My Favorite Quotes

New Favorite Quotes

These quotes last updated on 08/19/02.

"Pleasure without joy is as hollow as passion without tenderness."

– Alan Jay Lerner

"A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty."

– Rudyard Kipling

"The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense,

not between right and wrong."

– Carl Jung

After ecstasy, The laundry.

– Zen Saying

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matter

compared to what lies within us.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stillness is where you meet with the essence of things.

– John Fox

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do.

The hard part is doing it.

– General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Only those that risk going too far

can possibly find out how far one can go.

– T. S. Eliot

Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire.

– W. B. Yeats

Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Fortune sides with he who dares.

– Virgil

Success is overrated and Man's real genius lies in quite the opposite direction. Being really bad at something requires skill, panache and utter individualism.

– Stephen Pile

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

– Tom Stopard

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.

– R. D. Laing

Your soul grows sick with longing

for the things it has forbidden itself.

– Oscar Wilde

To forget all we believe and know may be impossible. But we can, at least for a miraculous moment, put all explanations aside and look with innocent eyes.

– Piero Ferrucci

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.

– E. E. Cummings

It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires.

It must abandon itself to its master passion.

– Rebecca West

Virtue is like precious odors ~ most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.

– Sir Francis Bacon

We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise.

– Emily Dickinson

Adults are obsolete children.

– Dr. Seuss

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist

but the ability to start over.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

I don't want everyone to like me;

I should think less of myself if some people did.

– Henry James

It is never too late to be who you might have been.

– George Eliot

I like long walks,

especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

– Noel Coward

Finish each day and be done with it.

You have done what you could.

Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in ~

forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day ~ begin it well and serenely

and with too high a spirit

to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a wonderful life I've had!

I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

– Colette

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

– George Bernard Shaw

It's not the answer that enlightens,

but the question.

– Eugene Ionesco

There is a time for departure

even when there's no certain place to go.

– Tennessee Williams

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

– Samuel Beckett

If you feel you have both feet planted on level ground,

then the university has failed you.

– Robert F. Goheen

The cure for anything is salt water–

sweat, tears, or the sea.

– Isak Dinesen

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,

but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

– Sir Winston Churchill

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.

– Nikki Giovanni

Friendship is Love without his wings.

– Lord Byron

True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.

– May Sarton

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

– Colette

Even if you're on the right track,

you'll get run over if you just sit there.

– Will Rogers

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

– Hector Berlioz

A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight,

and see the dawn before the rest of the world.

– Oscar Wilde

The penalty of success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.

– Lady Astor

Wit is a form of arousal.

We challenge one another to be funnier and smarter.

It's high-energy play.

It's the way friends make love to one another.

– Anne Gottlieb

Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin –

it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring.

– S. J. Perelman

We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.

– Aristotle

The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all,

is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

– Lorraine Hansberry

I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless

to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy,

unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.

– J. Edgar Hoover

The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on.

It is never of any use to oneself.

– Oscar Wilde

The really idle man gets nowhere.

The perpetually busy man does not get much further.

– Heneage Ogilvie

Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for.

– Earl Warren

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

– Harry Emerson Fosdick

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world

has been accomplished without passion.

– Georg Hegel

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.

I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world

are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want,

and, if they can't find them, make them.

– George Bernard Shaw

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

– Confucius

Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.

– William Shakespeare

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing.

Action always generates inspiration.

Inspiration seldom generates action.

– Frank Tibolt

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

– Nadia Boulanger

It is common sense to take a method and try it.

If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.

But above all, try something.

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

One popular new plastic surgery technique is called lipgrafting,

or "fat recycling," wherein fat cells are removed

from one part of your body that is too large,

such as your buttocks, and injected into your lips;

people will then be literally kissing your ass.

– Dave Barry

For anything worth having one must pay the price;

and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice.

– John Burroughs

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

– Rene Descartes

The primary object of a student of literature is to be delighted.

His duty is to enjoy himself: his efforts should be directed

to developing his faculty of appreciation.

– Lord David Cecil

Anything that's worth having is worth asking for.

Some say yes and some say no.

– Dr. Melba Colgrove

Every human mind is a great slumbering power

until awakened by a keen desire and by definite resolution to do.

– Edgar F. Roberts

Men are all alike in their promises.

It is only in their deeds that they differ.

– Moliere

Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.

– Lord Chesterfield

American women expect to find in their husbands

a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.

– W. Somerset Maugham

I don't say we all ought to misbehave,

but we ought to look as if we could.

– Orson Welles

Condoms aren't completely safe.

A friend of mine was wearing one and got hit by a bus.

– Bob Rubin

My dear, I don't care what they do,

so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.

– Mrs. Patrick Campbell

You can't build a reputation on what you're GOING to do.

– Henry Ford

In the depth of winter, I finally learned

that within me there lay an invincible summer.

– Albert Camus

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice,

and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

– G. K. Chesterton

I will work in my own way,

according to the light that is in me.

– Lydia Maria Child

Quit now, you'll never make it.

If you disregard this advice, you'll be halfway there.

– David Zucker

The more I want to get something done,

the less I call it work.

– Richard Bach

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

– Pablo Picasso

Before we set our hearts too much on anything,

let us examine how happy are those who already possess it.

– La Rochefoucauld

The way to become boring is to say everything.

– Voltaire

The really efficient laborer will be found

not to crowd his day with work,

but will saunter to his task

surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

– Henry David Thoreau

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

– Karl Barth

Human beings can alter their lives

by altering their attitudes of mind.

– William James

Our greatest glory is not in never failing,

but in rising up every time we fail.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if there were no hypothetical situations?

– Andrew Kohlsmith

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged

to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

– Nelson Mandela

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

There is no shortage of good days: it is good lives

that are hard to come by.

– Annie Dillard

When we ask advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

– Marquis de la Grange

Children today are tyrants.

They contradict their parents, gobble their food,

and tyrannize their teachers.

– Socrates

We are always too busy for our children;

we never give them the time or interest they deserve.

We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift ~

our personal association, which means so much to them ~

we give grudgingly.

– Mark Twain

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice;

it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

– William Jennings Bryan

You never know what is enough,

until you know what is more than enough.

– William Blake

Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.

– W. Eugene Smith

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will ~

he will be sure to repent it.

– Socrates

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

– Charles Kingsley

The opposite of talking isn't listening.

The opposite of talking is waiting.

– Fran Leibowitz

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

– Benjamin Disraeli

If I repent of anything,

it is very likely to be my good behavior.

– Henry David Thoreau

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is curiosity.

– Edmund Burke

The only journey is the one within.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it

but what he becomes by it.

– John Ruskin

The idea that is not dangerous

is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

– Elbert Hubbard

The greatest discovery of my generation

is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.

– William James

Do what you can with what you have where you are.

– Theodore Roosevelt

Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own.

You may both be wrong.

– Dandemis

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To remain whole, be twisted!

To become straight, let yourself be bent.

To become full, be hollow.

Be tattered, that you may be renewed.

– Lao Tzu

Whenever you fall, pick something up.

– Oswald Avery

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

– Brendan Francis

I love the man who can smile in trouble,

who can gather strength from distress,

and grows brave by reaction.

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink,

but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct,

will pursue his principles unto death.

– Thomas Paine (1737_1809)

Love me or hate me, but spare me your indifference.

– Libbie Fudim

Click here to see all of my favorite Quotes!