Site Map: MAIN / This Page

Treasury
of
Famous and Interesting Quotes
Collected
by
Bobby Matherne

Web www.doyletics.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bobby's Famous and Interesting Quotes

(Note: Credit for sources of Quotations, when available can be Viewed in the Source in Comments.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1882) in Journal May 1849

A little alliteration helps a lovely, little oration.
— J. David Knepper (6/20/2008)

Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.
— Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister

Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
— Harold Whitman

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
— Edmund Burke, Irish born English Statesman and Author

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.
— Edmund Burke, Irish born English Statesman and Author

Re-examine all you have been told...
Dismiss what insults your Soul.
— Walt Whitman (American Poet)

Once the government becomes the supplier of people's needs, there is no limit to the needs that will be claimed as a basic right
Lawrence Auster

A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness.
Lao-Tzu

Principle — particularly moral principle — can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true.
Edward Lyman

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

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Samuel Johnson

Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.
Ken Wilber (Webpage )

There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.
Swedish saying

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.
Plutarch

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news ... who proclaims salvation.
Isaiah 52:7

No. That's like asking two mountain peaks to merge.
King of Masks
(Title character's answer when asked if he would be consider becoming partners with another performer. From movie "The King of Mask" 1999)

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
— Voltaire

I am easily satisfied with the very best.
— Winston Churchill

There should be a tax on every man that wanted to get a government appointment, or be elected to office. In two years that tax alone would pay our national debt.
— Will Rogers

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

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 (1802-1882)

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1882)

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1882)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


            I am not earth-born, though I here delay;
            Hope's child, I summon infinite powers,
            And laugh to see the mild and sunny clay
            Smile on the shrunk and thin autumnal hours;
            I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me,
            If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea.

                  Ellery Channing,
                  friend of Thoreau and Emerson, 1843, "A Poet's Hope"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

God gave us memories so that we may have roses in December.
James M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan

In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born: that they are not superior to the citizen: that every one of them was once the act of a single man: every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case: that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1882)

The craft of the merchant is this: bringing a thing from where it abounds to where it is costly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart

Be like the bird that pausing in her flight a while, on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her — and yet sings, knowing that she has wings.
Victor Hugo (French poet, dramatist, and writer)

Sanity is a madness put to good uses.
— George Santayana (1863-1952)

Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.
— Emily Dickinson (Belle of Amherst, American Poet)

Unionism seldom, if ever, uses such power as it has to insure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding bad work.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

People constantly speak of ‘the government’ doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

Of the Gettysburg Address: it was not the Union forces that were fighting for government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but the people of the southern states.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Either you think — or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Writer)

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
Ernest Hemingway (American Writer)

As you stroll around the garden of The Poynter Institute, several inspirational sayings, carved into marble, greet you. One comes from the great sports writer Red Smith: "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
Roy Peter Clark (American Writer)

Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people once a year.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
Brendan Gill (1914-1997) US writer

What frenzy has of late posssess'd the brain
Though few can write, yet fewer can refrain."
Samuel Garth ( 17th-century physician and poet ) US writer

Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
-- Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
Victor Hugo (French poet, dramatist, and writer)

And I'll tell you something else — people are people, whatever their walk of life!
Gordon Lish (Avant garde novelist)

Good manners make any man a pleasure to be with. Ask any woman.
-- Peter Mayle

The virtuous need but few laws; for it is not the law which determines their actions, but their actions which determine the law.
--Theophrastus

These days, liberals are once again preaching one thing and practicing another. They always want diversity, but that ideal never seems to carry over to diversity of opinion.
— Vanessa Pierce

A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn’t own.
—Frank Dane

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
— Henry David Thoreau

Corruption is no stranger to Washington; it is a famous resident. —Walter Goodman
—Walter Goodman

There are so many congressmen and senators here [in Washington, D.C.], I don't know whether to tell a joke or pass a bill...as if there was a difference.
— Bob Hope

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents....
James Madison (4^th American President)

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

Congress!
— Written in the Men's restroom in the Representatives House of Congress, Washington, DC

I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
Richard Feynman (American Nobel Physicist and Author)

The reasons which any man offers to you for his own conduct betray his opinion of your character.
Sir Arthur Helps

A yawn may be bad manners but it's an honest opinion.
Evan Esar

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them.
François duc de la Rochefoucauld

Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities — always see them, for they're always there.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

RJM NOTE: Inspired by Peale, Robert H. Schuller became a possibilitarian and developed Possibility Thinking into a way of life for himself, his family, his Garden Community Church members in California, and the viewers of his Hour of Power weekly telecasts all over the world.

On Christ the solid rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
Robert H. Schuller [Minister and Founder of Garden Grove Community Church and Hour of Power]

Prayer does not change things; prayer changes us for things.
Robert A. Schuller

When you're down to nothing, God is up to something!
Robert A. Schuller

When swimming in a sewer the best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut.
Harry Boyd, TA Therapist from Oklahoma during a group session, c. 1977.

You can't make people better off by taking options away from them.
Thomas Sowell, American Writer

There is no bad weather, only bad clothes.
Old Swedish Saying

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
— Leonardo Da Vinci

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

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
Louis L'Amour

A thing long expected takes the form of the unexpected when at last it comes.
Mark Twain

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.
Mark Twain

If you don't read the newspaper (or watch TV news) you are uninformed,
if you do read the newspaper (or watch TV news) you are misinformed.
Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress....
But then I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.
— Albert Jay Nock

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton Early 20th Century Writer (equally true about TV and Internet invented after G. K. Chesterton)

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

English experience indicates that when two political parties agree about something, it is generally wrong.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
G.K. Chesterton [Writer]

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them — every day begin the task anew.
St Francis de Sales [My patron saint — Bobby Matherne]

Knowledge only casts data into the Dark — Wisdom casts Light and chases the Dark away.
Bobby Matherne

The parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins teaches that wisdom is to life as oil is to a lamp: it casts Light.
Bobby Matherne

There are no coincidences — only blessings from God. .
Bobby Matherne

Reality is always stranger than fiction because fiction lives inside of reality.
Bobby Matherne

A platitude is a high form of mediocrity.
Bobby Matherne

A dove that does not alight like a dove is an angel.
An angel does not alight with a touch — an angel alights with a feeling.
Bobby Matherne

I have fond memories of drinking beer. I'd like to keep it that way — as memories.
Bobby Matherne

You can lose yourself in a book, but you find yourself in Poetry.
Jasper Fforde in First Among Sequels

Toasts by Bobby Matherne:

May all those who have graced our presence,
Join us now to taste this essence.

May this drink we dream we swallow
make us dream of all to follow.

May for every drop this glass conveys,
A day be added to your days!

The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention.
Duguet

Unionism seldom, if ever, uses such power as it has to insure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding bad work.
H.L. Mencken

Any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day.
Booker T. Washington [American Educator and Philosopher]

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippman [American Commentator]

All songs are living ghosts that long for a living voice.
Brendan Kinneally

It is a funny thing about life — if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham

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.
Galileo Galilei

Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.
J. C. Watts, Jr.

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals — that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
Honore De Balzac

When politicians rush to fix things, it's a sure sign that either the intended patient is dead or fully healed."
Tony Snow (News Commentator, 2002)

The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside him/her. They come to us not knowing that cure. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.
Albert Schweitzer, MD

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.
Jean Jacques Rousseau

Rollin Becker had a 'mantra' he'd use before he saw a patient: 'Thank you for allowing me to watch you heal yourself.'
Hilmar Moore, Ortho-Bionomy Worker

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact.
George Eliot [Novelist]

A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. .
Christopher Reeve[Superman]

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Aesop[Noted Fables Author]

When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
Max Lerner

Time is the money of love.
Oscar Kokoschka, famous impressionist, painter of "Bride of the Wind", a portrait of Alma Mahler.

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time a tremendous whack.
Winston Churchill [British WWII Prime Minister ]

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

A state without some means of change is without the means of its conservation.
Edmund Burke

The enemies of truth are always awfully nice.
Christopher Morely

If I knew that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
Thoreau

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.
Oscar Wilde

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
Groucho Marx

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
— T.S. Eliot

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
— Jonathan Swift

"I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
— Gene Fowler

I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it.
— William Hazlitt

Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper.
— Robert E. Lee

Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
— Alexis de Tocqueville

Consensus is the negation of leadership.
— Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister of England, in 1980s)

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solution.
— Edward R. Murrow (Radio and TV News Correspondant, Mid 20th Century)

Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.
— Alexander Hamilton

Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA’s Web site and look at the ‘U.S. surface air temperature’ rankings for the lower 48 states, you might notice that something has changed. Then again, you might not. They’re not issuing any press releases about it. But they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The ‘hottest year on record’ is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century—2000, 2002, 2003, 2004—plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. Four of America’s Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full-blast. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone’s ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn’t have a word to say about it. And yet we survived.
— Mark Steyn

Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

We need more Democrats in the Senate — like Custer needed more arrows.
Ronald Reagan [40th United States president, 1980-88] “People constantly speak of ‘the government’ doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men.” —H. L. Mencken “Either you think—or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

You know it’s said that an economist is the only professional who sees something working in practice and then seriously wonders if it works in theory.
Ronald Reagan [40th United States president, 1980-88]

Reducing America to the status of a second class nation, unable to make its voice heard in the councils of the world will surely be the prelude to another generation of Americans dying needlessly because of our mistakes.
Ronald Reagan [40th United States president, 1980-88]

We stand here on the only island of freedom that is left in the whole world. There is no place left to flee to ... no place to escape to. We defend freedom here or it is gone. There is no place for us to run, only to make a stand. And if we fail, I think we face telling our children, and our children's children, what it was we found more precious than freedom. Because I am sure someday — if we fail in this — there will be a generation that will ask.
Ronald Reagan [40th United States president, 1980-88]

Americans have been taught to know when opportunity knocks, but the Democrats seem determined to knock opportunity.
Ronald Reagan

I have learned to have faith in you, the people, and I envision a leadership as president taking government off your backs and turning you loose to do what I know you can do best.
Ronald Reagan, prior to his election in 1980

The current tax code is a daily mugging.
Ronald Reagan

I think the so-called conservative is today what was, in the classic sense, the liberal. The classical liberal, during the Revolutionary time, was a man who wanted less power for the king and more power for the people. He wanted people to have more say in the running of their lives and he wanted protection for the God-given rights of the people. He did not believe those rights were dispensations granted by the king to the people, he believed that he was born with them. Well, that today is the conservative.
Ronald Reagan

In the fourth century, a monk thought he heard God telling him to go to Rome... He followed a crowd into the Colosseum and saw the gladiators. He realized they were going to fight to the death. He cried out, 'In the Name of Christ, stop!'... made his way through the crowd and climbed the wall into the arena... As he was pleading with the gladiators... one of them plunged his sword into his body... his last words were, 'In the Name of Christ, stop!' Suddenly the gladiators stood looking at this tiny form... In dead silence, everyone left. That was the last battle in the Colosseum. One tiny voice... 'In the Name of Christ, stop!' We could be saying that today.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down — up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

Here's my strategy on the Cold War:
       We win, they lose.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment's would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with. Well, we've discovered that money alone isn't the answer.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

I know what it's like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.
Ronald Reagan [US President 1980-88]

A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands — even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
John Stuart Mill (1806 to 1873, English philosopher and reformer)

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight on the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. ... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour'.
Winston Churchill (English PM, author, statesman)

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop every now and then and look around, you could miss it.
Ferris Beuler (Written by John Hughes in the screenplay for the 1980s movie Ferris Beuler's Day Off . Fictional character Ferris Beuler was played by Matthew Broderick.)

I live by this credo: Have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter has always brought me out of unhappy situations. Even in your darkest moment, you usually can find something to laugh about if you try hard enough.
— Red Skelton - 1913-1997

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde [Playwright]

The only difference between caprice and a lifelong passion is that caprice lasts a little longer.
Oscar Wilde [Playwright]

Everyone should know that you can’t live in any other way than by cultivating the soul.
Apuleius [Ancient Roman writer ]

“It is never too early or too late to care for the well-being of the soul.”
Epicurus [Ancient Roman writer ]

Books are like mountaintops jutting out of the sea. Self-contained islands though they may seem, they are upthrusts of an underlying geography that is at once local and, for all that, a part of a universal pattern. And so, while they inevitably reflect a time and place, they are part of a more general intellectual geography.
Jerome Bruner [American Educator and Scholar ]

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.
John Keats

History is simply the a record of things which ought not to have happened.
I. A. Richards [British Literary Critic]

You can observe a lot by watching.
Yogi Berra [Brooklyn Dodger's Catcher and Major League Philosopher]

I've had a wonderful evening, but it wasn't here tonight.
Groucho Marx (To a hostess upon leaving a party)

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
Groucho Marx (Comedian aka Captain Spalding)

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx (Comedian aka Captain Spalding)

Nonetheless, as often happens with lonely young creatures, I found companionship. In poetry. Indeed, I wonder whether poetry would have any readers besides poets if love combined with loneliness did not perform the introductions.
Mary McCarthy [American writer, from How I Grew, page 72]

The mind's time is quicker than the tongue's.
Mary McCarthy [American writer from The Company She Keeps, page 280]

"As for the wealthy business owner and whether he 'needs' the extra dollars, I'll simply relate the old adage of the man who said 'I've never had my paycheck signed by a poor man'."
Ron Paul (U. S. Representative from Texas, 2003)

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana (Philosopher)

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

“Fools get away with the impossible,” Robert Mitchum. “That’s because they’re the only ones who try it,” Jane Russell
in “His Kind of Woman” (1951 B&W movie)

Success is a poison that should be only taken late in life, then only in small doses.
Anthony Trollope (British Writer)

Of all the enemies of literature, success is the most insidious.
Cyril Connolly

Once you’ve got hold of an idea, the proofs of it tend to proliferate.
Margaret Atwood (Canadian writer)

People don't want to grow old, but they do grow old by repeating themselves.
Paul Weitz, movie director of 2002 movie with Hugh Grant, About a Boy

God is in the details.
Mies van der Rohe (20th Century Architect)

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.
James Garfield

If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man — it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.
— James A. Garfield

A man who never has gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal from the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt

Reality is a cliche from which we escape by metaphor.
Wallace Stevens

To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Blaize Pascal

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaize Pascal

Comedy is the collision of two different contexts, science is their fusion and art is their juxtaposition.
Arthur Koestler, (paraphrased)

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.
Sir William Osler

The shaman and scientist do not speak the language, but they are nonetheless engaged in the same activity: interpreting experience by means of theoretical constructs.
Gary Brent Madison

The Theorist's Fallacy is the confusion of a method or doctrine with the very reality it is about.
Gary Brent Madison

Put me clearly on the record: I don't want to 'reform' Social Security or 'rescue' it or 'adjust it to the new realities of the 21st century.' No, I want to hit it in the head with a shovel and bury it in a New Jersey landfill. It is time to kill the rotten, lousy, 'rip off your kids to keep granny in bingo cards' Ponzi scheme that we call Social Security, but would be more accurately described as 'the government taking money from poor, hard-working young families and giving just enough of it to retirees to keep them broke, too'.
Michael Graham

...effective censorship is a contradiction in terms. Like pruning, it gives new vigor to what it cuts back; but if it attacks the root, it destroys the plant it is supposed to save.

If modern art is sometimes shrill, it is not the fault of the artist alone. We all tend to raise our voices when we speak to persons who are getting deaf.

As Croce rather brusquely put it, there is no 'double bottom' to the suitcase of art.

Edgar Wind (3 quotes above from his book, Art and Anarchy )

Good writing is like a window pane.
George Orwell (Author, "1984")

Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Red Smith (Sports Writer)

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler (Reporter)

Why should I get writer's block? My father never got truck driver's block.
Roger Simon (Newspaper Columnist )

What we observe is not nature, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Werner Heisenberg (Physicist)

The teacher has forgotten and the students will soon forget, that what they see conveys no information until they know beforehand what they are expected to see.
Peter Medawar (Philosopher)

We need a ladder to the mind. A ladder and rungs.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 ) Click here to read more Joubert quotes.

Our life is of woven wind.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Our eye prevents us from seeing: it is our body that prevents us from touching. Between us and the truth there are our senses, which introduce a part of the truth in us and which also separate us from it.
— Joseph Joubert (1754 - 1821), from his Notebook

Sexes. One has the look of a wound, the other of something skinned.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Newton. It is no more true that he has discovered the system of the world than it is true that someone who balances the accounts of an administration has discovered a system of government.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Newton. How ripe his apple was.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Speak more softly to be better heard by a deaf public.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Roundness. This shape guarantees matter a long life. Time does not know where to take hold of it.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Like pebbles on a beach,
We are rounded by every wave
by every life
by every lifetime
Until time does not know where to take hold of us from now on.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
P.J. O'Rourke

The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money
Bernard Meltzer

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
Phillips Brooks

Nimbleness. Agility of mind. These works are no more than perilous leaps into space.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Skeptics are people who are absolutely sure that people can never be sure of anything.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Only the clever can experience tragedy; others merely stumble into accidents.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Joseph Joubert had a certain agility of mind.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Why is it we prohibit people from killing old growth trees and do not prohibit them from killing new growth human babies?
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

The way the Buddhist asks the question creates a different view of nature than the way the physicist does. The Buddhist asks wave questions and the physicist asks particle questions. One sees an unbroken whole and the other sees scattered parts.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

A hug is a heart to heart talk.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Our arms are canes of flesh with which the soul reaches and touches.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

When we hug, our souls mesh.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Who touches my books touches me.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

My words are but poor company to the ideas within.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Let your ink grow ripe.
Joseph Joubert (French writer, 1754 - 1824 )

Let your ink grow ripe and your books will write themselves.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

If I vanish from your view, it is because I travel with another.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Words. Magic utterances by which we enthrall one another in everyday trances.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Dreams have wings,
And other things
That smile like butterflies.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Rightly understood, psychotherapy is a process of breaking spells — spells of limitation that have held one in thrall, up until now.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

Darwin's crew on their famous voyage, when they encountered South Sea Islanders that had never seen a boat bigger than an outrigger canoe, asked the natives what they thought about their large ship. The natives looked directly at the ship and said, "What ship? That's just a funny looking seabird on the water!"
Bobby Matherne (American writer)

I failed in what I set out to do
At the same time as I succeeded
in what I did not even suspect
I was about to do.
Bobby Matherne (American writer, 1940 - )

In the queer mess of human destiny the determining factor is Luck. For every important place in life there are many men of fairly equal capacities. Among them Luck divides who shall accomplish the great work, who shall be crowned with laurel, and who shall fall back in obscurity and silence.
William Woodward (from Shameless Exploitation)

The anthropic principle asserts that the universe is the way it is because of the way we are.
Edward Harrison

Those who live in seclusion in mountains and forests and think that they are thus better than others cannot even attain happiness, let alone Buddhahood.
Muso Kokushi

Be good and you will be happy" is a dangerous inversion. "Be happy and you will be good" is the truth.
W. H. Auden

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
Will Durant [Historian]

The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is to explain all biology in terms of chemistry and physics.
Francis Crick

There are few secrets which do not cover a wrong, perhaps none which does not involve a lie.
George Perkins Marsh (1801- 1882 American Diplomatist and Philologist, born in Woodstock, Vermont)

Sidney Cox Said in his book, Indirections, reviewed at: http://www.doyletics.com/_arj1/indirect.htm

When you have made a reader wonder until a new realization comes to him, you have done what you started out to do.

On Frost: What he does is start people's imaginations so that they can better discover and enjoy their own actual experiences when no poet is by to provide the imagination.

Your reader has to be assured that he is on familiar ground. The more so, the more daring your intention.

To take the vapor threads of possibility that run up from the earth to heaven and weave them with the warp of days.

He is fortunate if the discrepancy between dream and possibility also deepens his sense of humor.

... history is always going to the bow-wows but never does.

... learn to ride the flux, and shape it a little as it flows to your fluent but positive intent. Doing so you will have your times of loving the dangerous flood you ride and guide.

For sharing and possessing large intentions makes one either pompous, self-pitying, or humorous. Some of us show traces of all three.

You may have always known that the most stable things in a flood is a man or woman who can ride it.

... a person's point of view is where he looks from.

Let no one shame you with characteristics natural to your age.

If you want to write well, you let a subject make you its subject.

Ford Maddox Ford, '...style, a succession of small surprises. You didn't contrive to put them there. Your style is your surprise.'

We need yardsticks... but yardsticks will not measure manifold motion.
Sidney Cox (1889-1952)

"'If I've offended you, I'm sorry' is not a real apology, but I will accept it in the sense in which it is intended."
Bobby Matherne (American writer, who on his 62^nd birthday, July 20, 2002, said this in reply to someone who said, 'If I've offended you, I'm sorry.')

Most people grow old like bread does: they grow stale. One can only stay young by re-inventing oneself!
Bobby Matherne (American writer)

Some people spend their entire life perfecting their faults.
Anonymous

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
Charles Horton Cooley

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
Muhammad Ali (né Cassius Clay, changed name about 21, American Boxing Champ)

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Marcus Aurelius

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius

This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.
Theodore Roosevelt

Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.
Herbert Hoover

A world that views itself the same at 5,000 years old as it did at 2,000 years old has wasted 3,000 years of life.
Bobby Matherne (paraphrase of Ali's statement above: at a world level, it describes the effect of ignoring the evolution of consciousness over a time span of 3,000 years.)

Think like a man of action; act like a man of thought.
Henri Bergson

Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; 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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

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.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who come from the best family.
Blaise Pascal [French philosopher]

If arrogance were a crime, there wouldn't be enough jail cells in the entire United States to hold all the people in TV news.
Bernard Goldberg (writing in "Bias")

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anais Nin (writer)

The infinite wistfulness

of the infinitive.
To know her

is to love her.
To walk and

chew gum.
To pass through the eye of a needle

and enter heaven.

Michael Hoffman, writing in the London Review of Books, 7 February 2002

When I was born, death kissed me. I kissed it back.
Rainer Maria Rilke

The place we rip open again and again that always heals — that’s God.
Rainer Maria Rilke in Sonnets to Orpheus

Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.
Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
Barry Goldwater [US Senator, 20th Century]

We’re all entitled to our own opinions; we’re not all entitled to our own facts.
Phil Gram [Senator from Texas in the Senate, Thursday September 26, 2002]

In order to discover new lands, one must be willing to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
—Andre Gide

A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.
Thomas Carlyle [British Author]

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas Carlyle [British Author]

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle [British Author]

Science is to reality as a large stone in hot water is to minestrone.
Bobby Matherne (American writer)

Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.
Joe Theisman [ NFL quarterback]

No good deed goes unpunished.
Clare Booth Luce [American writer]

Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Carl Zwanzig

I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.
Arthur Godfrey (American entertainer)

I pay my taxes gladly, but not willingly. I'd pay willingly and gladly if I were able to choose how the money was spent, instead of politicians choosing for me.
Bobby Matherne (American freedom builder)

Learning to be a writer is a do-it-yourself project.
Bobby Matherne (American writer)

Integrity has no need of rules. Albert Camus (French Author)

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.... The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
General Omar Bradley [WWII USA General]

Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.
Robert G. Ingersoll (American lawyer and orator)

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustle of a wing.
Robert G. Ingersoll (American lawyer and orator c. 1892, from eulogy to his brother, Ebon)

Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with the eternal stars — an intellectual ocean — toward which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their dew and rain.
Robert G. Ingersoll (American lawyer and orator)

We go as far as we can, and the rest of the way we say — God.
Robert G. Ingersoll (American lawyer and orator)

A life should not be written until it has been lived.
Robert G. Ingersoll (American lawyer and orator)

The laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still.
Robert G. Ingersoll (American lawyer and orator 1833-1899)

It can be said of Ingersoll, as was written of Castelar, that his eloquent utterances are as the finely-fashioned ornamental designs on a Damascus blade — the blade cuts as keenly, and the embellishments beautify without retarding its power.
The Capital (a leading journal in Washington)

Democrats will trample over a thousand poor people to throw a rock at a rich man.
Tom Adkins of "The Common Conservative"

That which is above is like that which is below, to perpetuate the mystery of the One Thing.
Hermes Trismegistus [Egyptian, compiler of ancient Neoplatonic, Kabbalistic, and Gnostic writings, and originator of the dictum, "As Above, So Below"]

We seem not to have learned a basic lesson of history: Capitalism harnesses human self interest; socialism exhausts itself trying to kill it.
Linda Bowles [American Writer]

How did people respond to our (research) findings? By defending their own paradigms. In response to new knowledge, there is always the question of how to maintain oneself doing the things one was trained in.
Salvador Minuchin [Innovator in Family Therapy]

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime;
       Therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
       Therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
       Therefore we must be saved by love.
Reinhold Niebuhr [Theologian 1892 - 1971]

Language, like light, is a medium: and the true philosophic style, like light from a north window, exhibits objects clearly, and distinctly, without soliciting attention to itself.
William Gilpin [British Author 1724-1804]

The art of teaching is to make the enjoyed moment serve the whole of life.
A. C. Harwood [Author]

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul.
Henry Ward Beecher [American Writer 1813-1887]

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road.
Henry Ward Beecher [American Writer 1813-1887]

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself — and be lenient to everybody else.
Henry Ward Beecher [American Writer 1813-1887, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe]

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Helen Keller (American Author, 1880-1968, became blind & deaf at 19 months old)

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Nothing fails like success because we don’t learn from it. We learn only from failure.
— Kenneth Boulding

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
—Walter Lippmann

He is able
Who thinks he is able.
Buddha

Once I remarked to Feynman that I was impressed by Hawking's ability to do path integrals in his head, "Ahh, that isn't so great," Feynman responded. "It is much more interesting to invent the path integral approach as I did as opposed to just being able to do the mechanics of it in your head." Feynman, wasn't being immodest, he was right, and this example (although not in Gleick's book) illustrates a point Gleick successfully presents throughout the book, that Feynman's genius and the nature of genius rests in creativity and originality. This was what the core of Feynman's tremendous intellect was all about - creating and discovering ideas. Indeed, Feynman's motto throughout his career, and found circled on his blackboard at the time of his death was "What I can not create, I can not understand."
Al Seckel (Reviewer of James Gleick’s book, “Genius: The Life and Times of Richard Feynman” for the Santa Monica News, 1992)

Preach always. If necessary, use words.
St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

The paper, the ink, the cover – what John Updike called ‘the charming little clothy box of the thing’ – this is not something e-book makers care about. They dismiss such observations with the buzz phrase ‘books as furniture.’ They admire books for technical reasons, though: books never crash.
D.T. Max The Electronic Book

Lexicographer – a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1884) [First lexicographer of note, in his, the very first English dictionary]

My country is the world and my religion is to do good.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)[Co-author of the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense and even more.]

Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no ambition corrupt thee, no example sway thee, no persuasion move thee to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so thou shalt live jollily, for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) [American printer, inventor, patriot, and writer]

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) [American printer, inventor, patriot, and writer]

Honour, worthily obtained, is in its nature a personal thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some share in obtaining it.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) [American printer, inventor, patriot, and writer]

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
Fred Allen (American Humorist 1894 - 1956)

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. 1907
Theodore Roosevelt (Spoken by this American President in 1907)

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self righteousness.
Robert Hutchinson (1871 - 1960)

I am writing in order to . . . locate myself, if not within a body, then in the narrow space between one letter and the next, between the lines where the ghosts of meaning are.
Hilary Mantel — writing in London Review of Books, 6 Feb 2003

If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
Alfred North Whitehead

The little word is has its tragedies; it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therin too lies the danger. Whenever I use the word is, except in sheer tautology, I deeply misuse it; and when I discover my error, the world seems to fall asunder and the members of my family no longer know one another.
George Santayana

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
E.B. White.

The problem is not that the churches are filled with empty pews, but that the pews are filled with empty people.
Charlie Shedd

If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have told me, "a faster horse."
Henry Ford (American Industrialist, inventor of mass production of the first cheap automobile)

Man has his will, - but woman has her way.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (American Jurist and Author 1809 - 1894)

Man's mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894, American poet, essayist and physician )

Picasso said that no one is capable of understanding you who is not capable of doing the same work himself.
Gertrude Stein (American writer 1874-1946)

Your friendship is good to feel in my heart.
Yvan Béguin (Geneva, Switzerland)

I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it — unless I'm thirsty.
Mme. Lily Bollinger

Ineffable Creator, Who out of the treasures of Thy wisdom hast appointed three hierarchies of Angels and set them in admirable order high above the heavens and hast disposed the divers portions of the universe in such marvellous array, Thou Who art called the True Source of Light and supereminent Principle of Wisdom, be pleased to cast a beam of Thy radiance upon the darkness of my mind and dispel from me the double darkness of sin and ignorance in which I have been born. Thou Who makest eloquent the tongues of little children, fashion my words and pour upon my lips the grace of Thy benediction. Grant me penetration to understand, capacity to retain, method and facility in study, subtlety in interpretation and abundant grace of expression. Order the beginning, direct the progress and perfect the achievement of my work, Thou Who art true God and true Man and livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen.
Thomas Aquinas (13^th Century Theologian)

I passionately hate the idea of being "with it", I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
Orson Welles (1915-1985, US film & stage director, actor, writer & producer who redefined film, Academy Award)

Some historical uses of the word "mind". extracted from the Oxford English Dictionary and listed by date in their order of appearance.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, of all thine heart, and in all thy soul, and in all thy mind.
(Mt 22.37, wyclif, 1382).

What thing is man, that thou art mindful of him?
(Heb 2.6, wyclif, 1382).

Do ye this thing in mind of me.
(Lk 22.19, wyclif, 1382).

It is no small engine to know all the secrets pertaining to the mind.
(1477).

A man's intent or mind spoken by his own mouth moveth more the hearer than it were showed and spoken by any other.
(1508).

Their mind abstract, not knowing what they say.
(1509).

I reason with one in a matter to feel his mind in it.
(1530).

I have a person or a beast according to my mind, I have them in such awe as I desire.
(1530).

Suspense: a hanging up; also doubt or uncertainty of mind.
(1548).

Love doth move the mind to mercy.
(1557).

Bend the powers of your spirit, and the force of your mind . . .
(1576).

Where he was very mindful of all other things, he never would remember any injurie done unto him.
(1579).

You are already love's firm votary, and cannot soon revolt, and change your mind.
(1591, shak).

What strange humor or mind-changing opinion took you this morning?
(1597).

Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind; And that which governs me to go about, doth part his function, and is partly blind.
(1600, shak).

The mind doth make the fact, or good or ill.
(1605).

To be carnally minded is death.
(Rm 8.6, 1611).

Certainly, it is Heaven upon Earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
(1625, Bacon).

If we mind toward heaven, we must walk through the world as strangers.
(1633).

Our mind . . . maketh up . . . the conceivable or intelligible things out of the sensible.
(1638).

The wolf . . . sent to school to learn to spell, could make nothing of all that was said to him but sheep. His mind still ran upon that.
(1677).

The opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author.
Arthur C. Clarke (1917- ) on back side of Title page of his book, Childhood's End

Today the taxing power, rather than chattel slavery, is the instrument by which the parasitical element of the population subsists. And that element, which includes politicians, panics at the slightest reduction in the state's power to plunder. Once you start liberating taxpayers, even a little tiny bit, nobody knows where it may end.
Joseph Sobran

I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections, not from the positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.
William Harvey [17th Century Italian philosopher, in 1628]

Man will never become philosopher by worrying about the writings of other men.
Galileo [17th Century Italian philosopher]

A false Friend and a Shadow, attend only while the Sun shines.
Benjamin Franklin [American Statesman]

Humility is the foundation of all virtues.
Confucius [Chinese Philosopher]

As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
Mark Twain [American Humorist]

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
Mark Twain [American Humorist]

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
Mark Twain [American Humorist]

Every living thing is a structure which acts to increase order within its boundaries.
J. Peter Vajk [20th Century Writer]

Wine – light held together by moisture.
Galileo [17th Century Italian philosopher]

Nemo propheta acceptus in patria sua
In English: No one is accepted as a prophet in his own country.
Suor Maria Celeste, daughter of Galileo, written in a letter to her father, October 15, 1633..

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool...shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is willing...teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep...awaken him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise...follow him."
Chinese proverb

When you build bridges, you can keep crossing them.
Rick Pitino (19xx – ) US basketball coach

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
Socrates

Every man should have a wife. If you marry a good wife, you will be thankful. And if you marry a bad wife, you can become a philosopher.
Socrates

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Paul Valéry

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Montaigne

Nothing is as terrible to see as ignorance in action .
Goethe

For only the personal can heal the personal, and God must become man to enable man to come to God.
Schiller from his essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry

Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept.
Novalis

Nothing is more damaging to a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Francis Bacon

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James

Either you think--or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you .
F. Scott Fitzgerald

All big things in this world are done by people who are naive and have an idea that is obviously impossible.
Dr. Frank Richards

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
Bertrand Russell

Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
— Ambrose Bierce

Politics — n. strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
Ambrose Bierce

Brain. An apparatus with which we think we think .
Ambrose Bierce

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
— Ambrose Bierce

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
— Charles de Gaulle

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
— Otto von Bismarck

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.
— Thomas Carlyle

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it .
Pablo Picasso

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation .
Herman Melville

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
— Horace

In law, what pleas so tainted and corrupt, But being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil.
— Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word!
— Andrew Jackson

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.
--President Andrew Jackson

Necessity never made a good bargain.
Benjamin Franklin

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
— Robert Frost

When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift

Reality is more profound than whatever human beings may often be willing to encompass with their thinking.
Rudolf Steiner, Austrian Philosopher (1860-1925)

Teachers as artists of education must approach children as artists of life.
Rudolf Steiner, Austrian Philosopher (1860-1925)

The only thing that matters is whether what I say can stand the test of a true knowledge of the human being.
Rudolf Steiner, Austrian Philosopher (1860-1925)

Discussion beings when knowledge ends.
Rudolf Steiner, Austrian Philosopher (1860-1925)

The less people are grounded in reality, the more they are usually convinced their opinion is right.
Rudolf Steiner, Austrian Philosopher (1860-1925)

The world is deep, deeper than day can comprehend.
Nietzsche

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
Nietzsche

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
Friedrich Nietzsche in “Beyond Good and Evil”

The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusion .
Maurice Chapelain

I don't want to tell you any half-truths unless they're completely accurate.
Dennis Rappaport

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Goethe

Below by Thoreau:

One wise sentence is worth the state of Massachusetts many times over.

There has been no man of pure genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of genius. Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild - the mallard - thought, which 'mid falling dews wings it way among the fens.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well.

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age.

The true poem is not that which the public reads. There is always a poem not printed on paper, coincident with the production of this, stereotyped in the poet's life. It is what he has become through his work.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

If words were invented to conceal thought, I think that newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.

Obey the spur of the moment. These accumulated it is that make the impulse and the impetus of the life of genius.

This is the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

Methinks a certain polygamy with its troubles is the fate of almost all men. They are married to two wives, their genius ( a celestial muse ) and also to some fair daughter of earth. Unless these two were fast friends before marriage, and so are afterwards, there will be but little peace in the home.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

You must store up none of the life in your gift; it is as fatal as to husband [use sparingly] your breath. We must live all our life.

The purest science is still biographical.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without it.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.

Men are the inveterate foes of all improvement . . . If you aspire to anything better than politics, expect no co-operation from men. They will not further anything good.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

The newest is but the oldest made visible to our senses. When we dig up the soil from a thousand feet below the surface we call it and the plants which spring from it new; and when our vision pierces deeper into space, and detects a remote star, we call that new also. It had shone only to itself, and quite superior to our observation.

For a companion I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius.

To make up a great action there are no subordinate mean ones.

It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear.
Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher, 1817 to 1862)

Here's a poem I wrote about Thoreau after reading "Man of Concord", by Walter Harding (Published in 1960 by Holt Rinehart), a collection of things people said about Thoreau who knew him personally. In this poem I include many aspects of Thoreau's life for which references can be found in the book. For example, someone asked "Why dog-footed?" and I found this reference on page 69 by Charles J. Woodbury:

"The fibre of nature was all through his joints and marrow, and through life he wore her livery. I don't know how long ago, far away in his ancestry (he said he was descended from the Northman, Thorer the dog-footed), she planned him, measured him for his suit."

(Poem "David Henry" Copyright 2001 by Bobby Matherne)

David Henry

The Northman Thorer — the dog-footed

walked in the red snow
His aquiline Roman nose —

his forerunner —

dividing the air

in his holy time.

Smelling of the pine woods

he was present at the birth

and bringing up of Nature

in his native soil.

His transcendental tutor recommended him

to the school board
And later to the Lord, with whom

he had not need to make peace,

having never quarreled with Him.

So noble a soul, this edelweiss,

that none could cut down nor reach

as he walked the grass into the mountains.

This teacher, surveyor, singer, botanist, flute player,

carpenter, inventor, Spartan-Buddhist
Who found 'books in running brooks, sermons in stones,
and good in everything.'

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
George Bernard Shaw

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.
Mark Twain

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Mark Twain

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln

The map is not the territory — it cannot represent all the territory.
Alfred O. Korzybskie, founder of General Semantics

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it limits.
Unknown

A theory is a mask of our ignorance on a subject
Bobby Matherne Link

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
B. P. Medawar

The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.
John Ruskin

In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.
John Ruskin

What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven only knows how to put a price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
Thomas Paine [Author of the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense and even more.]

Here lies an old tattered Book, its Pages torn out, but which will appear in a new Edition, Revised and Corrected by the Author.
Ben Franklin [Epitaph on his tombstone]

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson [Third United State President]

Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson [Third United State President]

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
Thomas Jefferson [Third United State President]

It is not honorable to take mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice.
Thomas Jefferson [Third United State President]

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Thomas Jefferson (letter to Benjamin Rush, 23 September 1800)

We know the Race is not to the swift,
nor the Battle to the strong.
Do you not think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind
and directs this Storm?
John Page [Virginia statesman writing to Thomas Jefferson after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 20, 1776]

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine [Author of the Declaration of Independence and even more, but no politician.]

[Note the similarity to Paine's quote above, almost to the point of plagiarism, of Goldwater's quote below, that help him lose the presidency in 1964.]

Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson [Third United State President]

Only the amateurs stay angry in this town.
Sam Donaldson TV Commentator [Speaking of Washington, D. C. during a Roast for Sen Alan Simpson.]

I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
George Washington

A man should stop his ears against paralyzing terror, and run the race that is set before him with a single mind.
Robert Louis Stevenson

A lot of people mean well, but their meanness is greater than their wellness.
Robert Hunter

You can't 'educate' the bestiality out of men.
Taylor Caldwell

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.
John Stuart Mill

The recollection of the past is only useful by way of provision for the future.
Samuel Johnson

No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit.
George W. Bush President of USA [in his State of the Union address, January 29, 2003]

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge, President of USA

One is defeated only when one accepts defeat.
Marshall Foch

In your country club, your church, and business, about fifteen percent of the people are screwballs, lightweights, and boobs, and you would not want those people unrepresented in Congress.
Alan Simpson (US Senator from Wyoming)

We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex — but Congress can.
Cullen Hightower

Make a virtue of necessity.
Geoffrey Chaucer

Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
C.S. Lewis

Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.
Jean Francois Revel

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity — another man's I mean.
Mark Twain (American Writer, Samuel Clemens)

That most delicious of all privileges — spending other people's money.
John Randolph of Roanoke

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.
Benjamin Disraeli

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny.
Calvin Coolidge

Virtually everything is under federal control nowadays except the federal budget.
Herman E. Talmadge

Before we give you billions more, we want to know what you've done with the trillion you've got.
Les Aspin

The current tax code is a daily mugging.
Ronald Reagan

Failure is always momentary.
Jack Black in 2006 "King Kong"

If it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need them.
A. K. Griffin

As Will Rogers famously observed, every time Congress makes a joke, it's a law. And every time it makes a law, it's a joke. If we could simply harness congressional hot air, America's energy problems would be history.
Paul Driessen

The Income Tax has made more Liars out of the American people than golf has.
Will Rogers

You hang an ape and a political ancestry over me, and you will see me taking it into the Supreme Court, to prove that the ape part is O.K., but that the political end of it is base libel.
Will Rogers

The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure it was drawn up by a lawyer.
Will Rogers

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
Will Rogers

I'm going to take in this flood area. Cal Coolidge didn't send me down here officially, but at least I'm going to talk and write the truth. This flood trouble isn't over yet by a long shot. . . . We've still got Congress to contend with.
Will Rogers

Maybe my ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower but they met the boat.
Will Rogers

All I know is just what I read in the newspapers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.
Will Rogers

"Does college pay? It does if you are a good open field runner."
Will Rogers

I never met a man I didn't like.
Will Rogers

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens. Then everybody disagrees.
Will Rogers (also accredited to Boris Marshalov)

It's a great country but you can't live in it for nothing.
Will Rogers

All I know is just what I read in the Congressional Record. They have had some awful funny articles in there lately. As our government deteriorates, our humor increases.
Will Rogers

The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.
Will Rogers

An old, long-whiskered man once said to Teddy Roosevelt: 'I am a Democrat, my father was a Democrat, my grandfather was a Democrat.'
Roosevelt then said:'Then if your father had been a horse thief and your grandfather had been a horse thief, you would be a horse thief?'
Will Rogers

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) [U.S. Senator and Politician, 20th Century]

What's so bad about the blind leading the blind? The seeing's been leading the seeing all these years and look where it got us!
Pogo the Possum, 1950's comic strip by Walt Kelly

Isn't democracy a system in which the scum could come to the top?
Francis Stuart, WWII Broadcaster [in LRB, 4 Jan 2001, page 6]

Someone once said that ‘All invention is but the extension of the body of man.'
Katherine Janeway, Startrek Voyager ["Scorpion" episode on 12-31-2000]

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance does whatever is dictated to it.
Thomas Paine

What is a number that a man may know it: and what is a man that he may know a number?
Warren McColloch (20th Century American Neurophysiologist, Poet, and Prophet)

When I point, look where I point, not at my finger.
Warren McColloch (20th Century American Neurophysiologist, Poet, and Prophet)

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott in Marmion, Canto 6, Stanza 17.

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.
Rumi, Sufi Poet, in The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XIII

In reality the soul is not mortal, but if the soul believes in mortality it is just like being mortal.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer, 18xx-19xx) [from page 20 of Volume VI, Sufi Teachings]

Silence raises the dignity of the wise and hides the stupidity of the foolish.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer, 18xx-19xx) [from page 49 of Volume VI, Sufi Teachings]

While all things have their opposites, it is also true that in each the spirit of the opposite exists.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer, 18xx-19xx) [from page 130 of Volume VIII, Sufi Teachings]

Rumi says in one of his poems, "O sleep, every night thou freest the prisoner from his bonds."
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer, 18xx-19xx)

Optimism comes from God, and pessimism is born from the heart of man.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer in his book Sufi Teachings, page 285, 18xx-19xx)

Self-pity is the worst poverty.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer in his book Sufi Teachings, page 245, 18xx-19xx)

For the just person all is just; for the unjust everything is unjust.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer in his book Sufi Teachings, page 285, 18xx-19xx)

To force a virtue upon anyone is pride; to let him see the beauty of good manners is an education.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer in his book Sufi Teachings, page 240, 18xx-19xx)

In the words of Shankarachaya, "All impossible things can be made possible save the bringing of the fool's mind to the point of truth."
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer in his book Sufi Teachings, page 208, 18xx-19xx)

The judge is the slave of law, the forgiver is its master.
Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi writer in his book Sufi Teachings, 18xx-19xx)

[Note the propinquity of the above quote to Rudolf Steiner's "We are slaves to our past, masters of our future." from Macrocosm and Microcosm: "Since we each did certain things in previous lifetimes that have led to the working-out of those things during this lifetime, we may consider ourselves as slaves to our past, but at the same time we may remind ourselves that we are masters of our future. [See page 75, Theosophy of the Rosicrucian by Rudolf Steiner.]" ]

I love Jesus Christ – he was the best of the Jews. Marcel Marceau ( Famous French mime speaking at the Nat Press Club, Jan 28, 2000 on C-SPAN)

The life of the soul in the physical world is a spiritual sleep. Rudolf Steiner (Austrian Philosopher, 1860- 1925)

Some people get lost in thought because it is such unfamiliar territory.
G. Behn

You have to be careful about being too careful.
Beryl Pfizer [Note: this quote illustrates G. Spencer Brown's Second Law of Form.]

There are very few people who don't become more interesting when they