| Bio: | "When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep..." (William Butler Yeats)
夜思
床前明月光
疑是地上霜
举头望明月
低头思故乡。
-李白
My Johari window
WORDS TO LIVE BY (updated often):
(They said it better than I ever could. My favoritest ones are in bold)
Life/Death
Mortality:
- "We do not know whether it is good to live or to die. Therefore we should not take delight in living nor should we tremble at the thought of death." (Gandhi)
- "There are but three events in a man's life: birth, life and death. He is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live." (Jean de La Bruyere)
- "All men think all men mortal but themselves." (Edward Young)
- "My time has not yet come either; some are born posthumously." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche)
- "It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life." (Richard Jefferies)
- "Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time." (James Baldwin)
- "Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another." (Mitch Albom)
- "dead has a smile like the nicest man you've never met who maybe winks" (e.e. cummings)
- "Thus emerges one of the great themes of life on planet Earth: 'Some die that others may live.'" (David Kirk)
- "Biology points out the individuality of every being, and at the same time reminds us of the brotherhood of all." (Jean Rostand)
Approaches to Life:
- "If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!" (Rudyard Kipling)
- "Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object." (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
- "That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions." (George Santayana)
- "Life is just one damned thing after another." (Frank Ward O'Malley)
- "Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die." (Amelia Josephine Burr)
- "Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life." (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt)
- "Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt and dance like no one is watching." (Randall G Leighton)
- "Without mystery life shrinks." (Edward O. Wilson)
- "...a change of heart occurs when people look beyond themselves to others, and then to the rest of life." (Edward O. Wilson)
- "Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it." (Mother Teresa)
- "There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as if everything is." (Albert Einstein)
- "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." (Mark Twain)
- "A chance remark, a careless involvement, may make the difference between a life of happiness and one of sorrow." (Alexander McCall Smith)
- "The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "I believe in being fully present." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "The little things, I can obey. But the big things--how we think, what we value--those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone--or any society--determine those for you." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these." (George Washington Carver)
- "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." (Buddha)
- "Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you." (Orson Scott Card)
- "The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything." (Oscar Wilde)
- "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference." (Elie Wiesel)
- "Man is born to live in society. Separate him, isolate him, and his way of thinking will become incoherent, his character will change, a thousand foolish fancies will spring up in his heart, bizarre ideas will take root in his mind like brambles in the wilderness." (Diderot, in The Nun)
- "laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
and death i think is no parenthesis" (e.e. cummings)
- In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." (Robert Frost)
- "We do what we must, and call it by the best names." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- "To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- "Yes, it was agreed; we were going to do everything we'd never done and had been too silly to do in the past." (Jack Kerouac)
- "Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over." (D. H. Lawrence)
- "All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." (James Thurber)
- "自求多福."（孔子)
- "工合"
- "Live with intention, walk to the edge, listen hard, practice wellness, play with abandon, laugh, choose with no regret, continue to learn, appreciate your friends, do what you love, love as if this is all there is." (Mary Anne Radmacher)
- "He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much." (Bessie A. Stanley)
- "We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together." (Erma Bombeck)
- "To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?" (Katharine Graham)
Happiness:
- "That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." (Willa Sibert Cather)
- "Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember." (Oscar Levant)
- "For what makes out true happiness, But Innocence, and inward Peace?" (Samuel Richardson, in Pamela)
- "Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness." (Samuel Johnson, as quoted in James Boswell's Life of Johnson)
- "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." (Goethe)
- "'And you ought to be happy, you ought to try to be happy, to live to be happy. How could I bear to think your life wouldn't be a happy one!'" (D. H. Lawrence)
- “Happiness is anyone and anything that's loved by you.” (Charlie Brown)
- "The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good." (Bertrand Russell)
- "Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have." (Doris Mortman)
- "Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination." (Roy M. Goodman)
- "If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain." (Emily Dickinson)
- "If all the griefs I am to have
Would only come today,
I am so happy I believe
They'd laugh and run away.
If all the joys I am to have
Would only come today,
They could not be so big as this
That happens to me now." (Emily Dickinson)
To Dream:
- "What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams." (Pedro Calderon de La Barca)
- "I slept and dreamed that life was beauty./I woke—and found that life was duty." (Ellen Sturgis Hooper)
- "We live, as we dream--alone." (Joseph Conrad)
- "All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream..." (Edgar Allen Poe)
- "I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." (William Butler Yeats)
- "You see things; and you way, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why Not?'" (George Bernard Shaw)
- "The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream." (Jack Kerouac)
- "Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won't. It's that simple." (Hugh Macleod)
Religion/Creation
- "One religion is as true as another." (Robert Burton)
- "Two went to pray? Oh, rather say one went to brag, the other to pray." (Richard Crashaw)
- "My God, my Father, and my Friend,/Do not forsake me in my end." (Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon)
- "By night an atheist half believes a God." (Edward Young)
- "If triangles had a god, he would have three sides." (Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu)
- "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." (Voltaire)
- "I believe in the incomprehensibility of God." (Honore de Balzac)
- "The great act of faith is when man decides that he is not God." (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.)
- "What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?" (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
- "Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith--the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible." (Sir William Osler)
- "Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." (Sigmund Freud)
- "I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose." (Clarence Seward Darrow)
- "I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings." (Pearl S. Buck)
- “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey.
We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” (Stephen Covey)
- "My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness." (The Dalai Lama)
Random Thoughts/Humor
- "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." (William Shakespeare)
- "I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out." (Arthur Hays Sulzberger)
- "Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win." (Jonathan Kozol)
- "Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine." (Anonymous)
- "He knows the universe, and himself he does not know." (Jean de la Fontaine)
- "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American." (Samuel Johnson)
- "I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher, but I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in." (Oliver Edwards)
- "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." (Horace Walpole)
- "I quickly laugh at everything, for fear of having to cry." (Pierre de Beaumarchais)
- "Who can refute a sneer?" (William Paley)
- "The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus." (Pierre Simon de Laplace) Because clearly, calculus is simpler than common sense.
- "I’s wicked—I is. I’s mighty wicked, anyhow. I can’t help it." (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
- "We are not amused." (Queen Victoria)
- "What is Matter?--Never mind. What is Mind?--No matter." (Punch)
- "Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading." (Sarah Orne Jewett)
- "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn." (George Bernard Shaw)
- "I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot." (George Bernard Shaw)
- "How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!" (Logan Pearsall Smith)
- "I think 'No comment' is a splendid expression." (Sir Winston Churchill)
- "The gibe of European scholars that there are three sexes in America--men, women, and professors." (Joel Elias Spingarn)
- "I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate!" (William Sibert Cather)
- "When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research." (Wilson Mizner)
- "Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else." (Will Rogers)
- "Conform and be dull." (J. Frank Dobie)
- "A human being; an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing." (Christopher Morley)
- "i spill my bright incalculable soul." (e. e. cummings)
- "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception." (Groucho Marx)
- "Know thyself." (Greek proverb)
- "'Know thyself?' If I knew myself I'd run away." (Goethe)
- "Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr. Hurst nothing at all. The former was divided between admiration of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, and doubt as to the occasion's justifying her coming so far alone. The latter was thinking only of his breakfast." (Jane Austen)
- "Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmellow, and when I woke up the pillow was gone." (Tommy Cooper)
- "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists somewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Bill Watterson)
- "I can resist everything except temptation." (Oscar Wilde)
- "Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes." (Oscar Wilde)
- "I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." (Oscar Wilde)
- "What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement?" (Fred Allen)
- "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." (Albert Einstein)
- "I intend to live forever. So far, so good." (Steven Wright)
- "At first I thought he was walking a dog. Then I realized it was his date." (Edith Massey)
- "Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep." (Albert Camus)
- "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working." (Douglas Adams)
- "Never say, 'oops.' Always say, 'Ah, interesting.'" (Anonymous)
- "If you want to see a comic strip, you should see me in the shower." (Groucho Marx)
- "One good thing about Internet dating: you're guaranteed to click with whomever you meet." (Mongo)
- "To be or not to be?" (Shakespeare)
- "’To be is to do.’ –Socrates ‘To do is to be.’ –Sartre ‘Do be do be do.’ –Sinatra.” (Kurt Vonnegut)
- "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate." (Unknown)
- "Life would be much easier if I had the source code." (Unknown)
- "In God we trust. Everything else we virus scan." (Unknown)
- "Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down" (e.e. cummings)
- "The hardest thing in the world to understand, is income tax." (Albert Einstein)
- "There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics." (William Gladstone)
- "I wasn't always black... There was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger." (Bill Cosby)
- "Never accept a drink from a Urologist." (Erma Bombeck)
- "According to a new survey, 90% of men say their lover is also their best friend. Which is really kind of disturbing when you consider man’s best friend is his dog." (Jay Leno)
- "Scientists in China now say they want to start cloning panda bears to save them from extinction. The best part is, it won't cost much because panda bears are black and white. Color duplicates are much more expensive." (Jay Leno)
- "Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature." (Cohen)
- "The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth." (Charles Luckman)
- "The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath." (Elizabeth Clarkson Swart)
- "One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." (AA Milne)
- "She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit." (W. Somerset Maugham)
- "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." (Niels Bohr)
- "Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know that's not true. Some smaller countries are neutral." (Robert Orben)
- "If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." (Vince Lombardi)
- "Your argument is sound...all sound." (Benjamin Franklin)
- "Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too." (Jeffrey Eugenides)
- "'This has all been verified. Under the microscope. The male sperms are faster.'
'I bet they're stupider, too.'
'Go on. Malign the male sperms all you want. Feel free. We don't want a male sperm. What we want is a good, old, slow, reliable female sperm.'" (Jeffrey Eugenides)
- “There are three things in life that people like to stare at: a flowing stream, a crackling fire and a Zamboni clearing the ice.” (Charlie Brown)
- "I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy." (J. D. Salinger)
- "Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted." (Fred Allen)
- "There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters." (Alice Thomas Ellis)
- "n the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better." (Ellen DeGeneres)
Politics
- "I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing." (H. L. Mencken)
- "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself." (Harry Truman)
- "Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either." (Gore Vidal)
California
- "There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California." (Edward Abbey)
- "California is a fine place to live—if you happen to be an orange." (Fred Allen)
- "Nothing is wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure." (Ross MacDonald)
- "In L.A relationships don't last. You go on a vacation and break up by the time you come home. Thank God for one-hour photo, so you can see your vacation photos while you're still in the relationship." (Judy Carter)
- "In California, they don't throw their garbage away--they make it into TV shows." (Woody Allen)
- "Everything is drive-through. In California, they even have a burial service called Jump-In-The-Box." (Wil Shriner)
Art/Music/Poetry
- "Music is the thing of the world that I love most." (Samuel Pepys)
- "Poetry is the mother tongue of mankind." (Johann Georg Hamann)
- "O young artist, you search for a subject—everything is a subject. Your subject is yourself, your impressions, your emotions in the presence of nature." (Eugene Delacroix)
- "Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmisison to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen." (Leo Tolstoy)
- "Art upsets, science reassures." (Georges Braque)
- "The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart." (Helen Keller)
- "Science arose from poetry—when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.” (Goethe)
- "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." (John Keats)
- "The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape..." (Pablo Picasso)
Languages
- "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse." (Charles V of France)
- "What is not clear is not French." (Antoine de Rivarol)
- "You write to me that it's impossible; the word is not French." (Napoleon I)
- "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put." (Winston Churchill)
- "As sheer casual reading matter, I still find the English dictionary the most interesting book in our language." (Albert Jay Nock)
- A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it." (Brander Matthews)
- "Drawing on my fine command of the language, I said nothing." (Robert Benchley)
- "I’m glad you like adverbs—I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect." (Henry James)
- "Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another." (Ambrose Bierce)
- "I only speak one language really, mathematics, but I dabble in others like English just enough to answer questions and buy groceries." (Rene Descartes)
- "German wasn't good for conversation because you had to wait until the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn't interrupt." (Jeffrey Eugenides)
Friendship/Love/Beauty
Friends and Enemies:
- "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." (Aristotle)
- "We can learn even from our enemies." (Ovid)
- "The best mirror is an old friend." (George Herbert)
- "The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself." (Moliere)
- "Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." (Leo Buscaglia)
- "Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend." (Albert Camus)
- "A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down." (Arnold H. Glasgow)
Love, General:
- "To be loved, be lovable." (Ovid)
- "Cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit cras amet." (Tomorrow let him love who has never loved and tomorrow let him who has loved love.) (Anonymous Latin)
- "Love is blind." (Chaucer)
- "We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire." (La Rochefoucauld)
- "L'amour, l'amour fait tourner le monde." (Anonymous French) (It's love, it's love that makes the world go round.)
- "L’Amitie Est l’Amour sans Ailes." (Lord Byron) (Friendship is Love without his wings.)
- "Intimates are predestined." (Henry Brooks Adams)
- "Love is unconditional, but respect is earned." (Glenn, the bus driver)
- "You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel." (Anonymous)
- "Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it." (Swedish proverb)
- "Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." (Robert Heinlein)
- "We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." (Sam Keen)
- "Love is shown in your deeds, not in your words." (Jerome Cummings)
- "Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties." (Jules Renard)
- "Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return." (Peace Pilgrim quote)
- "Love is the only rational act." (Levine)
- "Love each other or perish." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "Love wins. Love always wins." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread." (Mother Teresa)
- "...it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves." (Orson Scott Card)
- "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." (H. L. Mencken)
- "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." (Sophocles)
- "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance." (Oscar Wilde)
- "Familiar acts are beautiful through love." (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
- "To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage." (Lao Tzu)
- "That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us." (Goethe)
- "Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
- "Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul." (James Joyce)
- "For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy kind delight." (William Butler Yeats)
- "I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end" (William Butler Yeats)
- "until out of merely not nothing comes
I have never loved you dear as now i love" (e. e. cummings)
- "(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me" (e. e. cummings)
- "Amicitiae nostrae memoriam spero sempiternam fore." (Cicero)
- "Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur." (Syrus)
- "Amor tussisque non celantur." (Ovid)
- "Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem." (Catullus)
- "This is the use of memory:
For liberation--not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past." (T.S. Eliot)
- "Love should give a sense of freedom, not of prison." (D. H. Lawrence)
- "The essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back where you began." (Jeffrey Eugenides)
- "Should you find your soul mate, that person will accept you for who you are." (John Gray)
- "Love is anterior to life,
Posterior to death,
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath." (Emily Dickinson)
- "Extol thee -- could I? Then I will
By saying nothing new --
But just the truest truth
That thou art heavenly." (Emily Dickinson)
- "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Love, Tormented/Unrequited:
- "In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing." (Mignon McLaughlin)
- "If we must part forever,
Give me but one kind word to think upon,
And please myself with, while my heart's breaking." (Thomas Otway)
- "Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love." (Charlie Brown)
- "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was I." (Montaigne)
- "Love is a sickness full of woes, all remedies refusing." (Samuel Daniel)
- "Alas, how love can trifle with itself!" (William Shakespeare)
- "A mighty pain to love it is,/And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;/But of all pains, the greatest pain/It is to love, but love in vain." (Abraham Cowley)
- "And when I feigned an angry look,/Alas! I loved you best." (John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham and Normanby)
- "Of all the plagues a lover bears, sure rivals are the worst." (William Walsh)
- "If I love you, what business is it of yours?" (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- "For of all sad words of tongue or pen,/The saddest words are these: "It might have been!" (John Greenleaf Whittier)
- "On ne badine pas avec l’amour." (Alfred de Musset) (Do not trifle with love.)
- "Eternal passion! Eternal pain!" (Matthew Arnold)
- "It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love." (Miguel de Unamuno)
- "The tragedy of love is indifference." (William Somerset Maugham)
- "I'm not a jealous woman, but I CAN'T see what he sees in her, I can't see WHAT he sees in her, I can't see what he SEES in her!" (Sir Alan Patrick Herbert)
- "...and I found myself in his Arms, quite void of Strength, and he kissed me two or three times, as if he would have eaten me.--At last I burst from him..." (Samuel Richardson, in Pamela)
- "Lie still, lie still, my poor fluttering heart!" (Samuel Richardson, in Pamela)
- "Terry came out with tears of sorriness in her eyes. In her simple and funny little mind had been decided the fact that a pimp does not throw a woman's shoes against the door and does not tell her to get out. In reverent and sweet little silence she took all her clothes off and slipped her tiny body into the sheets with me. It was brown as grapes. I saw her poor belly where there was a Caesarian scar; her hips were so narrow she couldn't bear a child without getting gashed open. Her legs were like little sticks. She was only four foot ten. I made love to her in the sweetness of the weary morning. Then, two tired angels of some kind, hung-up forlornly in an lA shelf, having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon." (Jack Kerouac)
- "...he wanted to kiss her, but he dared not. She half wanted him to kiss her, but could not bring herself to give any sign." (D. H. Lawrence)
- "So he left her, and she was alone. Very few people cared for her, and she for very few people. She remained alone with herself, waiting." (D. H. Lawrence)
Love, Romantic:
- "Si tu me olvidas
Quiero que sepas
una cosa.
...
Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.
Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.
Pero
si cada día,
cada hora,
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable,
si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos." (Pablo Neruda)
- "A gain it is to find a beautiful human soul." (Johann Gottfried Herder)
- "Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye." (Samuel Lover)
- "Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one." (Friedrich Halm)
- "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." (Carl Gustav Jung)
- "She smiled a little smile and bowed a little bow." (Anthony Trollope)
- "When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter." (Tom Robbins)
- "Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart." (Kay Knudson)
- "A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account." (W. Somerset Maugham)
- "They don't know what they want in a partner. They don't know who they are themselves--so how can they know who they're marrying?" (Morrie Schwartz)
- "There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don't have a common set of values in life, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike...[and the biggest one of those values is] your belief in the importance of your marriage." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate,intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner." (Amy Bloom)
- "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was, and always will be yours. If it never returns, it was never yours to begin with." (Anonymous)
- "Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds." (Hugh Elliott)
- "He who is in love is wise and is becoming wise, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- "Infantile love follows the principle: 'I love because I am loved.'
Mature love follows the principle: 'I am loved because I love.'
Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.'
Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' (Erich Fromm)
- "How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?" (Albert Einstein)
- "Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me." (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
- "Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
- "Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are." (Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve)
- "Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are." (Houssaye)
- "A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous." (Ingrid Bergman)
- "Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
- "I love you
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you." (Roy Croft)
- "The things I know, anyone can know--but my heart is mine and mine alone." (Goethe)
- "To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written." (Rousseau)
- "Suddenly, quietly, you realize that - from this moment forth - you will no longer walk through this life alone. Like a new sun this awareness arises within you, freeing you from fear, opening your life. It is the beginning of love, and the end of all that came before." (Robert Frost)
- "Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence." (Edmond and Jules de Goncourt)
- "A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." (Germaine Greer)
- "(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes" (e.e. cummings)
- "love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one" (e.e. cummings)
- solemnly
myselves
ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile" (e.e. cummings)
- "and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason
that i do not fall into this street is love" (e.e. cummings)
- "When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes." (Victor Hugo)
- "My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom." (James Joyce, Dubliners)
- "She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory." (James Joyce, Dubliners)
- "Better recall how it felt to love; to have been loved means a little less." (Elizabeth Bowen)
- "Their eyes met. They no sooner looked but they loved." (Elizabeth Bowen)
- "(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)" (e. e. cummings)
- "Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño." (Pablo Neruda)
- "All these years I was looking for the woman I wanted to marry. I couldn't meet a girl without saying to myself, What kind of wife would she make? ... 'I want to marry a girl...so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old. This can't go on all the time--all this franticness and jumping around. We've got to go someplace, find something.'" (Jack Kerouac)
- "Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway." (Judith Viorst)
- "He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began." (Leo Tolstoy)
- "'They say he's not good enough for her. But I say if a man is genuine, as he is, and a girl is fond of him--then--it should be all right. He's as good as she.'" (D. H. Lawrence)
- "'That's what one must have, I think,' he continued--'the real, real flame of feeling through another person--once, only once, if it only lasts three months. ...She knows; she has been there. You can feel it about her, and about him, and about hundreds of people you meet every day; and, once it has happened to you, you can go on with anything and ripen....It's so hard to say, but the something big and intense that changes you when you really come together with somebody else. It almost seems to fertilise your soul and make it that you can go on and mature.'" (D. H. Lawrence)
- "'Don't ask me anything about the future...I don't know anything. Be with me now, will you, no matter what it is?' And she took him in her arms....He needed her badly. She had him in her arms....With her warmth she folded him over, consoled him, loved him. She would let the moment stand for itself." (D. H. Lawrence)
- "They could let themselves be carried by life, and they felt a sort of peace each in the other. There was a verification which they had had together. Nothing could nullify it, nothing could take it away; it was almost their belief in life." (D. H. Lawrence)
- "It denotes the first fever of human pair bonding. It causes giddiness, elation, a tickling on the chest wall, the urge to climb a balcony on the rope of the beloved's hair." (Jeffrey Eugenides)
- "Chance or destiny?...But I can't explain it, any more than Desdemona or Lefty could have, any more than each one of us, falling in love, can separate the hormonal from what feels divine..." (Jeffrey Eugenides)
- "Their first kiss....A brief flare of happiness went off inside her and hung, raining sparks..." (Jeffrey Eugenides)
- "'Wait a minute,' I said. 'Are you turning off the lights because of you or because of me?'
'Because of me.'
'Why?'
'Because I'm a shy, modest, Oriental lady...'" (Jeffrey Eugenides)
- "Opposites attract, but after marriage, opposites attack. Most of the time, we are attracted to people who don't have the things that we have. Incompatibility is why we get married, but it's also used as a reason to divorce. Incompatibility is just a lack of communication. If we just try to love [our spouse] the way we want to be loved, we are in trouble. Unless you communicate, it's difficult to know how to love another person." (Dr. Charles Lowery)
- "The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvellous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life." (Sir Hugh Walpole)
- "In his presence a sudden stillness came upon her, and the turmoil of her spirit ceased..." (Edith Wharton)
- "But something lived between them...leaped up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had kindled, the passion of her soul for his. In its light everything else dwindled and fell away from her." (Edith Wharton)
- "He had her in his arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain terrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise." (Edith Wharton)
Beauty:
- "Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies." (John Donne)
- "Beauty stands in the admiration only of weak minds led captive." (John Milton)
- "I would gladly give half of the wit with which I am credited for half of the beauty you possess." (Madame de Stael)
Peace/War
- "Accursed be he that first invented war." (Christopher Marlowe)
- "Blessed are the peacemakers on earth." (William Shakespeare)
- "There never was a good war or a bad peace." (Benjamin Franklin)
- "O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!" (Jeanne Manon Roland)
- "O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other." (Thomas Carlyle)
- "Let us have peace." (Ulysses S. Grant)
- "Our true nationality is mankind." (Herbert George Wells)
- "A pattern called a war./Christ! What are patterns for?" (Amy Lowell)
- "I have seen war....I hate war." (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
- "More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars." (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
- "Is war a biological necessity?" (Bronislaw Malinowski)
- "We must conquer war, or war will conquer us." (Ely Culbertson)
- "Be compassionate. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." (Albert Einstein)
- "War does not determine who is right - only who is left." (Bertrand Russell)
Wisdom/Truth/Foolishness
The Quest for Understanding:
- "I believe that in the end truth will conquer." (John Wycliffe)
- "I do not understand; I pause; I examine." (Montaigne)
- "Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est." (Francis Bacon) (Knowledge is power.)
- "Cogito ergo sum." (Rene Descartes) (I think, therefore I am.)
- "The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it." (Laurence Sterne)
- "To teach is to learn twice." (Joseph Joubert)
- "You have to study a great deal to know a little." (Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu)
- "Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind." (Samuel Johnson)
- "I love to lose myself in other men’s minds." (Charles Lamb)
- "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
- "Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration." (Thomas Alva Edison)
- "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." (Albert Einstein)
- "It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." (James Thurber)
- "Look and you will find it--what is unsought will go undetected." (Sophocles)
- "The further you go, the less you know." (Lao Tsu)
- "There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible." (Samuel Johnson, as quoted by James Boswell in Life of Johnson
- "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" (Albert Einstein)
- "Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." (Isaac Asimov)
- "学而不思则罔，思而不学则殆." (孔子)
General Ideas about Wisdom:
- "To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking all is lost." (Flaubert)
- "There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." (Socrates)
- "Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish." (Quintilian)
- "Men are most apt to believe what they least understand." (Montaigne)
- "Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend." (Francis Bacon)
- "The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more clever than others." (La Rochefoucauld)
- "Facts are stubborn things." (Alain Rene le Sage)
- "Love truth, but pardon error." (Voltaire)
- "He who thinks himself wise, O heavens! is a great fool." (Voltaire)
- "People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little." (Jean Jacques Rousseau)
- "Never think that you already know all. However highly you are appraised always have the courage to say to yourself--I am ignorant." (Ivan Petrovich Pavlov)
- "There is no sin except stupidity." (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde)
- "Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- "Quality and truth...the chief mark of the genuinely educated man." (Jacques Barzun)
- "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." (Albert Einstein)
- "To know this world is to gain a proprietary attachment to it. To know it well is to love and take responsibility for it." (Edward O. Wilson)
- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." (Albert Einstein)
- "Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. (Theodore Isaac Rubin)
- "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value." (Arthur C. Clarke)
- "I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow." (Woodrow Wilson)
- "No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete." (G K Chesterton)
- "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." (Isaac Asimov)
- "By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." (Confucius)
- "Indeed we would say, not that children are little scientists but that scientists are big, and relatively slow, children." (Alison Gopnik and Henry M. Wellman)
Virtue
- "The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue." (Confucius)
- "Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice; and yet everybody is content to hear." (John Selden)
- "Man, false man, smiling, destructive man!" (Nathaniel Lee)
- "Pride and conceit were the original sin of man." (Alain Rene le Sage)
- "The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it." (Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay)
- "Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race." (William Ewart Gladstone)
- "And so the wise put themselves last
And find themselves in the foremost place.
They are not preoccupied with self,
And so they flourish.
Because they live for all the world,
In a natural way, they develop to perfection." (Lao Tsu)
- "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." Mahatma Gandhi
Time
- "Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time." (Pericles)
- "That old bald cheater, Time." (Ben Jonson)
- "On the wings of Time grief flies away." (Jean de la Fontaine)
- "Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love." (Jean de La Bruyere)
- "Procrastination is the thief of time." (Edward Young)
- "Dost thou love Life? Then do not squander Time; for that's the stuff Life is made of." (Benjamin Franklin)
- "Youth is wholly experimental." (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- "Hold fast time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment." (Thomas Mann)
- "Time is the least thing we have of." (Ernest Hemingway)
- "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace." (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8)
- "Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love,
time is eternity." (Henry Van Dyke)
- "...if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." (Andy Warhol)
- "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." (Douglas Adams)
- "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
- "Time is a tick, a purr, a drop." (Eavan Boland)
- "For the next week that was all I heard--manana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven." (Jack Kerouac)
- "Loving is never a waste of time." (Astrid Alauda)
Misfortune/Hope
- "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle." (Plato)
- "The soul of man is immortal and imperishable." (Plato)
- "While there's life, there's hope." (Cicero)
- "Tomorrow will be a new day." (Cervantes)
- "We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others." (La Rochefoucauld)
- "Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear." (Benedict Spinoza)
- "My only hope lies in my despair." (Jean Racine)
- "Pain is short, and joy is eternal." (Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller)
- "’Tis always morning somewhere in the world." (Richard Henry Hengist Horne)
- "I decline to accept the end of man." (William Faulkner)
- "The opposition is indispensable." (Walter Lippman)
- "You leave me half in hope, half buried in despair." (Sophocles)
- "Forgive yourself. Forgive others." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "Never, never, never give up." (Winston Churchill)
- "Hope is a waking dream." (Aristotle)
- "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past." (Percy Shelley)
- "Don't be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind." (Hamilton Mabie)
- "Cheer up! The worst is yet to come!" (Mark Twain)
- "where everything's nothing
--arise,my soul;and sing" (e.e. cummings)
- "Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly." (Robert F Kennedy)
- "The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right." (Derek Mahon)
- "Dulcius ex asperis"
- "Bitterness, recriminations, advice, morality, sadness--everything was behind him, and ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being." (Jack Kerouac)
- "So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies...and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaminign in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out tonight...the evening star must be dropping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old..." (Jack Kerouac)
Esteem/Praise/Being Oneself
- "So much is a man worth as he esteems himself." (Rabelais)
- "Usually we praise only to be praised." (La Rochefoucauld)
- "Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself." (Blaise Pascal)
- "If you are mediocre and you grovel, you shall succeed." (Pierre de Beaumarchais)
- "That favorite subject, Myself." (James Boswell)
- "As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- "Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" (William Knox)
- "I am only one,/But still I am one./I cannot do everything,/But still I can do something;/And because I cannot do everything/I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." (Edward Everett Hale)
- "Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul." (Henry van Dyke)
- "People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise." (William Somerset Maugham)
- "If we wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are." (Montesquieu)
- "...if you're trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down on you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone." (Morrie Schwartz)
- "People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within." (Elizabeth Kubler Ross)
- "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- "We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies." (Emily Dickinson)
- "Success is the ability to go from on failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill)
- A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. (Herm Albright)
Money/Wealth
- "Money in one's possession is the instrument of liberty; money one pursues is the symbol of servitude. That is why I hold fast to what I have, but covet no more." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
- "It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money." (Camus)
Compassion
- "...if one is sick and being treated in hospital by a doctor who evinces a warm human feeling, one feels at ease and the doctors' desire to give the best possible care is itself curative, irrespective of the degree of his or her technical skill. On the other hand, if one's doctor lacks human feeling and displays an unfriendly expression, impatience or casual disregard, one will feel anxious, even if he or she is the most highly qualified doctor and the disease has been correctly diagnosed and the right medication prescribed. Inevitably, patients' feelings make a difference to the quality and completeness of their recovery." (Dalai Lama the 14th)
- "True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason." (Dalai Lama the 14th)
- "I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the practice of compassion." (Dalai Lama the 14th)
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