Wise words
I’ve been gathering favorite quotes for more years than I care to admit. Kindly let me know
if you’ve got a particularly nice one I’ve overlooked!
At the heart of any good business is a chief executive officer with one.
– Malcom Forbes, entrepreneur and magazine publisher (1919-1990)
We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.
– Carlos Castenada, mystic and author (1925-1998)
Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.
– Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)
In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.
– Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939)
Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
– Theodore Rubin, psychiatrist and writer (1923- )
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
– John Maynard Keynes, economist (1883-1946)
This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.
– Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )
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, Olympic Gold Medalist (1902-1981)
The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
– Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917-2008)
The only person you should ever compete with is yourself. You can’t hope for a fairer match.
– Todd Ruthman
The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
– Madeleine L’Engle, writer (1918-2007)
The real measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.
– John Henry Jowett, preacher (1864-1923)
It is not how old you are, but how you are old.
– Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.
– Steven Wright, comedian (b. 1955)
It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
– Rollo May, psychologist (1909-1994)
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.
– Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (1771-1845)
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.
– Audrey Hepburn, actress (1929-1993)
Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.
– Isaac Newton, philosopher and mathematician (1642-1727)
The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.
– E.E. Cummings, poet (1894-1962)
He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
– Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)
There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure.
– John Perkins, economist and author (b.1945)
We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
– Kenji Miyazawa, poet and story writer (1896-1933)
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
– Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and writer (121-180)
All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.
– Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.
– Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870)
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
– Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865)
If you want to work on your art, work on your life.
– Anton Chekhov, short-story writer and dramatist (1860-1904)
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
– Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941)
A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
– Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
– William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
– Linus Pauling, chemist, peace activist, author, educator; Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize (1901-1994)
It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
– Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)
The world, we are told, was made especially for man — a presumption not supported by all the facts… Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?
– John Muir, naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
– John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
– Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)
I am only one, / But still I am one. / I cannot do everything, / But still I can do something; / And because I cannot do everything, / I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
– Edward Everett Hale, author (1822-1909)
The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it.
– Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there’s more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged.
– Norman Mailer, author (1923-2007)
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
– James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)
Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when you were not: that gives us no concern. Why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? To die is only to be as we were before we were born.
– William Hazlitt, essayist (1778-1830)
The sense of wishing to be known only for what one really is is like putting on an old, easy, comfortable garment. You are no longer afraid of anybody or anything. You say to yourself, ‘Here I am — just so ugly, dull, poor, beautiful, rich, interesting, amusing, ridiculous — take me or leave me.’ And how absolutely beautiful it is to be doing only what lies within your own capabilities and is part of your own nature. It is like a great burden rolled off a man’s back when he comes to want to appear nothing that he is not, to take out of life only what is truly his own.
– David Grayson, journalist and author (1870-1946)
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882)
When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
– Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
– Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)
An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.
– Spanish proverb
Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.
– Allen Ginsberg, poet (1926-1997)
People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, psychiatrist and author (1926-2004)
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
– Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (1928-2016)
All one’s life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It’s a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.
– Doris Lessing, novelist, poet, playwright, Nobel laureate (1919-2013)
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
– Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894)
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
– Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India (1917-1984)
Poor is the power of the lead that becomes bullets compared to the power of the hot metal that becomes types.
– Georg Brandes, critic and scholar (1842-1927)
The pain passes but the beauty remains.
– Pierre-Auguste Renoir, artist [responding to Matisse on why he painted in spite of his painful arthritis] (1841-1919)
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
– Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (1564-1616)
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
– Hal Borland, author and journalist (1900-1978)
There is no such thing as a ‘self-made’ man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts.
– George Matthew Adams, newspaper columnist (1878-1962)
For any great thing to happen, you have to have two things:
A good idea, and not quite enough time.
– Leonard Bernstein, composer and conductor (1918-1990)