A Parallel Universe

You are the hawk with bloodstained wings.

What is the sound of a broken heart's scream? It is the color of midnight.

They say that Insanity is the color of Blood

Always hurting, but I can only think of you.

If your nightmare came to life, he would one day kill many men and woo many women.

When the moon begins to bleed, there will be sorrow and no more.

If he could love, might the sun shine upon your face?

If magic was real, might you change your mind?

If there was no more light, I would love you till my dying day.

If the dead could scream, would you cry for me?

What is the intention of the night? To see beyond the horizon.

What has the wind told you today?

He learned to take pleasure in the senseless life of a soldier. March. Fight. Live. Win. Burn, loot and pillage. Rape the local women, and drink enough wine to drown a horse.

I can still see it. When I close my eyes, I see the scene again, and again. I can still see the pain on her face and the pleasure on his as the bullet blew out her brains.

Standing watch until the sun will rise once more, standing watch until the pale light lifts the dead of night.

All life has an expiration date. Will you allow yours to come before you have made a difference?

Leave your wings outside.

If you seek trust, you must deceive.

The heat in his orange-eyed gaze was enough to light a fire in the midst of a rain. A heavy rain.

Stagefright. Ha! What a concept. You're not afraid of your home, are you Tambre love?

What can you do when you're only fifteen and you've already completed your life's goal?

I could point a gun at my head, hang myself, light a fire beneath my feet and what would happen? The gun would backfire, the rope would break and I would put the fire out as I fell on it. I'm just not good at this dying thing.

I can embrace my own pain, recignize it as a part of me. But the pain of others? I can't keep it out. I feel every scratch, every scar as if it were my own. But I cannot accept it as a part of my being.

I'm a depressed seventeen year old writer seperated from the one I love and adore. That should explain where I'm coming from.

Is my writing always this... bloody? I mate up a beast only to blow it up three lines later!
Err... make up...

I have not seen the sun shine in a long time.

Some pains are beyond tears.

I will always wait for you, my heart.

You know, I am seriously considering becoming a guide in Antartica and dragging scientists around for six months out of the year so I don't have to put up with people.

The idle mind will sometimes fall into contemplations that serve for nothing but to ruin the health, destroy good humour, hasten old age and wrinkles, and bring on an habitual melancholy. 'Tis a maxim with me to be young as long as one can: there is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth; those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity, which make all the happiness of life. To my extreme mortification I grow wiser every day...

Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them becuase they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair; and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Humans are the only creatures that appreciate irony...

Knowledge is often mistaken for intelligence. This is like mistaking a cup of milk for a cow.

If you wish to convince people of something, it is more useful to be entertaining than to be right.

Greatness is difficult to appreciate from close up. The great mountain on the horizon is only the ground when you are standing on it.

Surely thou jivest...

A major source of conflict in the world is the common misconception that words can be true or false.

Actually, there is such a thing as a free lunch; it's just that few of us are rich enough to get to see it.

There are a lot of judgemental people in the world, and I think all those people are worthless dirtballs.

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it is.

To affirm that every person has inherent worth and dignity is an understatement as great as saying that Bill Gates has some money.

There is much that cannot be understood by the poor soul that thinks words are the same as thoughts.

If you never fail, you're not trying hard enough.

**> Never let a computer see you hurry. <**

Much trouble in the world has been caused by the belief that words are the same as thoughts. In fact, the one who hears them supplies their only truth or falsity.

A sure way to drain life of its savor is to keep a death-grip on it.

Proverbs from all over

If you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both.

You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails.
Yiddish proverb

Change is inevitable; progress is optional.

Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone, and more fragile than a rose.
Turkish proverb

If triangles had a God, he'd have 3 sides.
Yiddish Proverb

Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.

The man who claims to be the boss in his own home will lie about other things as well.
Amish saying

Getting old is wonderful, when you consider the alternative.

Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.
Zen proverb

Stupid questions are better than stupid mistakes.
Japanese proverb

Even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then.
Southern Proverb

The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars.

Non-reciprocal principle: If you add a cup of wine to a barrel of sewage, you get a barrel of sewage. If you add a cup of sewage to a barrel of wine, you get a barrel of sewage.

Do not attribute any action to malice that can be explained by stupidity.

To talk goodness is not good. Only to do it is.
Chinese Proverb

Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
African Proverb

Zen, Taoist and Philosophical quotes

The deer hunter does not notice the mountains.
Zen proverb

The superior person uses his mind like a mirror: it accepts all, it reflects all. It recieves, but it does not keep.
Chuang Tzu

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
Alan Watts

The Web site you seek

cannot be located.

But endless others exist.

The Tao that is seen

is not the true Tao, until

you bring fresh toner.

Stay the patient course.

Of little worth is your ire;

the network is down.

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
Jane Austen

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
Herman Melville (in Moby Dick)

If you must argue, remember that it is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
William Gibbs McAdoo

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
Billy Wilder

In the world, there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong, nothing can surpass it.
Lao Tzu

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
Erica Jong

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
Kahlil Gibran

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
Heraclitus

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

Not one shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

I don't mind going nowhere, as long as it's an interesting path.

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Blessed is he who expects nothing; for he shall not be disappointed.
Jonathan Swift

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang-Tzu

Silence is one of the most effective forms of communication.

The nice thing about having nothing is that you don't have to worry about losing it.

A man said to the Universe, "Sir, I exist!".

"However," replied the Universe,

"The fact has not aroused in me

a sense of obligation".

     Steven Crane

I'll tell you the meaning of life, but first you have to promise not to laugh...
"Frank & Earnest"

This above all: to your own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Shakespeare

Funny Quotes

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
Mark Twain

In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.
Edward P. Tryon

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
Salvador Dali

Warning: dates on calendar are closer than they appear.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
Mahatma Ghandi

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he's a mile away and barefoot.

Resistentialism: (N) the perceived tendency of inanimate objects to be obstinate. E.g. the toaster that won't pop up, the spring clip that keeps jumping out on the floor.
from "The Spizzerinctum Archive"

It's better to give than to receive. Especially advice.
Mark Twain

Contrary to popular opinion, the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'fact'.

This space intentionally left blank.

We can seldom get our children to do what we tell them, but they almost never fail to imitate us.
Colin Powell

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
Arthur C. Clarke

If I were punished for every pun I shed, there would not be left a puny shed of my punnish head.
Samuel Johnson

The box said "Requires Windows 95, NT, or better", so I installed Linux.

Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as Gods. Cats have never forgotten this.

Worry is like a rocking chair - it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.
Dorothy Galyean

I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France

Welcome to Hell. Here's your copy of Windows.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson

A town that cannot support a lawyer can always support two.
Lyndon Johnson

Nine in the second place means: The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.

I think it would be a good idea.
Mahatma Ghandi, when asked by a reporter for his opinion of western civilization

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.

At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
Washington Post Magazine,6/9/85

Nails are better wood fasteners than screws, if both are applied using a hammer.

Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Oscar Wilde

I was delighted to be able to answer promptly. "I don't know", I said.
Mark Twain

Carpe Datum

3rd law of thermodynamics: things go worse under pressure.

Things should be made as simple as possible, and not simpler.
Albert Einstein

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.
Clarence Darrow

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain

Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.
Christian F. Gellert

Be the change you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Ghandi

Contrary to popular belief, Barnum's great discovery was not how easy it was to deceive the public, but rather, how much the public enjoyed being deceived.
Daniel J. Boorstin

Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
Lillian Hellman

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe.
Abraham Lincoln

Failure is not an option. It is a privilege reserved only for those who try.

Indifference is evil's bodyguard. Without it, evil would have to do a much better job of hiding.

Isn't sanity just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean, all you get is that one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, well, the sky's the limit!
"The Tick (comic book)"

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away.
-Arthur Helps (1813-1875)

Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain

He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
-Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin

It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
Epicurus

The woods would be very silent if only the birds with the sweetest songs were heard.

Zippy the Pinhead

... Are we having fun yet? ...

All of a sudden, I want to THROW OVER my promising ACTING CAREER, grow a LONG BLACK BEARD and wear a BASEBALL HAT...

All of life is a blur of Republicans and meat!

Bleakness... Desolation... Plastic Forks...

Content: 80% POLYESTER, 20% DACRON.. the waitress's UNIFORM sheds TARTAR SAUCE like an 8' by 10' GLOSSY..

Did YOU find a DIGITAL WATCH in YOUR box of VELVEETA?

I am deeply CONCERNED and I want something GOOD for BREAKFAST.

Look! A ladder! Maybe it leads to heaven, or a sandwich.

Supreme Irony

An unhurried sense of time is, in itself, a form of wealth.
(Seen in a self-service gas pump display)

... because computers are happiest when we avoid describing them in anthropomorphic terms.
(from the preface of an O'Rielly book)

"Men", said the Devil, 

"Are kind to their brothers."

"They don't want to mend 

their own ways, but each other's."

          Piet Hein

Eschew obfuscation.

Heisenberg may have slept here.

Do not be fanatical in your dedication to reason.
Anne Rice, "Pandora"

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark, and professionals built the Titanic.

Scenes are like Chinese food -- good while you're reading them, but leave you hungry for more.

Contact your Inner Dolphin - try a depth charge

All's fair in love and war, except of course if you launch a cruise missile at your loved one's home. That wouldn't be too fair.

I've just bought some underwear with magnifying glasses sewn into the backside. Do you think they make my bum look big?

Nature abhors a vacuum, but not as much as cats do.

Well, this day was a total waste of makeup.

Make yourself at home! Clean my kitchen.

Who are these kids and why are they calling me Mom?

Don't bother me. I'm living happily ever after.

None of the ideas expressed above are actually mine. They are told to me by Luthor and Ferdinand, the five inch tall space aliens who live under my desk. In return for these ideas, I have given them permission to eat any dust bunnies they may find under there.

Your eyes are weary from staring at the CRT. You feel sleepy. Notice how restful it is to watch the cursor blink. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.

WARNING: I cannot be help responsible for the above, as apparently my cat has learned how to type.

Do I look like a freakin' people person?

This isn't an office. It's Hell with fluorescent lighting.

I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.

I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.

I've found Jesus. He was behind the sofa the whole time.

If I throw a stick, will you leave?

You! Off my planet!

Therapy is expensive, popping' bubble wrap is cheap! You choose.

Practice random acts of intelligence & senseless acts of self-control.

Bottomless pit of needs & wants.

I like cats, too. Let's exchange recipes.

If I want to hear the pitter patter of little feet, I'll put shoes on my cat.

Does your train of thought have a caboose?

Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.

And your crybaby whiny-assed opinion would be...?

I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for 30 years.

If only you'd use your powers for good instead of evil...

See no evil, hear no evil, date no evil.

A PBS mind in an MTV world.

Allow me to introduce my selves.

Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.

Whisper my favorite words: "I'll buy it for you."

Better living through denial.

Suburbia: where they tear out the trees & then name streets after them.

I'm trying to imagine you with a personality.

A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.

Stress is when you wake up screaming & you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.

Here I am! Now what are your other two wishes?

Back off! You're standing in my aura.

I can't remember if I'm the good twin or the evil one.

Don't worry. I forgot your name, too!

Adults are just kids who owe money.

I just want revenge. Is that so wrong?

I work 40 hours a week to be this poor.

You say I'm a bitch like it's a bad thing.

Can I trade this job for what's behind door #2?

Macho Law forbids me from admitting I'm wrong.

Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?

Too may freaks, not enough circuses.

Chaos, panic, & disorder -- my work here is done.

Ambivalent? Well, yes and no.

You look like shit. Is that the style now?

Everyone thinks I'm psychotic, except for my friends deep inside the earth.

Earth is full. Go home.

Is it time for your medication or mine?

I plead contemporary insanity.

And which dwarf are you?

I refuse to star in your psychodrama.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.

How do I set a laser printer to stun?

Meandering to a different drummer.

I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert.

I majored in liberal arts. Will that be for here or to go?

Bring a credit card. They won't accept children.

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.

I went to a restaurant that serves 'breakfast anytime'. so, I ordered French toast during the Renisance.

If Clinton is the answer, it must have been a stupid question.

Poets have been curiously silent on the subject of cheese.

Some drink at the fountain of knowledge... others just gargle.

I'm not cheap, but I am on special this week.

I'll listen to logic and reason when it comes out on CD.

Old Celts never die. They just have harp failure

I've gotta be me -- everyone else was already taken.

Don't kiss a fool, or let a kiss fool you.

What goes around usually gets dizzy and falls over.

When life hands you a lemon, demand a corona to go with it.

I love defenseless animals. Especially in a good gravy.

People who think they're perfect are very annoying to those of us that really are.

Life is like walking through a mine field. You never know when a step will cause an explosion.

Our suspects are albinos and chain smokers.

A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.

It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done.

You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.

Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a fool about it.

To err is human, to forgive is not our policy.

When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

Never kick a fresh cow chip on a hot day.

There's two theories to arguin' with a woman. Neither one works.

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

If you find yourself in a hole the first thing to do is stop diggin'.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Democracy is a beautiful thing, except for that part about letting just any old yokel vote.

Give me the strength to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I cannot, and a great big bag of money.

I bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.

If you really want to impress people with your computer literacy, add the words "dot com" to the end of everything you say, dot com.

I don't know about you, but I enjoy watching paint dry. I imagine that the wet paint is a big freshwater lake that is the only source of water for some tiny cities by the lake. As the lake gets drier, the population gets more desperate, and sometimes there are water riots. Once there was a big fire and everyone died.

If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the looting started.

I am not insane, I am artistic!!

Should vegetarians eat animal crackers?

Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?

What do little birdies see when they get knocked unconscious?

Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?

If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?

Is the main reason Santa is so jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live?

Should you trust a stockbroker who's married to a travel agent?

Is boneless chicken considered to be an invertebrate?

If all those psychics know the winning lottery numbers, why are they all still working?

Isn't Disneyland a people trap operated by a mouse?

Sooner or later, doesn't EVERYONE stop smoking?

Since light travels faster than sound, isn't that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak?

Isn't the best way to save face to keep the lower part shut?

War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.

How come you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is dead?

Why does sour cream have an expiration date?

The light went out, but where to?

Why do banks charge you a "non-sufficient funds fee" on money they already know you don't have?

Why is it you have a "pair" of pants and only one bra?

Does the reverse side also have a reverse side?

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it do the other trees make fun of it?

How come abbreviated is such a long word?

Why are there 5 syllables in the word "monosyllabic"?

If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go?

Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.

How come Superman could stop bullets with his chest, but always ducked when someone threw a gun at him?

Do infants have as much fun in their infancy as adults do in adultery?

If "con" is the opposite of "pro," then what is the opposite of progress?

Why is lemon juice mostly artificial ingredients but dish washing liquid contains real lemons?

How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't grow in it?

Why buy a product that it takes 2000 flushes to get rid of?

Why do we wait until a pig is dead to "cure" it?

Why do we wash bath towels? Aren't we clean when we use them?

Why do we put suits in a garment bag and put garments in a suitcase?

Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

Do Roman paramedics refer to IV's as "4's"?

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

I'm not cheap, but I am on special this week.

I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I intend to live forever... so far, so good.

I love defenseless animals, especially in a good gravy.

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

If you ain't makin' waves, you ain't kickin' hard enough!

Mental backup in progress -Do Not Disturb!

Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of.

Support bacteria-they're the only culture some people have.

Televangelists: The Pro Wrestlers of religion.

The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.

When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

If I worked as much as others, I would do as little as they.

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

24 hours in a day... 24 beers in a case... coincidence? I think not.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.

When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded.

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.

Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!

If you choke a smurf, what color does it turn?

Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery.

I poured Spot Remover on my dog. Now he's gone.

I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.

Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.

How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?

Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them.

Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor.

Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

Wear short sleeves! Support your right to bare arms!

For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small stain.

OK, so what's the speed of dark?

Corduroy pillows: They're making headlines!

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

Mind Like A Steel Trap - Rusty And Illegal in 37 States.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose.

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.

Put on your seatbelt... I wanna try something.

The Universe is a figment of its own imagination.

There's no future in time travel.

Tonight's weather: Dark with continued darkness until dawn.

Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface.

Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.

DCE seeks DTE for mutual exchange of data.

A day without sunshine is like night.

There are three kinds of people: Those who can count; those who can't.

Chocolate: the OTHER major food group.

If you can't convince them, confuse them.

Death is hereditary.

Multitasking - screwing up several things at once.

Beat the 5 o'clock rush - Leave work at noon!

Arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to roof of mouth.

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

Polynesia: memory loss in parrots.

A good pun is its own reword.

I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

To err is human, to moo bovine.

Friends may come and go, but enemies tend to accumulate.

Man who smoke pot choke on handle.

MicroSloth: "Bringing you ten-year-old technology, tomorrow, maybe."

How does Teflon stick to the pan?

Teacher: "Simon, can you say your name backwards?" Simon: "No Mis"

Why is "abbreviated" such a long word?

Mary had a little lamb... and Mulder was determined to find out why.

There's an exception to every rule, except this one.

CAUTION: Can go from 0 to Bitch in 1.5 seconds!

I think, therefore I worry!

I want to be just like Barbie, the bitch has everything.

Every millennium, our species loses a trait and takes on a new one. Wouldn't it be nice if hatred could be the next, replaced by a stronger sense of compassion?

Live each moment as if your hair is on fire!

NOT a morning person doesn't even begin to cover it.

Out of my mind. Back in 5 minutes.

I may rise, but I refuse to shine.

Due to intense mind fog, all thoughts have been grounded.

Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most.

New clinical studies show...there are no answers.

I'd like to take you out and leave you there.

Having abandoned the search for truth, I'm looking for a good fantasy.

I live in another dimension but I have a summer home in reality.

I'm a sensitive man, especially my inner thighs.

Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.

All stressed out and no one to choke.

Arms are for hugging.

Attitudes are the real disability.

Back off: I'm a Goddess.

Bad dog! No biscuit!

Being weird isn't enough.

Be reasonable: do it my way.

Better active today than radio active tomorrow.

Bitch by birth.

Born again Pagan.

Courtesy is contagious.

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Doing my part to piss off the religious right.

Don't feed or tease the straight people.

Don't be humble. You're not that great.

Don't play with my button.

Don't presume I'm straight.

Don't worry: only Men, Women, and Children get AIDS.

Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehersal.

Everything happens for a reason: God needs a laugh!

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

Foreign aid is the transfer of money from poor people in a rich country to rich people in a poor country.

Get even. Live long enough to be a problem to your kids.

God doesn't want to get involved and is living in Canada.

God is great... it's the people that work for Her who are assholes.

God is coming and is She pissed.

God is NOT a boys' name!!

God! Please save me from your followers!

Good planets are hard to find.

Homophobia is a social disease.

How dare you presume I'd rather be thin?

How many roads must a man travel down, before he admits he is lost?

Hurry, your first impression is almost up!

I am a shameless agitator.

I believe in reincarnation. I'm coming back rich and skinny.

I can't be overdrawn... I still have some checks.

I can tell you're lying. Your lips are moving.

If at first you don't succeed, change the rules.

If life is a stage, I'd like better lighting.

If logic prevailed, men would ride side saddle.

If older is better, I must be approaching magnificent.

If you're trying to act like an asshole, you're doing a great job.

I'm looking for Mr. Right, but I'll settle for right away.

I'm not deaf. I'm ignoring you.

I'm not as innocent as I look.

In Goddess we trust.

It's not whether you win or lose. It's how you place the blame.

It's been lovely but I have to SCREAM now.

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.

I was wrong -- once in my life.

Jesus is coming! Look busy.

Jesus Saves! By using double coupons and shopping wisely.

Kinky is using a feather. Perverted is using the whole chicken.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Learn to think for a living.

Lets do it my way and get it right the first time.

Life is uncertain... eat dessert first.

Lord, give me chasity, but not right now.

Money isn't everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch.

Money is how people without talent keep score.

My mother told me to be good but she's been wrong before.

My Goddess gave birth to your God.

I need help you say? I'm enjoying life. And as long as I don't go on a killing spree (that can be proven it was me) isn't that what matters?

There's only so long I can do what other people want before I lash out and castrate someone.

I don't listen to that part of my brain. I've tied up that little voice with chains and a gag. The other voices are getting the branding iron, blowtorch and whips ready for a 'session'.

The gutter is a nice place! It just gets a bad rep from all the politicians.

In looking back at the past 100 years, one thing stands out: Man’s capacity for cruelty seems fairly constant. -- U.S. News

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices. - Calvin and Hobbes

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. - Lemony Snicket

Life isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you handle what happens.- by Nicholas Evans, 'The Smoke Jumper'

Let them live in the stillness and know the flame. They will loose all and give all.- by William Nicholson, 'Firesong'

'After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.' - Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone)

'Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.' - Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

'And I, of course, am innocent of all but malice.' - Fiona, Sign of the Unicorn, by Roger Zelazny

'And if you're going to criticize me for not finishing the whole thing and tying it up in a bow for you, why, do us both a favor and write your own damn book, only have the decency to call it a romance instead of a history, because history's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied. It ain't a pretty package, but then it's not your birthday that I know of so I'm under no obligation to give you a gift.' --Orson Scott Card, Alvin Journeyman

'because we are the people, and the people go on'--Ma Joad in 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck

'Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?' - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.' "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane." - 1984 (George Orwell)

'Life is a Gift Horse.' J.D. Salinger from 'Teddy'

'Life is pain. Anybody that says different is selling something.' -- Fezzik's mother, The Princess Bride

'Not all who wander are lost.' - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

'The surest sign that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.' Calvin and Hobbes

'Where in the nine hells did you ever find the notion that I would fight fair?' -Drizzt Do'Urden, The Crystal Shard (R.A. Salvator)

*Constance nervously bites her thumbnail* Tybalt: Do you bite your thumb at me sir?! Constance: No! I just bite my nails, that's all. Tybalt: Do you bite your nails at me sir?! Constance: No I swear! Look, I'll never bite them again. This'll be a great chance for me to quit once and for all. Thanks. -- 'Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)'

A bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company - John MacDonald in 'The Turquoise Lament', 1973

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. - Animal Farm, George Orwell

Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport. - Orson Scott Card, Shadow Puppets

Behind them lay pain, and death, and fear. Ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries. But they weren't alone. - The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

But what was there to warn about, besides the fact that he glowed in the dark? - Tamora Pierce

Certain things should just stay as they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. - Holden, 'Catcher in the Rye'

Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems? - Calvin and Hobbes

Her style is new, but the face is the same as it was so long ago, but from her eyes, a different smile like that of one who knows.

There were times I lost my way, aiming for the sky and searching for a dream.

I’m just a kid, and the world is a nightmare

I wasn’t here. You dies alone—

When the sun is gone, I see you.. Beautiful and haunting, but cold.

All your sorrow, grief and pain locked away in the forest of the night.

See the truth for what it really is.

My tears of pain will never heal…

You will always fine people who want to be carried on the shoulder of others. You will always find those who think that he world owes them a living. They don’t’ seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together if we truly wish to live.

One man’s justice is another’s injustice: One man’s beauty is another’s ugliness: one man’s wisdom is another’s folly.

Do you still wonder what’s behind the mask?

I never said I’d lie and wait forever. If I did we’d be together now. I can’t always just forget her…but she could try.

A tear drop trembled on her face where that smile was, it seemed so out of place.

I’m going to smile like nothings wrong, talk like everything’s perfect, act like it’s all a dream, and pretend that it’s not hurting me.

The past is not a package one can lay away. ~Emily Dickinson


Praises for our past triumphs are as feathers to a dead bird. ~Paul Eldridge


The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. ~Lesley P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953


The Past lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables


The one charm of the past is that it is the past. ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray


The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it. ~Wendell Berry


One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. ~Golda Meir


Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title. ~Virginia Woolf


God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion. ~Pliny the Elder


What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now. ~Author Unknown


We need not destroy the past. It is gone. ~John Cage

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. ~Mother Teresa


Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. ~Napoleon Bonaparte


The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war. ~Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit


Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
~Seymour Miller & Jill Jackson, "Let There Be Peace on Earth," 1955


I take it that what all men are really after is some form of, perhaps only some formula of, peace. ~James Conrad


The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists. ~William J. Clinton, 1997


The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war. ~Vera Brittain, 1964


You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. ~Attributed to both Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi


Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
~John Greenleaf Whittier


Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. ~Francesco Petrarch


Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war. ~John Andrew Holmes, Wisdom in Small Doses


An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind. ~Mahatma Gandhi


There is one armor that the world of men and women, as a world, has never yet put on. The churches have long bungled with its fastenings, but the world has gone unfended, and few have been those in whose hands the mystical sword of the spirit has shone with daily use. This armor, waiting to be worn, is the armor of brotherhood and sacrifice, the world of unselfishness, a conquering sword, with the power, where used, to unite the world in love. And there are none who may not put it on. ~M.A. DeWolfe Howe


I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it. ~Dwight Eisenhower


Lord, bid war's trumpet cease;
Fold the whole earth in peace.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace? ~J. Ramsay MacDonald


We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Right is more precious than peace. ~Woodrow Wilson


Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~Robert Fulghum


In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame
~Nikki Giovanni


A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts. ~Charles Wesley Burns


We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament. ~J. Ramsay MacDonald

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace. ~William Ewart Gladstone

If you do not raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds. ~Robert Green Ingersoll


Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody. ~Moms Mabley


The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. ~H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956


Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships. ~Charles Simic


The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. ~Ivy Baker Priest


Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan


People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped. ~Author Unknown


I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye. ~Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris, 1935


Sin is geographical. ~Bertrand Russell


I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years'. ~Henry Moore


Set out from any point. They are all alike. They all lead to a point of departure. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Someone said, "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know. ~T.S. Eliot


Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time. ~H.L. Mencken


A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. ~Bill Vaughan


In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty. ~Imbesi's Conservation of Filth Law


If you're being run out of town, get in front of the crowd and make it look like a parade. ~Author Unknown


Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds. ~George Santayana


We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions. ~Ian Percy


The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ~Henry Miller


All honor's wounds are self-inflicted. ~Andrew Carnegie


The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on. ~Joseph Heller, Catch-22


There's no such thing as bragging. You're either lying or telling the truth. ~Al Oliver


I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet. ~Denis Waitely


A penny will hide the biggest star in the Universe if you hold it close enough to your eye. ~Samuel Grafton


Is the glass half empty, half full, or twice as large as it needs to be? ~Author Unknown


If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. ~Abraham Maslow


Don't think of organ donations as giving up part of yourself to keep a total stranger alive. It's really a total stranger giving up almost all of themselves to keep part of you alive. ~Author Unknown


Be careful how you interpret the world: It is like that. ~Erich Heller


Astronomers always work in the past; because light takes time to move from one place to another, they see things as they were, not as they are. ~Neale E. Howard, The Telescope Handbook and Star Atlas, 1967


Each act is virgin, even the repeated ones. ~René Char


We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. ~Anaïs Nin


The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress. ~Joseph Joubert, Pensées, 1842


The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate. ~Bern Williams


No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have but a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property. ~Charles Dudley Warner


When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. ~Albert Einstein


Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. ~Arthur Schopenhauer, "Studies in Pessimism," Psychological Observations, 1851


Efficiency is intelligent laziness. ~David Dunham


It is not enough for a man to know how to ride; he must know how to fall. ~Mexican Proverb


If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe. ~Carl Sagan


A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. ~Alexander Pope, in Swift, Miscellanies


Hay is more acceptable to an ass than gold. ~Latin Proverb


When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran


If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Every man regards his own life as the New Year's Eve of time. ~Jean Paul Richter


All the suns labor to kindle your flame and a microbe puts it out. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


There is no burnt rice to a hungry person. ~Philippine Proverb


If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote? ~Bertrand Russell


Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed. ~Howard Nemerov


How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true! ~Logan Pearsall Smith


Everybody's talking about people breaking into houses but there are more people in the world who want to break out of houses. ~Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker, 1955


A statistician made a few calculations and discovered that since the birth of our nation more lives had been lost in celebrating independence than in winning it. ~Curtis Billings


If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush. ~Dawn French


Flowers often grow more beautifully on dung-hills than in gardens that look beautifully kept. ~Saint Francis de Sales


To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
~William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence," 1810


It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms one would not part. ~Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, Remembrance of Things Past, 1925


The rich would have to eat money if the poor did not provide food. ~Russian Proverb


My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure. ~Ashleigh Brilliant


The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out. ~Herbert Spencer


The bluebird carries the sky on his back. ~Henry David Thoreau


There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way. ~David Carradine


The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity. ~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665


The chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


A boil is no big deal. On someone else's neck. ~Jewish Saying


I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed. ~Matthew Henry


In the ideal sense nothing is uninteresting; there are only uninterested people. ~Brooks Atkinson


Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision. ~Stevie Wonder


I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world. ~Socrates


A "fraternity" is the antithesis of fraternity. The first... is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality. ~E.B. White, One Man's Meat, 1944


Retreat, hell! We're just advancing in another direction. ~Oliver Prince Smith


Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious. ~Saint Thomas Aquinas


An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books. ~Samuel Butler, Note-Books


All religions issue bibles against him, and say most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. ~Mark Twain, about the Devil


The shadows: some hide, others reveal. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


No one knows what they'll do in a moment of crisis and hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers. ~Joan Baez, "What Would You Do If....?"


Daughter am I in my mother's house;
But mistress in my own.
~Rudyard Kipling, "Our Lady of the Snows," 1898


What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight. ~Joseph Joubert


With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, "Notebook L," Aphorisms


A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward. ~Earl of Chesterfield


I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.
~Sylvia Plath, "Mad Girl's Love Song"


I went to a cafe that advertised breakfast anytime, so I ordered French Toast during the Rennaisance. ~Steven Wright


Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. ~H.L. Mencken


I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days. ~Daniel Boone


The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ~William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice


Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911


Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work. ~Mark Twain


I have scarcely touched the sky and I am made of it. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. ~G.K. Chesterton


There is no possible line of conduct which has at some time and place been condemned, and which has not at some other time and place been enjoined as a duty. ~William Lecky


What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth. ~Norman Cousins


If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. ~Ursula Le Guin


The tyrant dies and his rule ends, the martyr dies and his rule begins. ~Soren Kierkegaard


If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
~William Shakespeare, Henry IV


A gifted small girl has explained that pins are a great means of saving life, "by not swallowing them." ~Charles Edward Montague, Dramatic Values


[E]very saint has a past and every sinner has a future. ~Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, 1893


Addictions do come in handy sometimes: at least you have to get out of bed for them. ~Martin Amis


If a fanatic is willing to give his life for a cause, he's probably willing to give yours as well. ~David Gerrold


The highest virtue here may be least in another world. ~Kahlil Gibran


Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black. ~James Baldwin


I never ask God to give me anything; I only ask him to put me where things are. ~Mexican Proverb


If you cry "Forward," you must make plain in what direction to go. ~Anton Chekov


A full heart has room for everything and an empty heart has room for nothing. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason. ~John Henry Cardinal Newman


Presence is more than just being there. ~Malcolm S. Forbes, The Further Sayings of Chairman Malcolm


Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation. ~Benjamin Disraeli


Injury, when it is slight, upsets me; when it is strong it calms me. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you. ~Andre Gide


'Tis not the meat, but 'tis the appetite makes eating a delight. ~John Suckling, Sonnet, c.1638

[A] grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak. ~James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics, 1848


I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The judicial mind is too commonly characterized by a regard for a fourth decimal as the equal of a whole number. ~Martin H. Fischer


The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. ~Philip W. Anderson, "More Is Different," Science Magazine


If a man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles. ~Benjamin Franklin


For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them. ~Seneca


An exhibitionist is nothing without a voyeur. ~S. Sachs


The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in. ~Bill Copeland


The pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. ~D.H. Lawrence


The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ~Marcel Proust


What we see depends mainly on what we look for. ~John Lubbock


An unattempted woman cannot boast of her chastity. ~Michel de Montaigne


When a dog runs at you, whistle for him. ~Henry David Thoreau


The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it. ~Author Unknown


And see, no longer blinded by our eyes. ~Rupert Brooke


For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting. ~Robert Benchley, Benchley - or Else!


There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1600


Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength. ~Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, Witches and other Night Fears, 1823


Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them. ~Henri Frederic Amiel


The reverse side also has a reverse side. ~Japanese Proverb


'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
~Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope


At high tide the fish eat ants; at low tide the ants eat fish. ~Thai Proverb


Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue. ~Anatole France


Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room. ~William Hazlitt, Sketches and Essays, 1839


The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ~Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy


Each moment is a place you've never been. ~Mark Strand


There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell. ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton


Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting. ~Billy Wilder


Finish last in your league and they call you idiot. Finish last in medical school and they call you doctor. ~Abe Lemons


A woman who sells herself to buy bread for her aged mother or her child, stands upon a higher moral plane than the blushing maiden who marries a money bag, in order to gratify her frivolous appetite for parties and travel. Of two men, he is the less deceived, the more logical and rational, who pays his companion of an hour in cash, each time, than he who gets a companion for life by the marriage contract, whose society was purchased as much as in the former case. Every alliance between man and woman in which either one is influenced by the substantial or selfish advantage to be gained by it, is prostitution. ~Max Nordau, Conventional Lies of Our Civilization


A hole is nothing at all, but you can still break your neck in it. ~Author Unknown


Everything's got a moral if only you can find it. ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


To really enjoy the better things in life, one must first have experienced the things they are better than. ~Oscar Holmolka


When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper. ~Andy Rooney


If we escape punishment for our vices, why should we complain if we are not rewarded for our virtues? ~John Churton Collins, Aphorisms in the English Review, 1914


We have them just where they want us. ~James T. Kirk


Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. ~George Bernard Shaw


Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet. ~Judith Martin


Never is a long, long word, but it's less frustrating than "God knows when." ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Winning is overrated. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war. ~Al McGuire


Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. ~James Baldwin


There's such a thin line between winning and losing. ~John R. Tunis


There are always three sides to every story: your side, the other side, and the truth. ~Author Unknown


Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation. ~Friederich Nietzsche


It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the grain of sand in your shoe. ~Author Unknown


Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. ~Ambrose Bierce


In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death - even vegetarians. ~Spock from Star Trek, "Wolf in the Fold"


Emotion has taught mankind to reason. ~Marquis de Vauvenargues


One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity. ~Kevin Smith


I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes. ~Robert A. Heinlein


Travelers never think that they are the foreigners. ~Mason Cooley


If anyone were to be willing to trace his descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother? ~Samuel Wilberforce


What is a promiscuous person? It is usually someone who is getting more sex than you are. ~Victor Lownes, Playboy, 1985


Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1836


A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. ~Wendy Kaminer


I always thought a yard was three feet, then I started mowing the lawn. ~C.E. Cowman


Where there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ~Dorthea Lange


It is easier for me to see everything as one thing than to see one thing as one thing. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. ~Samuel Butler


There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. ~Chinese Proverb

They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards. ~Creighton W. Abrams


Every exit is an entrance somewhere else. ~Tom Stoppard


A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space. ~Gloria Steinem

Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth. ~Thomas Carlyle


I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value. ~Rebecca West


There is something self-defeating in the too-conscious pursuit of pleasure. ~Max Eastman


Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume. ~Jean de Boufflers


In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures. ~Cicero


Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it. ~Soren Kierkegaard


In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls. ~Honore de Balzac


We can often endure an extra pound of pain far more easily than we can suffer the withdrawal of an ounce of accustomed pleasure. ~Sydney J. Harris


Pleasure is the bait of sin. ~Plato


Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations. ~Jane Austen


No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety. ~Publilius Syrus


The essence of pleasure is spontaneity. ~Germaine Greer


Perhaps all pleasure is only relief. ~William Burroughs


There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it. ~Ovid, Metamorphoses

Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver. ~Author Unknown


Half the promises people say were never kept, were never made. ~Edgar Watson Howe


And be these juggling friends no more believ'd,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear
And break it to our hope.
~William Shakespeare

We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears. ~Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld


Promise only what you can deliver. Then deliver more than you promise. ~Author Unknown


To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. ~Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1876

A man who is "of sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key. ~Paul Valéry, Mauvaises pensées et autres, 1942


Sanity is madness put to good uses. ~George Santayana, Little Essays


I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it. ~Author Unknown


Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change. ~Author Unknown


The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you. ~Rita Mae Brown


See, the human mind is kind of like... a piñata. When it breaks open, there's a lot of surprises inside. Once you get the piñata perspective, you see that losing your mind can be a peak experience. ~Jane Wagner


Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. ~R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience


You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it. ~Robin Williams


I haven't lost my mind; I have a tape back-up somewhere. ~Author Unknown


I'll be the in to your sane. ~Numan


I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. ~William Shakespeare


Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. ~Oliver W. Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858


I have my own little world, but it's okay - they know me here. ~Author Unknown


No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions. ~Henry Ward Beecher


Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, political parties, nations, and eras it's the rule. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886


A man might pass for insane who should see things as they are. ~William Ellery Channing


I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages. ~William H. Mauldin


You should listen to your heart, and not the voices in your head. ~Matt Groening, The Simpsons, spoken by the character Marge Simpson


There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know.
~John Dryden, The Spanish Friar, 1681


If you are physically sick, you can elicit the interest of a battery of physicians; but if you are mentally sick, you are lucky if the janitor comes around. ~Martin H. Fischer


No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. ~Aristotle


There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good. ~Edwin Denby


A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
~Emily Dickinson


Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces. ~Marcel Proust


Today I felt pass over me
A breath of wind from the wings of madness.
~Charles Baudelaire


Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. ~Diogenes


When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. ~Mark Twain


There is no great genius without some touch of madness. ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca, "On Tranquillity of the Mind," Moral Essays


I suppose it is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts. ~G.B. Burgin

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence. ~John Lahr


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


An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind. ~Walter Bagehot


Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation. ~James Thurber

Now all my teachers are dead except silence. ~W.S. Merwin


The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quite and calm.... One of the greatest sounds of them all - and to me it is a sound - is utter, complete silence. ~Andre Kostelanetz


The Arctic expresses the sum of all wisdom: Silence. ~Walter Bauer

Having a sister is like having a best friend you can't get rid of. You know whatever you do, they'll still be there. ~Amy Li


A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost. ~Marion C. Garretty


Is solace anywhere more comforting than in the arms of a sister. ~Alice Walker


Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life. ~Charles M. Schulz


If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child. ~Linda Sunshine


You can kid the world. But not your sister. ~Charlotte Gray


I would like more sisters, that the taking out of one, might not leave such stillness. ~Emily Dickinson


Help one another, is part of the religion of sisterhood. ~Louisa May Alcott


Sisters never quite forgive each other for what happened when they were five. ~Pam Brown


In thee my soul shall own combined the sister and the friend. ~Catherine Killigrew


Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet. ~Vietnamese Proverb


A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double. ~Toni Morrison


Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply... ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814


What's the good of news if you haven't a sister to share it? ~Jenny DeVries


Sisters is probably the most competitive relationship within the family, but once the sisters are grown, it becomes the strongest relationship. ~Margaret Mead


Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart - oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape - of your sister. ~Katherine Mansfield


A sister smiles when one tells one's stories - for she knows where the decoration has been added. ~Chris Montaigne


More than Santa Claus, your sister knows when you've been bad and good. ~Linda Sunshine


If sisters were free to express how they really feel, parents would hear this: "Give me all the attention and all the toys and send Rebecca to live with Grandma." ~Linda Sunshine


My sister taught me everything I really need to know, and she was only in sixth grade at the time. ~Linda Sunshine

I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends. ~James Boswell


How do people make it through life without a sister? ~Sara Corpening


If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater. ~Pam Brown


There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me. ~Mary Montagu


When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us? ~Pam Brown


The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble. ~Clara Ortega


I know some sisters who only see each other on Mother's Day and some who will never speak again. But most are like my sister and me... linked by volatile love, best friends who make other best friends ever so slightly less best. ~Patricia Volk


Sisterly love is, of all sentiments, the most abstract. Nature does not grant it any functions. ~Ugo Betti


Sisters function as safety nets in a chaotic world simply by being there for each other. ~Carol Saline


Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow. ~Benjamin Disraeli


Elder sisters never can do younger ones justice! ~Charlotte M. Yonge


A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life. ~Isadora James


To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega


The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend. ~Cali Rae Turner


An older sister helps one remain half child, half woman. ~Author Unknown


An older sister is a friend and defender - a listener, conspirator, a counsellor and a sharer of delights. And sorrows too. ~Pam Brown


Our brothers and sisters are there with us from the dawn of our personal stories to the inevitable dusk. ~Susan Scarf Merrell


I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at. ~Maya Angelou


A sibling may be the keeper of one's identity, the only person with the keys to one's unfettered, more fundamental self. ~Marian Sandmaier


Our siblings push buttons that cast us in roles we felt sure we had let go of long ago - the baby, the peacekeeper, the caretaker, the avoider.... It doesn't seem to matter how much time has elapsed or how far we've traveled. ~Jane Mersky Leder


Our siblings. They resemble us just enough to make all their differences confusing, and no matter what we choose to make of this, we are cast in relation to them our whole lives long. ~Susan Scarf Merrell


Sibling relationships - and 80 percent of Americans have at least one - outlast marriages, survive the death of parents, resurface after quarrels that would sink any friendship. They flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust. ~Erica E. Goode, "The Secret World of Siblings," U.S. News & World Report, 10 January 1994


Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring - quite often the hard way. ~Pamela Dugdale


Sisters share the scent and smells - the feel of a common childhood. ~Pam Brown


A sister shares childhood memories and grown-up dreams. ~Author Unknown


Sisters annoy, interfere, criticize. Indulge in monumental sulks, in huffs, in snide remarks. Borrow. Break. Monopolize the bathroom. Are always underfoot. But if catastrophe should strike, sisters are there. Defending you against all comers. ~Pam Brown


Between sisters, often, the child's cry never dies down. "Never leave me," it says; "do not abandon me." ~Louise Bernikow


It was nice growing up with someone like you - someone to lean on, someone to count on... someone to tell on! ~Author Unknown


Sisterhood is powerful. ~Robin Morgan


Sisters don't need words. They have perfected a language of snarls and smiles and frowns and winks - expressions of shocked surprise and incredulity and disbelief. Sniffs and snorts and gasps and sighs - that can undermine any tale you're telling. ~Pam Brown


One of the best things about being an adult is the realization that you can share with your sister and still have plenty for yourself. ~Betsy Cohen


We know one another's faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws. ~Rose Macaulay


Sisters may share the same mother and father but appear to come from different families. ~Author Unknown


We acquire friends and we make enemies, but our sisters come with the territory. ~Evelyn Loeb


We may look old and wise to the outside world. But to each other, we are still in junior school. ~Charlotte Gray


Whatever you do they will love you; even if they don't love you they are connected to you till you die. You can be boring and tedious with sisters, whereas you have to put on a good face with friends. ~Deborah Moggach


You keep your past by having sisters. As you get older, they're the only ones who don't get bored if you talk about your memories. ~Deborah Moggach


It's hard to be responsible, adult and sensible all the time. How good it is to have a sister whose heart is as young as your own. ~Pam Brown


Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. ~Louise Glück


She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she's the reason you wish you were an only child. ~Barbara Alpert

Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


A smile confuses an approaching frown. ~Author Unknown


People seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile. ~Lee Mildon


A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. ~Phyllis Diller


Smile. Have you ever noticed how easily puppies make human friends? Yet all they do is wag their tails and fall over. ~Walter Anderson, The Confidence Course, 1997


The world always looks brighter from behind a smile. ~Author Unknown


Start every day with a smile and get it over with. ~W.C. Fields


Before you put on a frown, make absolutely sure there are no smiles available. ~Jim Beggs


A smile is an inexpensive way to change your looks. ~Charles Gordy


Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. ~Mark Twain, Following the Equator


The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief. ~William Shakespeare, Othello


A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home. ~Author Unknown


If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it. ~Andy Rooney


If you smile at someone, they might smile back. ~Author Unknown


Always remember to be happy because you never know who's falling in love with your smile. ~Author Unknown


Everyone smiles in the same language. ~Author Unknown


If you don't have a smile, I'll give you one of mine. ~Author Unknown


I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful. ~Author Unknown


Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. ~George Eliot


She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. ~Raymond Chandler


A smile appeared upon her face as if she'd taken it directly from her handbag and pinned it there. ~Loma Chandler


A laugh is a smile that bursts. ~Mary H. Waldrip


If you don't start out the day with a smile, it's not too late to start practicing for tomorrow. ~Author Unknown


No matter how grouchy you're feeling,
You'll find the smile more or less healing.
It grows in a wreath
All around the front teeth -
Thus preserving the face from congealing.
~Anthony Euwer


Every day you spend without a smile, is a lost day. ~Author Unknown


Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. ~Mother Teresa


A friendly look, a kindly smile, one good act, and life's worthwhile. ~Author Unknown


A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles. ~Washington Irving


Beauty is power; a smile is its sword. ~Charles Reade


A smile is the universal welcome. ~Max Eastman


Keep smiling - it makes people wonder what you've been up to. ~Author Unknown


You're never fully dressed without a smile. ~Martin Charnin


It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown. ~Author Unknown


Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important. ~Janet Lane


All the statistics in the world can't measure the warmth of a smile. ~Chris Hart


If you would like to spoil the day for a grouch, give him a smile. ~Author Unknown


Peace begins with a smile. ~Mother Teresa


A smile is a powerful weapon; you can even break ice with it. ~Author Unknown


A smile costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give. ~Author Unknown


It takes a lot of work from the face to let out a smile, but just think what good smiling can bring to the most important muscle of the body... the heart. ~Author Unknown

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden, 1854


Language... has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone. ~Paul Johannes Tillich, The Eternal Now


There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. ~Colette


I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau, 1854


When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. ~Henry David Thoreau


We live in a very tense society. We are pulled apart... and we all need to learn how to pull ourselves together.... I think that at least part of the answer lies in solitude. ~Helen Hayes


It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts. ~K.T. Jong


Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. ~Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun


By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. ~George Herbert


Only in quiet waters do thing mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world. ~Hans Margolius


Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are. ~Robert Cecil


The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit. ~Marya Mannes


In solitude, where we are least alone. ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage


For those uneasy with the world, solitude is the only guarantee of confidence. ~Terri Guillemets


With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves. ~Eric Hoffer


Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that's where I renew my springs that never dry up. ~Pearl Buck


A large, still book is a piece of quietness, succulent and nourishing in a noisy world, which I approach and imbibe with "a sort of greedy enjoyment," as Marcel Proust said of those rooms of his old home whose air was "saturated with the bouquet of silence." ~Holbrook Jackson


When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves. ~Eda LeShan


I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls. ~Henry David Thoreau


Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known... then went crazy as a loon. ~Matt Groening, The Simpsons, spoken by the character Lisa Simpson


The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude. ~Voltaire


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


No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength. ~Jack Kerouac


We visit others as a matter of social obligation. How long has it been since we have visited with ourselves? ~Morris Adler


Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude. ~Paul Tillich


Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir


Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. ~Marcus Aurelius


It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe. ~Victor Hugo


There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout


I owe my solitude to other people. ~Alan Watts


I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. ~Henry David Thoreau

The man who doesn't relax and hoot a few hoots voluntarily, now and then, is in great danger of hooting hoots and standing on his head for the edification of the pathologist and trained nurse, a little later on. ~Elbert Hubbard


There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


The time to relax is when you don't have time for it. ~Attributed to both Jim Goodwin and Sydney J. Harris


Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. ~Margaret Fuller


Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. ~Ovid


For fast-acting relief, try slowing down. ~Lily Tomlin


We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves. ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton


Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow. ~Douglas Pagels, These Are the Gifts I'd Like to Give to You


The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it. ~Author Unknown


No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick


Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension. ~Joshua L. Liebman


Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. ~Will Rogers, Autobiography, 1949


There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes


There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job. ~Peter Drucker


One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. ~Bertrand Russell


Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. ~Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind


Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. ~Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne


Some of the secret joys of living are not found by rushing from point A to point B, but by inventing some imaginary letters along the way. ~Douglas Pagels, These Are the Gifts I'd Like to Give to You


A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
~William Henry Davies


To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace. ~Milan Kundera


I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once. ~Jennifer Yane


The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself. ~H.L. Mencken


There is more to life than increasing its speed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi


The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery


A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. ~Aesop, Fables


Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you. ~John De Paola


How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then to rest afterward. ~Spanish Proverb


When Mozart was composing at the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Vienna was so quiet that fire alarms could be given verbally, by a shouting watchman mounted on top of St. Stefan's Cathedral. In twentieth-century society, the noise level is such that it keeps knocking our bodies out of tune and out of their natural rhythms. This ever-increasing assault of sound upon our ears, minds, and bodies adds to the stress load of civilized beings trying to live in a highly complex environment. ~Steven Halpern


Loafing needs no explanation and is its own excuse. ~Christopher Morley


It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. ~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow


There is precious little hope to be got out of whatever keeps us industrious, but there is a chance for us whenever we cease work and become stargazers. ~H.M. Tomlinson


If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles. ~Doug Larson


The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life. ~Robert Maclver


Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. ~Chinese Proverb


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~J. Lubbock


A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward. ~George Jean Nathan


Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths. ~Etty Hillesum

The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
~John Greenleaf Whittier, My Psalm


The soul may sleep and the body still be happy, but only in youth. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time. ~Carl Jung


Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other. ~Henry David Thoreau


A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul. ~Plato


What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a downy spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière


Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit. ~William Shakespeare


I believe that the soul consists of its sufferings. For the soul that cures its own sufferings dies. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other. ~Lord Byron


Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year? ~Horace


Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. ~Marcus Aurelius, Meditations


When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay. ~Octave Mirbeau


How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver. ~Oscar Wilde


Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Following the Equator, 1897


When you do things from your soul you feel a river moving in you, a joy. When action come from another section, the feeling disappears. ~Jalal ad-Din Rumi


Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth." Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923


What is soul? It's like electricity - we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room. ~Ray Charles


Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time. ~Timothy Leary


Living is being born slowly. It would be a little too easy if we could borrow ready-made souls. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942


The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire. ~Ferdinand Foch


One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way. ~Vincent Van Gogh


You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out. ~Martha Graham


I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of another boy. ~Woody Allen

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. ~Voltaire


Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. ~Edmund Burke

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. ~Carl G. Jung


Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. ~Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun


No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head. ~Terry Josephson


You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think. ~Walter Anderson, The Confidence Course, 1997


Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? ~Winnie the Pooh


People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. ~Soren Kierkegaard


Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. ~John F. Kennedy


The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. ~Will Durant


Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in. ~Alan Alda


I like to think of thoughts as living blossoms borne by the human tree. ~James Douglas


The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it. ~H.G. Wells


Our minds are lazier than our bodies. ~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678


Invest a few moments in thinking. It will pay good interest. ~Author Unknown


Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory. ~G. Behn


Thinking is like loving and dying. Each of us must do it for himself. ~Josiah Royce


It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. ~Luther Burbank


Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself. ~Martin H. Fischer


We spend our days in deliberating, and we end them without coming to any resolve. ~L'Estrange


Our job is not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of the decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking. ~Author Unknown


Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry. ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923


The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. ~H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1925


Few people think no more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once a week. ~George Bernard Shaw


Belief is when someone else does the thinking. ~Buckminster Fuller, 1972


Irons rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. ~Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, 1508


A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody. ~Stanislaw Lec, Unkempt Thoughts, 1962


Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all. ~G.C. Lichtenberg


The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking. ~Albert Einstein


Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


At a certain age some people's minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat. ~William Lyon Phelps


No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity. ~Henry Van Dyke


Tell your friends not to think aloud
Until they swallow.
~Nickelback, "Leader of Men," The State


Believing is easier than thinking. Hence so many more believers than thinkers. ~Bruce Calvert


A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor ~Victor Hugo


Sometimes I think and other times I am. ~Paul Valéry, Variété: Cantiques spirituels, 1924


Few minds wear out; more rust out. ~Christian N. Bovee


Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information. ~John Erskine


Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche


Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months - and without a new thought for years on end. ~Kent Ruth


The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have. ~John Locke, 16 May 1699


Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts. ~George Savile, Marquess de Halifax, Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections


Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough. ~Confucius, Analects


Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking. ~Steve Allen


What luck for rulers, that men do not think. ~Adolph Hitler


Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. ~Bertrand Russell


[Thinking is] what a great many people think they are doing when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~William James


For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while. ~Luther Burbank


How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. ~Niels Bohr


You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind. ~Author Unknown


He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. ~William Drummond, Academical Questions


Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to. ~Howard Mumford Jones

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once. ~John Archibald Wheeler


As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden, 1854


Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving. ~Martin Amis, Money


The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked. ~Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle


Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. ~Dion Boucicault


Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
~Henry Austin Dobson


For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work. ~Doug Larson


But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day. ~Benjamin Disraeli


Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!.... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his hands are mutes. ~Charles Dickens


Time wastes our bodies and our wits, but we waste time, so we are quits. ~Author Unknown


Time is the fire in which we burn. ~Delmore Schwartz, "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day," 1937 (Thank you, George.)


Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
~William Shakespeare


You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. ~James Matthew Barrie


A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours. ~John B. Priestly


It strikes! one, two,
Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch,
Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest;
Would thou could'st make the time to do so too;
I'll wind thee up no more.
~Ben Jonson


The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up. ~J.K. Rowling, "The Hungarian Horntail," Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000


Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side. ~The Talmud


Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


El tiempo da buen consejo. ~Proverb


There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time. ~Napoleon I, Maxims, 1815


Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. ~Faith Baldwin


How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on. ~Zall's Second Law


The years like great black oxen tread the world
And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
~William Butler Yeats, The Countess Cathleen


If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no time. ~Elbert Hubbard


Time flies on restless pinions - constant never. ~Friedrich Schiller


The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C.S. Lewis


Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design? ~Paracelsus


Time! the corrector when our judgments err. ~Lord Byron


The time you think you're missing, misses you too. ~Ymber Delecto


What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know. ~Saint Augustine


Each moment has its sickle, emulous
Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root.
~Edward Young


The inertia hardest to overcome is that of perfectly good seconds. ~Martin H. Fischer


Time is the wisest counsellor of all. ~Pericles


There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires. ~Charles Caleb Colton


Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst. ~Willaim Penn


Time is the longest distance between two places. ~Tennessee Williams


Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds my golden time! ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Man goes nowhere. Everything comes to man, like tomorrow. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Whether we wake or we sleep,
Whether we carol or weep,
The Sun with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time.
~Edward Fitzgerald


Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends. ~Charles Caleb Colton


Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. ~Henry David Thoreau


The Present is a Point just passed. ~David Russell


Methinks I see the wanton hours flee,
And as they pass, turn back and laugh at me.
~George Villiers


Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. ~Denis Waitely


Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away. ~Charles Caleb Colton


One must learn a different... sense of time, one that depends more on small amounts than big ones. ~Sister Mary Paul


Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. ~Ambrose Bierce


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. ~Louis Hector Berlioz


Let not the sands of time get in your lunch. ~Author Unknown

Vanity is the quicksand of reason ~George Sand


The surest cure for vanity is loneliness. ~Thomas Wolfe


Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. ~Benjamin Franklin


There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it. ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898


Without this ridiculous vanity that takes the form of self-display, and is part of everything and everyone, we would see nothing, and nothing would exist. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Beauty's sister is vanity, and its daughter lust. ~Author Unknown


Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay. ~François de la Rochefoucauld


Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it. ~John Adams


There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth. ~Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton


Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you. ~Miguel De Unamuno


To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life. ~Lord Chesterfield


Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory. ~Joseph Conrad


We speak little if not egged on by vanity. ~François de la Rochefoucauld


The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity. ~Henri Bergson


If vanity does not overthrow all our virtues, at least she makes them totter. ~François de la Rochefoucauld


Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty. ~Louis Kronenberger


Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast. ~Logan Pearsall Smith


Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man. ~Robert Louis Stevenson


What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own. ~François de la Rochefoucauld


In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity;
On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools - that's vanity.
~Robert Browning


Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company. ~François de la Rochefoucauld


Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter, wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action: and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life. ~Benjamin Franklin

We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid. ~Gerard Vanderhaar


The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out. ~Chinese Proverb


What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? ~Alan Paton


Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe. ~John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667


There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed. ~Gil Bailie


Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat. ~John Frederick Boyes


Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet. ~Daniel Webster


In violence we forget who we are. ~Mary McCarthy


It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence... and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect. ~Manitonquat


Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet. ~Dave Barry


It's not the bullet with my name on it that worries me. It's the one that says "To whom it may concern." ~Anonymous Belfast resident, quoted in London Guardian, 1991


I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string. ~Scott Adams


I will not carry a gun.... I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun! ~Hawkeye, M*A*S*H, "Officer of the Day"


Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. ~Abraham Lincoln


Why are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they'll blur together in people's minds - sexandviolence - until we can't tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex." ~Dick Cavett, 1978


And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. ~George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"


It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists


The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime. ~Max Stirner


So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private citizens will occasionally kill theirs. ~Elbert Hubbard


He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder. ~Henry C. Wright, The Liberator, 7 April 1837


Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. ~Josef de Maistre


How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take? ~Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845


It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. ~Gandhi


Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.


Nonviolence doesn't always work - but violence never does. ~Madge Micheels-Cyrus


In some cases nonviolence requires more militancy than violence. ~Cesar Chavez


If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG. ~Jack Nicholson


Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary. ~Gandhi


He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness. ~Sam Peckinpah

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith


You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury


So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. ~Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948


The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~Anaïs Nin


Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow


A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~Charles Peguy


And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath


I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all. ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977


I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard


If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison


What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "All Trivia," Afterthoughts, 1931


The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. ~Norbet Platt


It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. ~Vita Sackville-West


Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. ~Sharon O'Brien


Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain


I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. ~James Michener


The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. ~Mark Twain


The wastebasket is a writer's best friend. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer


Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction. ~Dylan Thomas, letter to Vernon Watkins, March 1938


Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth


The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. ~Vladimir Nabakov


Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~Anton Chekhov


Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space. ~Orson Scott Card


A metaphor is like a simile. ~Author Unknown


The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. ~Mark Twain


The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it. ~Jules Renard, "Diary," February 1895


Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. ~Author Unknown


A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. ~Karl Kraus


A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose. ~Samuel McChord Crothers, "Every Man's Natural Desire to Be Somebody Else," The Dame School of Experience, 1920


When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can. ~Samuel Lover, Handy Andy, 1842


I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. ~James Michener


If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster. ~Isaac Asimov


I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. ~Peter De Vries


Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. ~Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, December 1957


To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make. ~Truman Capote, McCall's, November 1967

A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. ~John K. Hutchens, New York Herald Tribune, 10 September 1961


I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. ~English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University


Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. ~Hannah Arendt


It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order. ~Ann Beattie, Picturing Will, 1989


For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain [and] the noise of battle. ~John Cheever


Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"


No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. ~Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907


Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~Gene Fowler


Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable. ~Francis Bacon


The expression "to write something down" suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it. ~William Gass, "Habitations of the Word," Kenyon Review, October 1984


Be obscure clearly. ~E.B. White


Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. ~Flannery O'Connor


It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. ~Joan Baez


When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence. ~Samuel Butler


Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may. ~Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversation: Diogenes and Plato


When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man. ~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670


Every writer I know has trouble writing. ~Joseph Heller


A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one. ~Baltasar Gracián


When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. ~Enrique Jardiel Poncela


I asked Ring Lardner the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and filled in the spaces. ~Harold Ross


When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
~Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)


Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. ~Sholem Asch


If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. ~Lord Byron


I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. ~Jack Smith


An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts. ~Juvenal, Satires


Writing is a struggle against silence. ~Carlos Fuentes


The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. ~Elias Canetti


All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer


One hates an author that's all author. ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Beppo"


What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. ~Burton Rascoe


The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie


An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else. ~Etty Hillesum, quoted in Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die by Karol Jackowski


A writer's mind seems to be situated partly in the solar plexus and partly in the head. ~Ethel Wilson


Publication - is the auction of the Mind of Man. ~Emily Dickinson


If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. ~Don Marquis


There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters. ~Miguel de Cervantes


Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ~E.L. Doctorow


The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. ~Henry David Thoreau


You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke. ~Arthur Polotnik


An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff. ~Adlai Stevenson, as quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs


Most editors are failed writers - but so are most writers. ~T.S. Eliot


What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told. ~André Gide


Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free. ~Samuel Johnson


A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident. ~W. Somerset Maugham, Summing Up, 1938

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works. ~Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621


My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin. ~Karl Kraus


As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894


The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. ~Ernest Hemingway, interview in Paris Review, Spring 1958


As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. ~Virginia Woolf


I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. ~Norman Mailer


To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all. ~Lord Byron


Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. ~Theodore Dreiser, 1900


It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else. ~Havelock Ellis


Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason. They made no such demand upon those who wrote them. ~Charles Caleb Colton


Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. ~Author Unknown, commonly misattributed to Samuel Johnson (*) (Thank you, Frank Lynch.)


How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. ~Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 August 1851


I am a man, and alive.... For this reason I am a novelist. And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog. ~D.H. Lawrence, preface to Shestov, All Things Are Possible, 1938


Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head. ~From the movie Finding Forrester


It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis


Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? ~Friedrich Nietzsche


Writing is both mask and unveiling. ~E.B. White


Let's hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks. ~Peter S. Prescott


True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
~Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism"


Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. ~Franz Kafka


An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~Gustave Flaubert


There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen. ~Leo Tolstoy


A man will turn over half a library to make one book. ~Samuel Johnson


What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thought; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. But always the rarest, those streaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach. ~Logan Pearsall Smith


No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. ~Russell Lynes


A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. ~Jean Luc Godard


Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life. ~James Norman Hall


Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially. ~A. Bronson Alcott


The artist's only responsibility is his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.... If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies. ~Faulkner, quoted in M. Cowley, Writers at Work, 1958


A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947


Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~Colette, Casual Chance, 1964


Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. ~Jules Renard, Journal, 10 April 1895


The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. ~Ray Bradbury


Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all. ~Franklin P. Adams, Half a Loaf, 1927


You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world. ~G.K. Chesterton


The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes. ~André Gide, Journals, 1894


Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant. ~Edna Ferber, A Kind of Magic, 1963


The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. ~Alfred Kazin, Think, February 1963


i never think at all when i write
nobody can do two things at the same time
and do them both well
~Don Marquis, Archy's Life of Mehitabel, 1933


Our passions shape our books; repose writes them in the intervals. ~Proust, The Past Recaptured, 1927


Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. ~Samuel Johnson, "Recalling the Advice of a College Tutor," Boswell, Life of Johnson, 1791


An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. ~Chateaubriand, Le Génie du Christianisme, 1802


The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads. ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958


There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as do exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. ~Jessamyn West, Saturday Review, 21 September 1957


I do not like to write - I like to have written. ~Gloria Steinem


Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not drive on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. ~Winston Churchill


One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane


He that uses many words for the explaining any subject doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. ~John Ray


A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. ~G.K. Chesterton


Novelists... fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence. ~Fay Weldon


Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. ~Rainer Maria Rilke


Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. ~Samuel Butler


It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. ~Robert Benchley


No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman. ~Van Wyck Brooks


The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. ~Samuel Johnson


The best style is the style you don't notice. ~Somerset Maugham


There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. ~William Makepeace Thackeray


I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head. ~John Updike


Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible. ~Leo Tolstoy


Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will. ~Goethe

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. ~Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, c.1420


You've got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice. ~Steven D. Woodhull


What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière


Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day. ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956


Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other. ~Henry David Thoreau


Remedy it, or welcome it: a wise man's only two choices. ~Terri Guillemets


Remember, if you’re headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns! ~Allison Gappa Bottke


Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means. ~Robert Louis Stevenson


See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little. ~Pope John XXIII


Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Now that it's all over, what did you really do yesterday that's worth mentioning? ~Coleman Cox


Laziness will cause you pain. ~Slogan on T-shirt worn at the Vee Arnis Jitsu School of Self-Defense


If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it. ~Toni Morrison


Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics. Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with the enemies of humanity. ~Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949


Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it. ~Author Unknown


Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste. ~Brecht


Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. ~Victor Hugo


We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. ~William James


You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. ~Leo Aikman


Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty. ~Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles


The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. ~Plato


Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. ~Jonathan Kozel


Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me. ~Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from "The Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Neibuhr


Excess on occasion is exhilirating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938


The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Last Tournament," Idylls of the King


I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. ~Sara Teasdale, "The Philosopher"


Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it - torn up to irrecoverable tatters. ~Samuel Butler


Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. ~Theodore Roosevelt


Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982


Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself. ~Elbert Hubbard


Be careful not to drown in a mirage. ~Terri Guillemets


On the bathing-tub of King T'ang the following words were engraved: "If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day. Yea, let there be daily renovation." ~Confucian Analects

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. ~Jimmy Johnson


What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known. ~Samuel Johnson


To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning. ~John W. Gardner


There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go. ~Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier)


Face what you think you believe and you will be surprised. ~William Hale White


Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, &34;What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French


Just remember, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter


Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped. ~African Proverb


One can enjoy a wood fire worthily only when he warms his thoughts by it as well as his hands and feet. ~Odell Shepherd


The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice that which we are for what we could become. ~Charles DuBois


Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. ~Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn


Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted. ~John Lennon


If you have to do it every day, for God's sake learn to do it well. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. ~Henry Miller, The Books in My Life


Never explain. Your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe it anyway. ~Elbert Hubbard, A Thousand and One Epigrams, 1911


Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. ~Dandemis


Whatever you are be a good one. ~Abraham Lincoln


It's better to fight for something than against something. ~Author Unknown


The day will happen whether or not you get up. ~John Ciardi


Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most. ~George R. Kirkpatrick


Think of your faults the first part of the night when you are awake, and the faults of others the latter part of the night when you are asleep. ~Chinese Proverb


When "Why not do it?" barely outweights "Why do it?" - don't do it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


When you invite trouble, it's usually quick to accept. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


Giving up doesn't always mean you are weak. Sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go. ~Author Unknown


Promise only what you can deliver. Then deliver more than you promise. ~Author Unknown


All philosophy in two words, - sustain and abstain. ~Epictetus


Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake. ~Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne


Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got. ~Janis Joplin


The biggest problem in the world
Could have been solved when it was small.
~Witter Bynner, The Way of Life According to Laotzu


What you can't get out of, get into wholeheartedly. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French by Stuart Gilbert


Never believe in mirrors or newspapers. ~Tom Stoppard


Yet some things you miss and some things you lose by keeping your arm outstretched. ~Author Unknown



Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses. ~Oscar Wilde


Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired, go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand. ~Bruce Lee


While seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself. ~Doug Horton


To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy. ~Hippocrates


Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others. ~Buddha


Things sweet the taste prove in digestion sour. ~William Shakespeare, King Richard the Second, 1595


Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? ~Abraham Lincoln


"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door," he used to say. "You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~J.R.R. Tolkien, "Three Is Company," The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 1954


There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. ~James Thurber


Don't get your knickers in a knot. Nothing is solved and it just makes you walk funny. ~Kathryn Carpenter


Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven. ~G.C. Lichtenberg


We must have passed through life unobservantly, if we have never perceived that a man is very much himself what he thinks of others. ~Frederick W. Faber


Never saw off the branch you are on, unless you are being hanged from it. ~Stanislaw Lec


Don't despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof. ~Martin H. Fischer


The best way to predict your future is to create it. ~Peter Drucker


You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was. ~Irish Proverb


Beware of a man of one book. ~English Proverb


Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey. ~Tad Williams


It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards. ~Baltasar Gracian


A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. ~Henry David Thoreau


Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours. ~Swedish Proverb


Aspire to a lower level of harm. ~Anonymous


I try not to kid myself. You know, I don't mind romancing someone else, but to fool yourself is pretty devastating and dangerous. ~Bill Veeck


You can't truthfully explain your smallest action without fully revealing your character. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back. ~Mick Jagger


When you lose, don't lose the lesson. ~Author Unknown


There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire. ~John C. Collins


Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you. ~Frank Tyger


Friends and neighbors complain that taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might the more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly. ~Benjamin Franklin


Be nice to people on your way up because you'll need them on your way down. ~W. Migner


When you throw dirt, you lose ground. ~Texan Proverb


The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. ~Albert Schweitzer


Everyone should learn to do one thing supremely well because he likes it, and one thing supremely well because he detests it. ~Brigham Young


Sometimes the best way to hold onto something is to let it go. ~Author Unknown


The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show. ~Author Unknown


Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls and to-tomorrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


To know the road ahead, ask those coming back. ~Chinese Proverb


The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you're the easiest person to fool. ~Richard Feynman


Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. ~Malcolm S. Forbes


I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better. ~Glenda Jackson

Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetime, is certain for those who are friends. ~Richard Bach


We only part to meet again. ~John Gay


Man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell. ~Jean Paul Richter


Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need to know of hell. ~Emily Dickinson, "Parting"


Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye? ~Author Unknown


Gone - flitted away,
Taken the stars from the night and the sun
From the day!
Gone, and a cloud in my heart.
~Alfred Tennyson


Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos. ~Charles M. Schulz


Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. ~Henry David Thoreau


How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. ~Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie


Goodbyes are not forever.
Goodbyes are not the end.
They simply mean I'll miss you
Until we meet again!
~Author Unknown


The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. ~Ivy Baker Priest


Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair. ~William Cowper


Excuse me, then! you know my heart;
But dearest friends, alas! must part.
~John Gay


To die and part is a less evil; but to part and live, there, there is the torment. ~George Lansdowne


May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand. ~Irish Blessing


Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Some trails are happy ones,
Others are blue.
It's the way you ride the trail that counts,
Here's a happy one for you.
~Dale Evans


No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth. ~Robert Southey


Can miles truly separate you from friends.... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there? ~Richard Bach


Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. ~Garrison Keillor


What shall I do with all the days and hours
That must be counted ere I see thy face?
How shall I charm the interval that lowers
Between this time and that sweet time of grace?
~Frances Anne Kemble


Not to understand a treasure's worth till time has stole away the slighted good, is cause of half the poverty we feel, and makes the world the wilderness it is. ~William Cowper


She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.
~Francis Thompson


Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love. ~George Eliot


Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart. ~Kay Knudsen


The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. ~Author Unknown


You and I will meet again
When we're least expecting it
One day in some far off place
I will recognize your face
I won't say goodbye my friend
For you and I will meet again
~Tom Petty


Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. ~William Shakespeare

In the hope to meet
Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
~Ben Jonson


Some people come into our lives
and leave footprints on our hearts
and we are never ever the same.
~Flavia Weedn, Forever


But fate ordains that dearest friends must part. ~Edward Young


Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age. ~John Dryden


Where is the "good" in goodbye? ~Author Unknown


As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence. ~Alcibiades


So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.
~William Shenstone


A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering angel, so nothing can harm you.
~Irish Blessing


Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravelled, fondly turns to thee;
Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.
~Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller


Distance of time and place generally cure what they seem to aggravate; and taking leave of our friends resembles taking leave of the world, of which it has been said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible. ~Henry Fielding


May you always have work for your hands to do.
May your pockets hold always a coin or two.
May the sun shine bright on your windowpane.
May the rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near you.
And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.
~Irish Blessing


As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death. ~Anna Brownell Jameson


Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave. ~A.A. Milne


Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again. ~Elizabeth Bowen


May the sun shine, all day long,
everything go right, and nothing wrong.
May those you love bring love back to you,
and may all the wishes you wish come true!
~Irish Blessing


May you always have walls for the winds,
a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire,
laughter to cheer you, those you love near you,
and all your heart might desire.
~Irish Blessing


Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire. ~Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld, translated from French


Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven. ~Tryon Edwards


Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~Kahlil Gibran


Farewell, my sister, fare thee well.
The elements be kind to thee, and make
Thy spirits all of comfort: fare thee well.
~William Shakespeare


A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it. ~Helen Rowland


The return makes one love the farewell. ~Alfred De Musset


You're searching...
For things that don't exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings - there are no such things.
There are only middles.
~Robert Frost, Mountain Interval, "In the Home Stretch"


Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.
~Lord Byron


May you have warm words on a cool evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door. ~Irish Toast


If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden. ~Attributed to Claudia Ghandi


Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring,
Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing,
Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove,
Say, is not absence death to those who love?
~Alexander Pope


May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day.
May songbirds serenade you every step along the way.
May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue.
And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.
~Irish Blessing


That bitter word, which closed all earthly friendships and finished every feast of love farewell! ~Robert Pollok


One kind kiss before we part,
Drop a tear, and bid adieu;
Though we sever, my fond heart
Till we meet shall pant for you.
~Robert Dodsley


The joy of meeting pays the pangs of absence; else who could bear it? ~Nicholas Rowe


Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave. ~William Shakespeare


If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me? ~Allen Collins and Ronnie Van Zant, "Free Bird," One More From the Road, 1973, performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd


Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. ~Lazurus Long


May brooks and trees and singing hills
Join in the chorus too,
And every gentle wind that blows
Send happiness to you.
~Irish Blessing


I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. ~Gilda Radner


Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart. ~Washington Irving


Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been -
A sound which makes us linger; - yet - farewell!
~Lord Byron


Goodbye, goodbye, I hate the word. Solitude has long since turned brown and withered, sitting bitter in my mouth and heavy in my veins. ~R.M. Grenon


Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will. ~Author Unknown


Farewell!
For in that word - that fatal word - howe'er
We promise - hope - believe - there breathes despair.
~Lord Byron


Let's not unman each other - part at once;
All farewells should be sudden, when forever,
Else they make an eternity of moments,
And clog the last sad sands of life with tears.
~Lord Byron


A goodbye isn't painful unless you're never going to say hello again. ~Author Unknown


A chord, stronger or weaker, is snapped asunder in every parting, and time's busy fingers are not practiced in re-splicing broken ties. Meet again you may; will it be in the same way? With the same sympathies? With the same sentiments? Will the souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream? Rarely, rarely! ~Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton


Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life. ~Jean Paul Richter


Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. ~Theodor Seuss Geisel, attributed