Allison, Dorothy.
-
My family of friends has kept me alive through lovers that have left, enterprises that have failed, and all too many stories that never got finished. That family has been a part of remaking the world for me.
Angelou, Maya.
- You may write me down in
history with your bitter twisted lies. You may tread me in the very dirt,
but still like dust I rise.
Auden, W.H.
- In those whom I like I can
find no common denominator; in those whom I love, I can: they all make
me laugh.
Augustine.
- No one is really happy merely
because he has what he wants, but only if he wants things he ought to
want.
Basho.
- Do not seek to follow in the
footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
Bentley, Eric.
- If one has truly lost hope,
one would not be on hand to say so.
Bonaparte, Napoleon.
- The best way to keep one's
word is not to give it.
Camus, Albert.
- Do not wait for the last
judgment. It comes every day.
- Man's only duty is to be
happy.
- The absurd is the
essential concept and the first truth.
Carver, George Washington.
- How far you go in life
depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the
aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong
-- because someday you will have been all of these.
Chapelain, Maurice.
- The final delusion is the
belief that one has lost all delusion.
Churchill, Sir Winston.
- We are all worms, but I do
believe I am a glow worm.
- Success is not final, failure
is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
- The turning point in the
process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you
that survives all the hurts.
- If you're going through hell,
keep going.
Clarke, Francis A.
- Why not upset the apple cart?
If you don't, the apples will just rot anyway.
Curtis, Ian.
- So this is permanent, love
shattered pride -- what once was innocence, turned on its side.
- Love will tear us apart.
d'Souza, Father Alfred.
- For a long time it had
seemed to me that life was about to begin real life. But there was
always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some
unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life
would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
da Vinci, Leonardo.
- Obstacles cannot crush me.
Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not
change his mind.
- Iron rusts from disuse;
stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so
does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
- Shun those studies in which
the work that results dies with the worker.
- As a well-spent day brings
happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
de Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin.
- Where love is concerned, too
much is not even enough.
Dement, Charles William.
- Dreaming permits each and
every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
Difranco, Ani.
- It's fucking terrifying to
come back from God-knows-where and have infantile, hysterical Christian
right-wingers dominating the national discourse with who-slept-with-whom
shenanigans. They just executed a woman in Texas. Anybody heard of Iraq? Can
we talk health care? What must the world think of us?
- I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen, 'cause silence is violence.
- When I say, "you sucked
my brain out," the English translation is : "I am in love with you
and it is no fun."
Disraeli, Benjamin.
- Man is not the creature of
circumstances, circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents,
and man is more powerful than matter.
Dumas, Alexandre.
- Friendship consists in
forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives.
Einstein, Albert.
- As far as the laws of
mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are
certain, they do not refer to reality.
- The important thing is not to
stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help
but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of
the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to
comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
- Possessions, outward success,
publicity, luxury--to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that
a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for every one, best for both
the body and the mind.
- Peace cannot be kept by force.
It can only be achieved by understanding.
Eliot, T.S.
- Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion;
it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from
personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
- The glory of friendship is not
the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship;
it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that
someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
- To laugh often and much, to
win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn
the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit
better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social
condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded!
- What lies behind us and what
lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- It is easy in the world to
live after the world's opinions. It is easy in solitude to live after our
own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with
perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Epictetus.
- Nothing truly stops you.
Nothing truly holds you back. For your own will is always within your
control.
Flaubert, Gustave.
- Human life is a sad show,
undoubtedly: ugly, heavy and complex. Art has no other end, for people
of feeling, than to conjure away the burden and bitterness.
Fosdick, Harry Emerson.
- I would rather live in a world
where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my
mind could comprehend it.
Franklin, Benjamin.
- If you would not be
forgotten, as soon as you are rotten, either write things worth reading or
do things worth the writing.
Galilei, Galileo.
- I do not feel obliged to
believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and
intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Ghandi.
- An eye for an eye only
makes the whole world blind.
Hamilton, Alexander.
- Men give me credit for some
genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I
study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded
with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call
genius.
Hannibal.
- We must either find a way or
make one.
Herbert, Alan Patrick.
- The conception of two
people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word
suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.
Hugo, Victor.
- Everything that is great has a
sacred horror. It is easy to admire mediocrities and hills, but anything
that is too high - a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly of great men
as well as a masterpiece - is frightening when seen from too close. Every
peak seems to be an exaggeration. Climbing it is tiring. One slips and
loses ones breath on the slopes, one is injured by sharp projections …
foaming torrents reveal precipices, summits are hidden by clouds; the ascent
is as terrifying as a fall. One has a strange feeling: aversion to the
great. One sees the abysses without seeing the sublimities. It is examined
by nearsighted men when it is made to be contemplated by eagles.
- The pupil dilates in the night
and at last finds day in it, even as the soul dilates in misfortune, and at
last finds God in it.
- A creditor is worse than a
slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your
dignity, and can command it.
Huxley, Aldous.
- Consistency is contrary to
nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are
dead.
Johnson, Michael.
- Life is often compared to a
marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of
hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity
to perform at our best.
Johnson, Samuel.
- There is no kind of idleness
by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the
appearance of business.
Johnson, Stewart B.
- Our business in life is not to
get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves: to break our own
records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.
Joubert, Joseph.
- Those who never retract their
opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
Jung, Carl.
- Everything that irritates us
about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
- There are as many nights as
days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a
happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy'
would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
- The meeting of two
personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances:
if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Kempis, Thomas A.
- If you wish to be known, and
to learn anything to good purpose, be eager to be unknown and accounted
nothing.
Kierkegaard, Søren.
- If I were to wish for
anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate
sense of potential — for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the
possible. Pleasure disappoints; possibility never.
Laing, R.D.
- Madness need not be all
breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.
Langenfield, Byron J.
- Rare is the person who can
weigh the faults of others without putting his thumb on the scales.
Lincoln, Abraham.
- I have been driven many times
to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to
go.
Manson, Charles.
- If you look down at me,
I am a fool. If you look up at me, I am a lord. If you look straight
at me, you see yourself.
McNab, Sandor.
- Nothing determines who we
will become so much as those things we choose to ignore.
Milne, A.A.
- One of the advantages of being
disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
- How wonderful a thing it is,
to have nothing to do all day. And then, having done nothing all day, to
rest. (Eeyore)
Mizner, Wilson.
- I respect faith, but doubt is
what gets you an education.
Monette, Paul.
- To have greatly loved is to
sail without ballast -- with neither chart nor cargo, not bound for the
least of kingdoms. Nothing remains, except this being free.
- We sail together if we sail at
all.
Morello, Tom.
- I am enormously proud to be an
American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled
government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal -- but
there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country
that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owning
founding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the
Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P.
Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden
from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the
late 1800's and early 1900's -- that's amazing. People of get tricked into
going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are
people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that
that's so much more courageous and brave.
Mother Theresa.
-
Loneliness and the feeling of
being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Nietzche, Friedrich.
- The most common sort of lie is
the one uttered to one's self.
- I am of today and of the
has-been; but there is something in me that is of tomorrow and of the
day-after-tomorrow and of the shall-be.
- What does not destroy me,
makes me strong.
- One may sometimes tell a lie,
but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.
- He who has a why to live for
can bear any how.
Nin, Anais.
- Each friend represents a world
in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this
meeting that a new world is born.
- If what Proust says is true,
that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness.
For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
Paine, Thomas.
- I do not believe in the
creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek
church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church
that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Pitt, Thomas.
- You should never take
advice from any man, however well he knows his subject, unless he also knows
you.
Poe, Edgar Allan.
- All that we see or seem is
but a dream within a dream.
Radner, Gilda.
- 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.
Repplier, Agnes.
- It is not so much depravity that afflicts the
human race as a general lack of intelligence.
Rostand, Jean.
- If one kills a man, he is an
assassin. If one kills millions, he is a conqueror. If one kills
everyone, he is a god.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques.
- It is too difficult to think
nobly when one only thinks to get a living.
Roux, Joseph.
- Nothing vivifies, and nothing
kills, like the emotions.
Saturnus.
- Death is when life turns into
art.
Sartre, Jean-Paul.
- The more sand that has escaped from the
hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
Schalchlin, Steve.
- Part of how we face difficulty
with grace and humility is to realize that there is always someone who has
it way worse than we do. It doesn't mean we have to deny our own pain —
that's self-destructive — but it is always healthy to be able to place our
own problems in context. It's how we find the strength to endure and
overcome with true victory.
Schopenhauer.
- Every man takes the limits of
his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Seneca.
- A man who examines the saddle
and bridle and not the animal itself when he is out to buy a horse is a
fool; similarly, only an absolute fool values a man according to his
clothes, or according to his position, which after all is only something we
wear like clothing.
Shakespeare, William
- O, what man may within him hide, though angel
on the outward side!
Shaw, George Bernard.
- As long as I have a want,
I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
- We have no more right to
consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without
producing it.
- You see things; and you
say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why
not?"
Shostakovich, Dmitri.
Skye, Ione.
- Anything less than a mad
passionate extraordinary love is a waste of time; there are too many
mediocre things in life to deal with and love shouldn't be one of them.
Smith, Robert.
- But I like it when that lightning comes.
- Sometimes I think I've seen too much,
sometimes nothing at all...and sometimes I think I just forgot what I was
looking for...
Stein, Leo.
- The wise person questions the
wisdom of others because they question their own; the foolish one, because
it is different from their own.
Stevenson, Robert Louis.
- You cannot run away from
weakness; you must some time fight it out or
perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?"
Stoppard, Tom.
- Life is a gamble, at
terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
- Our best hope is to
transcend our limitations and be utterly ludicrous.
Tacitus.
- Fear is not in the habit
of speaking truth. When perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom
must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the
truth any cause to wonder that he does not
hear it.
Tully, Brock.
- When I say beautiful
things, I'm not necessarily living them; when I live them, the beautiful
thing is that words aren't necessary.
Twain, Mark.
-
Grief can take care of itself, but
to get the full value out of a joy you must have somebody
to divide it with.
Tzu, Lao.
- A good traveler has no
fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
- Kindness in words creates
confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving
creates love.
Von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang.
- Knowing is not enough; we
must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
- A useless life is an early
death.
- A teacher who can arouse a
feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes
more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects
classified with name and form.
- Everything that emancipates
the spirit without giving us control over ourselves is harmful.
- When we treat man as he is, we
make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he
potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
- Nothing is worth more than
this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.
Ward, William Arthur.
- If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If
you can dream it, you can become it.
Washington, Booker T.
Wheeler, Jon.
- If you haven't found something
strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
Wiesel, Elie.
- Take sides. Neutrality helps
the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the
tormented.
Wilde, Oscar.
- Marriage is a long, dull meal,
with dessert served at the beginning.
- Whenever people agree with me
I always feel I must be wrong.
- The only way to rid temptation
is to yield to it.
- Nothing makes one so vain as
being told one is a sinner.
- Moderation is a fatal thing.
Nothing succeeds like excess.
- Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
- The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
- The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
- It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
- Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
- The old believe everything, the middle-aged
suspect everything, the young know everything.
- Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
- If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
- Behind every exquisite thing that ever existed, there was something tragic.
[Unknown]
- Estoy aquí / por estar, y la nieve / sigue cayendo