws the less justice.
-Cicero 44BC
Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
-Francis Bacon
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
-Thomas Jefferson
The state is made for man, not man for the state.
-Albert Einstein
The sluggard does not plow after the autumn, so he begs during the harvest and
has nothing.
-Proverbs 20:4
But whoever has the world's goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes
his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
-1 John 3:17
Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.
-Mark Twain
It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely
try to help another without helping himself.
-R.W. Emerson
Stubborness we deprecate, firmness we condone, the former is our neighbors
trait, the latter is our own.
-John Wooden
Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to; the sense of
disappointment can, with very little skill on our part, be turned into a sense
of injury.
-(Senior devil Screwtape) C.S. Lewis
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own
understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make your paths straight.
-Proverbs 3:5-6
Just because the river is quiet does not mean the crocodiles have left.
-Malay proverb
Anyone who marries for money earns every cent of it.
-Anonymous
Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.
-Stephen Swid
A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
-Benjamin Franklin
Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.
-C.S. Lewis (1963)
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is I could be
just as proud for half the money.
-Arthur Godfrey
Experience is the hardest teacher.
It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.
-Anonymous
Unquestionably there is progress. The average American nows pays out almost as
much in taxes alone as he formerly got in wages.
-H.L. Mencken
All the other pleasures of life seem to wear out, but the pleasure of helping
others in distress never does.
-Julius Rosenwald
In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.
-Proverbs 14:15
"A good man
leaves an inheritance to his children's children" (Proverbs 13:22).
"The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage. . . " (Proverbs 21:5).
"Divide your portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what
misfortune may occur on the earth" (Ecclesiastes 11:2).
"Know well the condition of your flocks, and pay attention to your herds; for
riches are not forever, nor does a crown endure to all generations" (Proverbs
27:23-24).
"But godliness actually is a means of great gain, when accompanied by
contentment" (1 Timothy 6:6).
"By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by
knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches" (Proverbs
24:3-4).
"If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his
household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Timothy
5:8).
"The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave"
(Proverb 22:7)
"It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay"
(Ecclesiastes 5:5).
"You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips, just as you have
voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God, what you have promised" (Deuteronomy
23:23).
"The wicked borrows and does not pay back, but the righteous is gracious and
gives" (Psalm 37:21)
"My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus" (Philippians 4:19).
We know that God was speaking truth when He spoke through the prophet Jeremiah
and said, "For I know the plans that I have for you . . . plans for welfare and
not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and
come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when
you search for Me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:11-13). Paul, writing to the
oppressed church in Rome, said, "For the gifts and the calling of God are
irrevocable" (Romans 11:29).
"It matters not
whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose."
- Darrin Weinberg
"I see no reason to suppose [steam locomotives] will ever force themselves into
general use."
- Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington (1769-1852)
In 1952, IBM forecasted the total global market for computers as 52 units. In
1982, IBM forecasted the total global market for PC's as 200,000 units. In 1966
RCA forecasted that there would be 220,000 computers in the United States by the
turn of the 21st Century. - Less than current weekly shipments.
Edison also made the following pronouncements on electricity in the home:
"Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will
use it, ever. It's too dangerous…it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of
lightning. Direct current is safe." And, "Just as certain as death, George
Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a system of
any size."
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
- Ken Olsen president of Digital Equipment, 1977.
"The population will begin to get smaller and smaller."
- author Cyril Bibby in 1947, at the beginning of the baby boom.
"Between changed environmental factors and better drugs, coronary heart disease
will be pretty well licked by 2000."
- Dr. Irvine Page of the Cleveland Clinic, 1966.
"What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking
his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?"
- English author William Law, a Senior Call to a Devout and Holy Life, 1728.
"Famous in our circles is the story of the visiting English banker who in 1948
upon seeing our model 95 camera commented, 'Very interesting, but why would one
want a picture in a minute?'"
- Polaroid founder Dr. Edwin Land in the 1979 Polaroid Annual Report.
"Smoke and noise- so easy to overcome- will be held in decent check by
legislation…"
- Morris L. Ernst, Utopia 1976, 1955.
"I don't think w should be too timid to say that at the end of the century,
we're going to put a man on Mars; somebody's going to do it."
- Vice President Spiro Agnew, 1969.
``Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to
the doctrines of the weak.'' - Robert G. Ingersoll, American lawyer and
statesman (1833-1899).
"Everyone's quick to blame the alien."
- Aeschylus (c. - 456 B.C.)
"It is the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has
prospered."
- Aeschylus (c. - 456 B.C.)
"Only when a man's life comes to its end in prosperity dare we pronounce him
happy."
- Aeschylus (c. - 456 B.C.)
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens."
- Woody Allen (1935 - )
"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."
- Woody Allen (1935 - )
"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads
to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray
we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
- Woody Allen (1935 - )
"The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much
sleep."
- Woody Allen (1935 - )
""Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who
controls the present controls the past.""
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its
adherents."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"At 50, everyone has the face he deserves."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went
before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future
conquers the past."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle."
- George Orwell (1903 - 1950)
"Great men can't be ruled."
- Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)
"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have
imagined."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears
a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured
or far away."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"If the law is of such a nature that it requires you to be an agent of injustice
to another, then I say, break the law."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"In Wildness is the preservation of the world."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak, and another to hear."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Make the most of your regrets. . . To regrets deeply is to live afresh."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first
syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"I heartily accept the motto -- "That government is best which governs least;"
and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically Carried
out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, -- "That government is
best which government is best which governs not at all.""- Henry David Thoreau
(1817 - 1862)
"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Our life is frittered away by detail. . . .Simplify, simplify, simplify."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"That man is the richest whose pleasure are the cheapest."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to
be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is
confirmed desperation."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"The perception of beauty is a moral test."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates,
his fate."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what
lives within us."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"When I read some of the rules of speaking and writing the English language
correctly, . . . I think -- Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind
it."- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its
ignorance."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Any fool can make a rule."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"City Life. Millions of people being lonesome together."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"Dreams are the touchstones of our character."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is
violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a
foretaste of the resurrection."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse
proportion to his mental capacity."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"To expect a man to retain everything that he has ever read is like expecting
him to carry about in his body everything that he has ever eaten."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the
same is true of fame."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those
who possess great talent it is hypocrisy."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"By the time
we've made it, we've had it."
- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
"Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs."
- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
"If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job."
- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
"Men who never get carried away should be."
- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
"Success follows doing what you want to do. There is no other way to be
successful."
- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
"The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with and open one."
- Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)
"None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and
are not."
- Benedict de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
"Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow."
- Benedict de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition
for benevolence, confidence, justice."
- Benedict de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
"The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they
have to speak."
- Benedict de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
"We feel and know that we are eternal."
- Benedict de Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
"Seek not that
the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which
happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life."
- Epictetus ( - c.130)
"Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor avoid
anything which depends on others. If he does not observe this rule, he must be a
slave."
- Epictetus ( - c.130)
"At every occasion in your life, do not forget to commune with yourself and ask
of yourself how you can profit by it."
- Epictetus ( - c.130)
"If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write."
- Epictetus ( - c.130)
"It is difficulties that show what men are."
- Epictetus ( - c.130)
"Nature has given men one tongue and two ears, that we may hear twice as much as
we speak."
- Epictetus ( - c.130)
"Only the educated are free."
- Epictetus ( - c.130)
""Money often
costs too much.""
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply
nothing to do."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think
aloud."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"A good indignation makes an excellent speech."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is
to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"A nation never falls but by suicide."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"All life is an experiment."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"All mankind love a lover."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"All the great speakers were bad speakers once."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Art is a jealous mistress."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Character is that which can do without success."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that
I cannot hear what you say to the contrary."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Heaven always bears some proportion to earth. The god of the cannibal will be a
cannibal, of the crusades a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Hitch your wagon to a star."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"I used to always think that I'd look back on us crying and laugh, but, I never
thought I'd look back on us laughing and cry."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better
mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world
will make a beaten path to his door."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"In every work of genius we recognize our rejected thoughts."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"It is easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"It is not length of life, but depth of life."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted
whenever I am contradicted."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless
seeker with no past at my back."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on
government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for
these."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"People only see what they are prepared to see."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of
character."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be
one."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"The universal does not attract us until housed in an individual."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"The years teach much which the days never knew."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us
or we find it not."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"To fill the hour, -- that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice
for a repentance or an approval."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show
themselves great."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"We are always getting ready to live, but never living."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"We boil at different degrees"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"We do what we must, and call it by the best names."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"When I cannot brag about knowing something, I brag about not knowing it."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be
too late."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have
both."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
"Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bud supper."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be
content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to
fear; and yet that commonly is the case of kings."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty, or to seek power over
other and to lose power over a man's self."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Knowledge is power."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Some books are to be tasted, other to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed
and digested."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"The house is well, but it is you, Your Majesty, who have made me too great for
my house."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays
irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own
nature with it."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater
degree of order and quality in things than it really finds."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects,
for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for
counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would
heal and do well."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"All rising to great place is by a winding stair."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase
the cares of life, but the mitigate the remembrance of death."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns
things weighty and solid."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"For knowledge, too, is itself power."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the
price will fall."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human
pleasures."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Children sweeten labors, but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase
the cares of life, but the mitigate the remembrance of death."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns
things weighty and solid."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"For knowledge, too, is itself power."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human
pleasures."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Curiosity is only in vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk.
We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of
ever telling."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time
to make it shorter."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"I lay is down as a fact that if all men know what others say of them, there
would not be four friends in the world."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"The heart has it reasons which reason know nothing of."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of
things which surpass it."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same
persons."
- Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
"I stopped believing in Santa Clause when I was six. Mother took me to see him
in a department store and he asked for my autograph."
- Shirley Temple (1928 - )
"You have to be efficient if you're going to be lazy."
- Shirly Conran (1932 - )
"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a
necessary condition for our existence."
- Sholem Asch
"Fortune favors the bold."
- Virgil (70 B.C. - 19 B.C.)
"I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts."
- Virgil (70 B.C. - 19 B.C.)
"Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love."
- Virgil (70 B.C. - 19 B.C.)
"Maybe one day we shall be glad to remember even these hardships."
- Virgil (70 B.C. - 19 B.C.)
"They can because they think they can."
- Virgil (70 B.C. - 19 B.C.)
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."
- George Santayana (1863 - 1952)
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your
aim."
- George Santayana (1863 - 1952)
"The family is one of nature's masterpieces."
- George Santayana (1863 - 1952)
"Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous
circumstances would have lain dormant."
- Horace (65 B. C. - 8 B.C.)
"Force without judgment falls of its own weight."
- Horace (65 B. C. - 8 B.C.)
"Nothing is swifter than rumor."
- Horace (65 B. C. - 8 B.C.)
"All the
knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
"We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them
as God gives them to us."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
"What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and
magic in it."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
"Which government is best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to
play with your hair."
- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
"Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is
giving me that which you need more than I do."
- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and
kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."
- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
"Let there be space in your togetherness."
- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
"We shall never understand one another until we reduce the language to seven
words."
- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
"You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who
shall command the skylark not to sing?"
- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)
"The best way of avenging yourself is not to become like the wrongdoer."
- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
""A cucumber is bitter." Throw it away. "There are briars in the road." Turn
aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, "And why were such things made in
the world?""
- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
"How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it."
- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
"Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear."
- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
"Nothing is evil which is according to nature."
- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
"Our life is what our thoughts make of it."
- Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180)
"It is not
difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your
unconventionality is but the convention of your set."
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)
"It’s a funny thing about life: If you refuse to accept anything but the best,
you very often get it."
- W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)
"Mothers are
fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are
their own."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies;
for the hardest victory is the victory over self."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"It is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be
equalized."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies;
for the hardest victory is the victory over self."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"It is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be
equalized."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it."
- Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
"All wish to know, but none want to pay the fee."
- Juvenal ( - 130)
"Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another."
- Juvenal ( - 130)
"No one ever suddenly became depraved."
- Juvenal ( - 130)
"Take away love and our earth is a tomb."
- Robert Browning (1812 - 1889)
"At the beginning and at the end of love the two lovers are embarrassed to find
themselves alone."
- Jean de La Bruyère (1645 - 1696)
"Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love."
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedoms of the
people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent
and sudden usurpations.
-James Madison
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who
approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but
downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.
-Patrick Henry, Virginia's Ratification convention, 1788
Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of
society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only
his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible
hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.
-Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the
pursuit of justice is no virtue.
-Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964 (1909-1998)
Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others
is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.
-Ayn Rand
The whole notion that you can equalize opportunity in things that
matter is utopian.
-Dr. Thomas Sowell, Economist and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution,
Stanford, California, 1992
Its not charity if its at the point of a gun.
-Unknown
The intrepid
Theodore Roosevelt once declared: "I would rather bust out than rust out." The
tragic fact is that a lamentable number of top-notch business executives, when
they reach retirement age and are forced out, live very little longer. They find
themselves fish out of water. Far too many of our ablest Americans, after living
supremely strenuously, don't know how to slow down as they get older, don't know
how to exercise moderation. Personally, I don't want either to bust out or rust
out. I believe in following the middle of the road.
--B.C. FORBES (1950)
I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what I ought to do, but I
don't know where to begin.
--STEPHEN BAYNE
It took great courage to ask a beautiful young woman to marry me. Believe me, it
is easier to play the whole of Petrushka on the piano.
--ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN
He's the type of guy I'd be proud to have as a son-in-law, just not with my
daughter.
--PETER FRITSCH
I should have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have
given pleasure to my mother-in-law.
--LORD BYRON
A Text ... But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. --II PETER 3: 8
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government behind
you.
-WILL ROGERS
I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.
-WOODY ALLEN
Many a true word is spoken in jest.
-ENGLISH PROVERB
Evidently you don't know that we are living in a new world, that we have
outgrown all past conditions and are so rich that it is inevitable millions of
people will speculate in stocks," one successful stockbroker hurled at me the
other day. I take with more than one grain of salt emphatic assurances that
stock prices can never fall back to levels formerly regarded as normal. The
"impossible" having happened in the money market, is it not just possible that
the "impossible" may happen in the stock market?
--B.C. FORBES (APRIL 1929)
The eyes, those silent tongues of love.
--CERVANTES
At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
--GEORGE ORWELL
I went out to buy a kitchen sink and they threw everything else into the deal.
--DAVE WEINBAUM
Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish
may be caught with the smallest hook.
--HENRY WARD BEECHER
Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others
to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with
folly.
--ERASMUS
At every party there are two kinds of people--those who want to go home and
those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.
--ANN LANDERS
He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.
--SAMUEL JOHNSON
Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or
robbing a bank, but never to being bores.
--ELSA MAXWELL
A Text ... For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon
earth are a shadow.
--JOB 8: 9
Of all the perversions of the democratic process, can you think of any worse one
than having judges run for election? To get their party's nod, judicial
candidates have to curry favor with local and state political power brokers. How
do you suppose such favor is curried? Running for office costs a bundle. Big
bucks are needed. How much imagination do you need to figure out why many of the
big contributors give so big? Those running for judgeships usually end up
heavily indebted to the power brokers and dollar-ladlers.
--MALCOLM FORBES (1966)
The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe
once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman.
--GRAHAM GREENE
When I want to buy up any politician I always find the antimonopolists the most
purchasable--they don't come so high.
--WILLIAM VANDERBILT
When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they
will.
--SHAKESPEARE
The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.
--BESS MYERSON
If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.
--ARAB PROVERB
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are
quite capable of every wickedness.
--JOSEPH CONRAD
Public money is like holy water; everyone helps himself to it.
--ITALIAN PROVERB
Ever since World War II ended, this writer has been convinced that Russia would
stop short of precipitating a third World War. That conviction persists. Events
in Korea have strengthened it. The free countries who are members of the United
Nations have rallied, still are rallying, to combat Soviet Russia throughout the
world. Note how silent Stalin has been recently. The power of the U.N. has
progressed. My belief is that Russia is not prepared to throw down the gauntlet
to all the rest of the world.
--B.C. FORBES (1950)
Poker is a game of chance, but not the way I play it.
--W.C. FIELDS
That which, perhaps, hears more nonsense than anything in the world is a picture
in a museum.
--EDMOND & JULES DE GONCOURT
Ever since Eve gave Adam the apple, there has been a misunderstanding between
the sexes about gifts.
--NAN ROBERTSON
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. --FULTON J. SHEEN
Inflationary trends are under way. Wage increases, through strikes or threatened
strikes, are rampant. Government expenditures are ballooning ominously. Hoarding
has contributed unconscionably to price-boosting. The Government should
institute measures calculated to arrest inflation. America's commitments are
already so mountainous, international and domestic, that the pruning knife
should be applied. You and I, all American taxpayers, don't possess limitless
resources--our pockets are not bottomless. Curb inflation at every turn! --B.C.
Forbes (1950)
I fuss around with commas, semi-colons, dictionaries, and wordings, and it
drives me crazy. I am too virile. I ought to be building subways.
--HAROLD ROSS
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
--GOETHE
Gentleman: a man who buys two of the same morning paper from the doorman of his
favorite nightclub when he leaves with his girl.
--MARLENE DIETRICH
Robert Benchley and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would
have been adultery.
--DOROTHY PARKER
A blonde in a red dress can do without introductions--but not without a
bodyguard.
--RONA JAFFE
The wicked walk on every side, when the vilest men are exalted.
--psalms 12: 8
In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get
possessed by our possessions.
-MAX LERNER
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own
taste.
-MARCEL DUCHAMP
Friends are God's apology for relations.
-HUGH KINGSMILL
I only drink to make other people seem more interesting.
-GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
-DEAN MARTIN
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty.
-II CORINTHIANS 3:17
"In the cycle of a great civilization, the artist begins as priest, and ends as
a clown or buffoon."
- Malcolm Muggeridge
"In order to excel, you must be completely dedicated to your chosen sport. You
must also be prepared to work hard and be willing to accept destructive
criticism. Without 100 percent dedication, you won't be able to do this."
- Willie Mays
"I never stay away from workouts. I work hard. I've tried to take care of my
body. I'll never look back and say that I could have done more. I've paid the
price in practice, but I know I get the most out of my ability."
- Carl Yastrzemski
"Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt. Only by being open to change
will you have a true opportunity to get the most from your talent."
- Nolan Ryan
Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving
but does not make any progress.
Alfred A. Montapert (American Author)
To stick to the present and not let it pass without drawing some profit from it,
that's what I think duty is. ...let us perservere as far as we can rather today
than tomorrow."
- Vincent Van Gogh, Dear Theo
"Well, I dare not allow myself any illusions, and I am afraid it may never
happen that Father and Mother will really appreciate my art. It is not their
fault; we do not see the same things with the same eyes, or have the same
thoughts raised in us by them. They will never be able to understand what
painting is."
- Vincent Van Gogh, Dear Theo
"Carlyle rightly says, 'Blessed is he who has found his work.' I think a painter
is happy because he is in harmony with nature as soon as he can express a little
of what he sees. And that's a great thing; one knows what one has to do, there
are subjects in abundance. If that work strives to bring peace, like that of
Millet, then it is doubly stimulating--one is also less alone, because one
thinks: It's true I'm sitting here lonely, but whilst I am sitting here and
keeping silent, my work perhaps speaks to my friend, and whoever sees it will
not suspect me of being heartless."
- Vincent Van Gogh, Dear Theo
"But I must work on in full calmness and serenity... The world concerns me only
in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on
the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in
the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art,
but to express a sincere human feeling. So this work is the aim--and through
concentration upon that one idea, everything one does is simplified. Now the
work goes slowly--a reason the more to lose no time."
- Vincent Van Gogh, Dear Theo
"I am a man of passions, capable of and subject to doing more or less foolish
things, of which I happen to repent, more or less, afterwards. Now and then I
speak and act too quickly, when it would have been better to wait patiently. I
think other people sometimes commit the same imprudences. Well, this being the
case, what must be done? Must I consider myself a dangerous man, incapable of
anything? I do not think so. But the question is to try by all means to put
those selfsame passions to a good use. For instance, I have more or less
irresistible passion for books, and I want continually to instruct myself, just
as much as I want to eat my bread. When I was in the surroundings of pictures
and things of art, I then had a violent passion for them that reached the
highest pitch of enthusiasm. And I do not repent it..."
- Vincent Van Gogh, Dear Theo
"It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good,
and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and
will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good--it
may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will
certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others
arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors
and do their work in the same way."
- Vincent Van Gogh, Dear Theo
I believe in
Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but
because by it I see everything else.
No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet. - C.S. Lewis
Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. -
C.S. Lewis
You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what
our civilization needs is more "drive," or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or
"creativity." In sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the
function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and
bid the geldings be fruitful. 1943 - from The Abolition of Man- C.S. Lewis
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more
clever devil. - C.S. Lewis
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches
rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with
democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to
one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the
creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands
above and outside his own creation. 1943 - from Christian Reflections, "The
Poison of Subjectivism"- C.S. Lewis
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it
than the next man... it is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of
being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.
- C.S. Lewis 1952 - from Mere Christianity
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the
most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under
omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his
cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own
good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their
consciences. - C.S. Lewis