“Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.” - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.” - Albert Einstein

“We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.” - James Matthew Barrie

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." - Will Rogers

"If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it." - Lucy Larcom

"There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." - Willa Cather

"When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind." - Cicero

"You better live your best and act your best and think your best today, for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow." - Harriet Martineau

"Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend." - Saadi

"It is necessary to try to surpass oneself always; this occupation ought to last as long as life." - Queen Christina

"The thing that I'm always left with is this overwhelming desire for people to be rooted and the only way that they feel rooted is through another person." - John Allen

"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something." - Wilson Mizner

"I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell." - Harry S Truman

"Things start out as hopes and end up as habits." - Lillian Hellman

"Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even." - Horace

"The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all." - Jawaharlal Nehru

The Tragedy

"Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it." - Helen Hayes

“We neglect those things which are under our very eyes, and heedless of things within our grasp, pursue those which are afar off.” - Unknown

"Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them." - Robertson Davies

"Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom." - Hannah Arendt

"Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body." - Joseph Addison

"I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches." - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face." - Jim Bishop

"What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government." - Barack Obama

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas A. Edison

"It's very strange when the life you never had flashes before your eyes." - Terri Minsky

"There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." - Albert Camus

"Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality." - Bertrand Russell

"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand." - Mark Twain

"Chase after truth like hell, and you'll free yourself--even though you never touch its coat-tails." - Clarence Darrow

"The only place you will be accepted is the place you make for yourself." - Holly Lisle

"You cannot be really first-rate at your work, if your work is all you are." - Anna Quindlen

“Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow.” - Unknown

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” - John Wooden

“Progress is what happens when impossibility yields to necessity.” - Arnold Glasow

“'Tis sweet to listen as the night winds creep From leaf to leaf; 'tis sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky.” - Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)

“Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The best way out is always through." - Robert Frost

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from." - Peter Ustinov

"Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning." - George Carlin

"Free advice is worth the price." - Robert Half

"Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties." - Doug Larson

"I'm just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious." - David Letterman

"If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt." - Dean Martin

"I am I plus my circumstances." - Jose Ortega y Gasset

"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent." - John Donne

"There is no better high than discovery." - E. O. Wilson

"The deeper sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain." - Kahlil Gibran

"Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends." - Jacques Delille

"Some think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go." - Sylvia Robinson

"Don't fall before you're pushed." - English Proverb

"Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness." - Lao-Tzu

"Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery." - Matthew Arnold

"Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something." - Gertrude Stein

"I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away wh

"Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them." - Robert Graves

"Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things." - Denis Diderot

"The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society." - Emma Goldman

"A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go." - Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

"A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece." - Ludwig Erhard

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind." - Albert Einstein

"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip." - Will Rogers

"As knowledge increases, wonder deepens." - Charles Morgan

"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost." - Charles Caleb Colton

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool." - Joseph Roux

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." - Auguste Rodin

"This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say." - Brenda Ueland

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything." - George Lois

"Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done." - Aaron Burr

"Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all." - Sir Winston Churchill

"Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given." - Deepak Chopra

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good." - Baltasar Gracian

"Management is nothing more than motivating other people." -Lee Iacocca

"All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"When a quiet man is moved to passion, it seems the very earth will shake." - Stephanie Barron

"The best defence against misguided arrogance is a keen sense of humour." - Kathryn L. Nelson

“Don't love the things you own, lest they own you.” - Unknown

“A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.” - Bob Edwards

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it." - George Bernard Shaw

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." - G. K. Chesterton

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us." - Kurt Vonnegut

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people." - Victor Borge

"With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven." - Henry Ward Beecher

"Have more than thou showest; Speak less than thou knowest." - William Shakespeare

"Freedom is a possession of inestimable value." - Cicero

"Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave." - Mary Tyler Moore

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just." - Abraham Lincoln

"Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible." - Mark Jenkins

“Never underestimate the heart of a champion.” - Rudy Tomjanovich

“Prosperity belongs to those who learn new things the fastest.” - Paul Zane Pilzer

“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” - Edmund Burke

“Never elated while one man's oppress'd; Never dejected while another's blessed.” - Alexander Pope

“Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.” - Will Rogers

“God places the heaviest burden on those who can carry its weight.” - Reggie White

“The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.” - Baltasar Gracián

"Nothing endures but personal qualities." - Walt Whitman

“The wind in ones face makes one wise.” - George Herbert

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices." - Henry David Thoreau

"If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time." - Shimon Peres

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." - Jerry Seinfeld

"The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity." - Helen Rowland

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer?" - George Price

"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men." - George Eliot

"The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened." - Saki

"I've been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn't require my presence." - Garry Trudeau

"Only the mediocre are always at their best." - Jean Giraudoux

"Food is an important part of a balanced diet." - Fran Lebowitz

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." - Yogi Berra

"Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk." - Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

"The more things change, the more they remain...insane." - Michael Fry and T. Lewis

"The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him." - Russell Baker

"There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it." - Mary Wilson Little

"The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before." - Thorstein Veblen

"Please all, and you will please none." - Aesop

"I am deliberate and afraid of nothing." - Audre Lorde

"Be at peace with your own soul, then heaven and earth will be at peace with you." - St. Jerome

"Vigorous let us be in attaining our ends, and mild in our method of attainment." - Lord Newborough

"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"If you can't do what you want, do what you can." - Lois McMaster Bujold

"A mind too active is no mind at all." - Theodore Roethke

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers." - Charles W. Eliot

"Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur." - Muriel Spark

"The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities." - Louis D. Brandeis

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play." - John Cleese

"Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about." - Trey Parker and Matt Stone

"Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever." - Margaret Cho

"The human brain is unique in that it is the only container of which it can be said that the more you put into it, the more it will hold." - Glenn Doman

"Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself." - Mark Twain

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." - J. R. R. Tolkien

"All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse." - John Quincy Adams

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them." - Paul Valery

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them." - Samuel Butler

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'" - Kahlil Gibran

"I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul." - George W. Bush

"I grow more intense as I age." - Florida Scott-Maxwell

"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else." - Will Rogers

"Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein." - Joe Theismann

"Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." - Don Marquis

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities." - Aldous Huxley

"Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable." - Andre Gide

"Drive thy business or it will drive thee." - Benjamin Franklin

"You can question somebody's views and their judgment without questioning their motives or patriotism." - Barack Obama

"Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys." - Gail Pool

"Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest." - Colleen Wainwright

"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves." - Rudyard Kipling

"Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight." - Phyllis Diller

"It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be." - Gilbert Parker

"If I knew what I was so anxious about, I wouldn't be so anxious." - Mignon McLaughlin

"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this." - Bertrand Russell

"Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity." - Socrates

"Truth has beauty, power and necessity." - Sylvia Ashton-Warner

"Sometimes old things need to go away. That way, we have room for the new things that come into our lives." - Randy K. Milholland

"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic." - Anais Nin

"It's a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation." - Roberto Benigni

"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them." - Leo Tolstoy

"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." - Sir Winston Churchill

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." - John Cage

"You have to lead people gently toward what they already know is right." - Phil Crosby

"Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives." - Marilyn Ferguson

"The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them." - Alfred North Whitehead

"A mind set in its ways is wasted. Don't do it." - Eric Schmidt

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain." - Mark Twain

"I can't complain, but sometimes I still do. Life's been good to me so far." - Joe Walsh

"Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise." - Margaret Atwood

"Furious activity is no substitute for understanding." - H. H. Williams

"If you want to be found, stand where the seeker seeks." - Sidney Lanier

"We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh." - Agnes Repplier

"When you build bridges, you can keep crossing them." - Rick Pitino

“Keep breathing.” - Sophie Tucker

"We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities." - Walt Kelly

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace." - Oscar Wilde

"If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us." - William Feather

"We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too." - Helen Hayes

"Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted. Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it." - Hugh Macleod

"In the absence of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras." - Tom Nolan

"Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility." - Oprah Winfrey

“Hurry when you have time, then you'll have time when you are in a hurry.” - Unknown

“Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.” - Unknown

"A person who trusts no one can't be trusted." - Jerome Blattner

"Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers." - Edward Shepherd Mead

"There is nothing on earth divine except humanity." - Walter Savage Landor

"He harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner." - Hesiod

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult." - E. B. White

"Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such." - Henry Miller

"It's always helpful to learn from your mistakes because then your mistakes seem worthwhile." - Garry Marshall

"Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty... Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words." - Rainer Maria Rilke

"There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read." - G. K. Chesterton

"Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay." - Simone de Beauvoir

"I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure." - Bette Davis

"Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." - Mark Twain

"Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it." - Colin Powell

"Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking." - John Maynard Keynes

"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults." - Thomas Szasz

We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong." - Bill Vaughan

"Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues." - Joseph Hall

"There are no facts, only interpretations." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent." - Isaac Newton

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." - John Wayne

"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." - John F. Kennedy

"I love you the more, that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else." - John Keats

"It's important to begin a search on a full stomach." - Henry Bromel

"Everything you do in life, every choice you make, has a consequence. When you do things without thinkin', then you ain't makin' the choice. The choice is makin' you." - Mark Steven Johnson

"A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold." - Ogden Nash

"Don't go through life, grow through life." - Eric Butterworth

"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." - Ayn Rand

"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pearce

"When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable." - W. Somerset Maugham

“Leave not a sword in the hand of an idiot.” - Unknown

“Sentiment is the poetry of the imagination.” - Alphonse de Lamartine

“Providence sees to it that no man gets happiness out of crime.” - Conte Vittorio Alfieri

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw

"There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past." - George Carlin

"Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so." - Bertrand Russell

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

"Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes." - Norman Douglas

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out." - Walter Winchell

"Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them." - Washington Irving

"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself." - Thomas Jefferson

"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Sometimes it is the quiet observer who see the most." - Kathryn L. Nelson

"For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change." - Ingrid Bengis

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." - Epicurus

"The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor." - Horace

"Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city." - Anne Michaels

"It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them." - Joseph de Maistre

"The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence." - Robert J. Shiller

"If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances." - Julia Sorel

"The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side." - Scott Westerfeld

"The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side." - Scott Westerfeld

"The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side." - Scott Westerfeld

"The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side." - Scott Westerfeld

"Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference." - Jane Goodall

"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think." - Niels Bohr

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them." - Jane Austen

"It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time." - Tallulah Bankhead

"Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself." - Michel de Montaigne

"Life is too important to be taken seriously. " - Oscar Wilde

"Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little." - Edna Ferber

"No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut." - Sam Rayburn

"The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor." - Michael Patrick King

"When you choose the paradigm of service, it turns everything you do from a job into a gift." - Oprah Winfrey

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be." - Clementine Paddleford

"You don't need to win every medal to be successful." - Jason Fried

"Painting in watercolor is like walking a tight-rope; one must achieve a perfect balance between what the paint wants to do and what the artist wants to do, or all is lost." - Mary C. Taylor

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain

"I think it's always a good move to listen to that inner voice, if it doesn't lead to a crime." - Lisa Kudrow

"Indecision may or may not be my problem." - Jimmy Buffett

"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well." - Horace Walpole

"No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed." - Harold MacMillan

"To make pleasures pleasant, shorten them." - Charles Buxton

"Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." - Sarah Bernhardt

"The best way to try to motivate somebody is by being direct with them. To be honest with them. Lies are never the right way to get your message across." - Trey Parker and Matt Stone

“I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.” - Rita Dove

“I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.” - Edward Gibbon

"You can cover a great deal of country in books." - Andrew Lang