Happen-quotes
Today is: 2/3/2012
It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. l did it in one afternoon on the golf course.
-- Hank Aaron --
Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was to keep swinging.
-- Hank Aaron --
Business without profit is not business any more than a pickle is candy.
-- Charles F. Abbott --
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
-- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir --
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson --
The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.
-- Bella Abzug --
The best cure for hypochondria is to forget about your body and get interested in somebody else's.
-- Goodman Ace --
Politics makes estranged bedfellows.
-- Goodman Ace --
I will undoubtedly have to seek what is happily known as gainful employment, which I am glad to say does not describe holding public office.
-- Dean Acheson --
The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.
-- Dean Acheson --
I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
-- Diane Ackerman --
Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, but no one can agree on what it is.
-- Diane Ackerman --
Poetry is an act of distillation. It takes contingency samples, is selective. It telescopes time. It focuses what most often floods past us in a polite blur.
-- Diane Ackerman --
I'd rather be a host than a guest. As Beerbohm observed, a happy host is a sad guest.
-- Harold Acton --
Justice, humanity, and benevolence are the duties you owe to society in general. To your country the same duties are incumbent upon you with the additional obligation of sacrificing ease, pleasure, wealth, and life itself for its defense and security.
-- Abigail Adams --
We have too many high-sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.
-- Abigail Adams --
I will never consent to have our sex considered in an inferior point of light. Let each planet shine in their own orbit. God and nature designed it so - if man is Lord, women is Lordess - that is what I contend for.
-- Abigail Adams --
A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.
-- Ansel Adams --
Yosemite valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.
-- Ansel Adams --
Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs.
-- Ansel Adams --
All right, so I spend money. Can you name one other extravagance I have?
-- Cindy Adams --
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-- Douglas Adams --
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams --
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
-- Douglas Adams --
Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.
-- Douglas Adams, from "The Salmon of Doubt" --
I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
-- Douglas Adams --
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
-- Douglas Adams --
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.
-- Franklin P. Adams --
Anybody who finds it easy to make money on the horses is probably in the dog food business.
-- Franklin P. Adams --
I hate the pollyanna pest who says all is for the best.
-- Franklin P. Adams --
In the order named, these are the hardest to control: wine, women, and song.
-- Franklin P. Adams --
The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.
-- Franklin P. Adams --
Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year.
-- Franklin P. Adams --
I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
-- Franklin P. Adams --
It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.
-- Henry B. Adams --
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
-- Henry Adams --
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
-- Henry Brooks Adams --
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
-- Henry Adams --
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
-- Henry Brooks Adams --
A man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.
-- James Adams --
May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions.
-- Joey Adams --
The most popular labor saving device today is still a husband with money.
-- Joey Adams --
Science is really going at a rapid pace. Now it's only a hundred years behind the comic strips.
-- Joey Adams --
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
-- John Adams --
If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.
-- John Adams --
The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
-- John Adams --
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
-- John Quincy Adams --
I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success to anything that I ever undertook. Yet, with fervent gratitude to God, I confess that my life has been equally marked by great and signal success which I neither aimed at nor anticipated.
-- John Quincy Adams --
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear, and obstacles vanish into air.
-- John Quincy Adams --
The great crises of life are not, I think, necessarily those which are in themselves the hardest to bear, but those for which we are least prepared.
-- Mary Adams --
Nature tops the list of potent tranquilizers and stress reducers. The mere sound of moving water has been shown to lower blood pressure.
-- Patch Adams --
Who looks after the psychoanalyst's wife while the psychoanalyst is away being psychoanalyzed?
-- Scarritt Adams --
Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
-- Scott Adams --
Energy is equal to desire and purpose.
-- Sheryl Adams --
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
-- Joseph Addison --
Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind.
-- Joseph Addison --
Silence never shows itself to so great advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation.
-- Joseph Addison --
We are always doing things for posterity, but I would gladly see posterity do something for us.
-- Joseph Addison --
Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul; I think the Romans call it stoicism.
-- Joseph Addison --
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. They are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
-- Joseph Addison --
It is ridiculous for any man to criticize the works of another if he has not distinguished himself by his own performances.
-- Joseph Addison --
We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull.
-- Joseph Addison --
A cloudy day, or a little sunshine, have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most real blessings or misfortunes.
-- Joseph Addison --
Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.
-- Joseph Addison --
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
-- Joseph Addison --
"We are always doing," says he, "something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us."
-- Joseph Addison --
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
-- Joseph Addison --
When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gout and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambush among the dishes.
-- Joseph Addison --
There is nothing truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor.
-- Joseph Addison --
For parlor use, the vague generality is a lifesaver.
-- George Ade --
Early to bed and early to rise is a bad rule for anyone who wishes to become acquainted with our most prominent and influential people.
-- George Ade --
A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
-- George Ade --
There is everything in a name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but would not cost half as much during the winter months.
-- George Ade --
Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time and money to do it right.
-- Kurt H. Adler --
It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
-- Alfred Adler --
Man knows more than he understands.
-- Alfred Adler --
The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.
-- Felix Adler --
Champions know there are no shortcuts to the top. They climb the mountain one step at a time. They have no use for helicopters!
-- Judi Adler --
There is no point in our ancestors speaking to us unless we know how to listen.
-- Mortimer Adler --
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
-- Stella Adler --
The theater was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.
-- Stella Adler --
Real giving had its joy in imagining the joy of the receiver. It means choosing, expending time, going out of one's way, thinking of the other as a subject: the opposite of distraction.
-- Thodor W. Adorno --
Human prosperity never rests but always craves more, till blown up with pride it totters and falls. From the opulent mansions pointed at by all passers-by none warns it away, none cries, "Let no more riches enter!"
-- Aeschylus --
Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both sides before we commiit ourselves to either.
-- Aesop's Fables --
Make sure of the bear before you sell his skin.
-- Aesop's Fables --
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
-- Aesop --
Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
-- Aesop --
Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction.
-- Aesop --
Beware, lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
-- Aesop --
He who always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
-- Aesop --
The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.
-- Aesop --
It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.
-- Aesop, The Jay and the Peacock --
The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our destruction.
-- Aesop --
While I see many hoof marks going in, I see none coming out. It is easier to get into the enemy's toils than out again.
-- Aesop, from "The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts" --
It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.
-- Aesop --
It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water, they are good servants but bad masters.
-- Aesop --
What a splendid head, yet no brain.
-- Aesop --
The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
-- Herbert Agar --
A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it. An amateur is a man who can't do his job when he does feel like it.
-- James Agate --
I wonder what it is in the New York air that enables me to sit up till all hours of the night in an atmosphere which in London would make a horse dizzy, but here merely clears the brain.
-- James Agate --
I have views on most matters, and I am as willing as a politician to change most of them.
-- James Agate --
Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.
-- James Agate --
New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
-- James Agate --
In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again.
-- James Agee --
We all need the waters of the Mercy River. Though they don't run deep, there's usually enough, just enough, for the extravagance of our lives.
-- Jonis Agee --
It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.
-- Ama Ata Aidoo --
At the present time there exist problems beyond our ability to solve, not because of theoretical difficulties, but because of insufficient means of mechanical computation.
-- Howard Aiken --
If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken --
If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
-- Catherine Aird --
Set your expectations high; find men and women whose integrity and values you respect; get their agreement on a course of action; and give them your ultimate trust.
-- John Akers --
In human intimacy there is a secret boundary; neither the experience of being in love nor passion can cross it, though lips be joined together in awful silence, and the heart break asunder with love.
-- Anna Akhmatova --
Life on the farm is a school of patience: you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days.
-- Henri Alain --
Posy and pearls, amethyst and gold, forever you and I, our precious love to hold.
-- Astrid Alauda --
He slept beneath the moon, he basked in the sun; he lived a life of going-to-do, and died with nothing done.
-- James Albery --
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.
-- Mitch Albom --
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
-- Herm Albright --
Only in America could a refugee girl from Europe become secretary of state.
-- Madeline Albright --
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott --
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott --
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with delight and profit.
-- A. B. Alcott --
Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression.
-- Bronson Alcott --
There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, in fields, streams, and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners, that neither cities nor universities enjoy.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott --
Keep your sense of humor. There's enough stress in the rest of your life to let bad shots ruin a game you're supposed to enjoy.
-- Amy Strum Alcott --
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
-- Louisa May Alcott --
My definition of a philosopher is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.
-- Louisa May Alcott --
I had a pleasant time with my mind, for it was happy.
-- Louisa May Alcott --
I don't think secrets agree with me; I feel rumpled up in my mind since you told me that.
-- Louisa May Alcott --
It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.
-- Alan Alda --
It's too bad I'm not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.
-- Alan Alda --
No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
-- Alan Alda --
Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
-- Alan Alda --
There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle.
-- Robert Alden --
Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.
-- Brian Aldiss --
What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, stardust, or sea foam, flower or winged air.
-- Thomas Bailey Aldrich --
How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.
-- Alexander the Great --
Harold (Robbins) could be the best conversationalist in the world - if he ever found anyone he thought worth talking to.
-- H. Alexander --
All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.
-- Scott Alexander --
A handwritten, personal letter has become a genuine modern-day luxury, like a child's pony ride.
-- Shana Alexander --
Letters are expectation packed in an envelope.
-- Shana Alexander --
Providence sees to it that no man gets happiness out of crime.
-- Vittorio Alfieri --
Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
-- Alfonso, King of Castile, on studying the Ptolemaic system --
If a problem is too difficult to solve, one cannot claim that it is solved by pointing at all the efforts made to solve it.
-- Hannes Alfven --
The flower we do not pluck is the only which never loses its beauty or its fragrance.
-- W. R. Alger --
The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.
-- Nelson Algren --
Advice to a young man: Stay in college, get the knowledge. And stay there until you're through. If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they sure can make something out of you.
-- Muhammad Ali --
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
-- Muhammad Ali --
I have said I am the greatest. Ain't nobody ever heard me say I was the smartest.
-- Muhammad Ali --
To be a great champion, you must believe you are the best. If you're not, pretend you are.
-- Muhammad Ali --
It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
-- Muhammad Ali --
I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own.
-- Muhammad Ali --
Inside a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.
-- Muhammad Ali --
Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild.
-- Dante Alighieri --
The more perfect a thing is, the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.
-- Dante Alighieri --
The penguin flies backwards because he doesn't care to see where he's going, but wants to see where he's been.
-- Fred Allen --
An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.
-- Fred Allen --
Was she old? When they lit the candles on her birthday cake, six people were overcome by the heat.
-- Fred Allen --
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen --
He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in the goose.
-- Fred Allen --
I like long walks. Especially when they're taken by people who annoy me.
-- Fred Allen --
If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.
-- Fred Allen --
I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case and got my tuition back.
-- Fred Allen --
The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
-- Fred Allen --
Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.
-- Fred Allen --
I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can’t remember what the third thing is.
-- Fred Allen --
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
-- Fred Allen --
I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.
-- Fred Allen --
His hobby is collecting old echoes.
-- Fred Allen --
An advertising agency is eighty-five percent confusion and fifteen percent commission.
-- Fred Allen --
The head of our advertising agency suffered from claustrophobia so he had to stay out of Rhode Island.
-- Fred Allen --
Forget the past - the future will give you plenty to worry about.
-- George Allen, Sr. --
Every time you win, you're reborn; when you lose, you die a little.
-- George Allen, Sr. --
Jumping at several small opportunities may get us there more quickly than waiting for the big one to come along.
-- Hugh Allen --
If I can't blow up the world in the first ten seconds, then the show is a flop.
-- Irwin Allen --
You will become as small as your controlling desire, as great as your dominant aspiration.
-- James Allen --
Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will bring about right results.
-- James L. Allen --
Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.
-- James Allen --
Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
-- James Allen --
Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.
-- Robert Allen --
I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-- Woody Allen --
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
-- Woody Allen --
Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
-- Woody Allen --
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
-- Woody Allen --
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
-- Woody Allen --
How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?
-- Woody Allen --
They reside with my father - who polishes them. Well, I'm certainly not going to put Oscars in my house.
-- Woody Allen --
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
-- Woody Allen --
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
-- Woody Allen --
I'm astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.
-- Woody Allen --
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
-- Woody Allen --
I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.
-- Woody Allen --
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
-- Woody Allen --
I'd rather die than live in the country. I've always been at two with nature.
-- Woody Allen --
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
-- Woody Allen --
How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?
-- Woody Allen --
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.
-- Woody Allen --
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
-- Woody Allen --
My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.
-- Woody Allen --
His mistaken belief in his own superiority cuts him off from reality as completely as if he were living in a colored glass jar.
-- Margery Allingham --
There's a lot of terrible things goin' on all the time, but you gotta try and have some fun in the end.
-- Mose Allison --
There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, "I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn't like."
-- Gordon Allport --
There's a kind of blackmail that only the family can exercise over you and it is more powerful than anything the whole of society can do to you.
-- Pedro Almodovar --
We begin by fooling others and end by fooling ourselves.
-- Eric Alterman --
I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.
-- Lisa Alther --
If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that she could now eat dessert without eating her vegetables.
-- Lisa Alther --
That's the risk you take if you change; that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.
-- Lisa Alther --
I got fired for many years for doing a lot of the things that I'm now getting accolades for.
-- Robert Altman --
I've about had it - the agencies, the winking, the networks, the ratings. Anyone who thinks TV is an art medium is crazy - it's an advertising medium.
-- Robert Altman --
Look around the table. If you don't see a sucker, get up, because you're the sucker.
-- Amarillo Slim --
No man can be a sound lawyer who is not well-read in the laws of Moses.
-- Fisher Ames --
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel --
Blessed be childhood which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.
-- Henri F. Amiel --
Learn to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel --
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
-- Amiel --
There is only one way of not hating those who do us wrong, and that is by doing them good.
-- Henri Amiel --
Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda. As far as lies in its power, it tends to transform the universe and humanity into its own image.
-- Henri Amiel --
Music is harmony; Harmony is perfection; Perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel --
Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to live, make haste to be kind!
-- Henri Frederic Amiel --
Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel --
The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
-- Henri Amiel --
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
-- Henri Amiel --
If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing.
-- Kingsley Amis --
A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch.
-- Kingsley Amis --
Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.
-- Hans Christian Andersen --
"But the Emperor has nothing on at all!" cried a little child.
-- Hans Christian Andersen --
I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them.
-- Sherwood Andersen --
Speeches are like steer horns - a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
-- Evelyn Anderson --
Tattoo - what a loaded word it is, rife with associations to goons, goofs, bikers, tribal warriors, carnival artists, drunken sailors and floozies.
-- Jon Anderson --
My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.
-- Margaret Anderson --
The interest in the lives of others, the high evaluation of these lives, what are they but the overflow of the interest he finds in himself, the values he attributes to his own being?
-- Sherwood Anderson --
It's a mystery. All I did was wear this bikini in "Dr. No" - not even a small one - and whoosh! Overnight I've made it.
-- Ursula Andress --
I take care of my flowers and my cats. And enjoy food. And that's living.
-- Ursula Andress --
O can't you see, brother - death's a congested road for fighters now, and hero a cheap label.
-- C. D. Andrews --
All love shifts and changes. I don't know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time.
-- Julie Andrews --
Nothing will work unless you do.
-- Maya Angelou --
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
-- Maya Angelou --
I always knew that fury was my natural enemy. It clotted my blood and clogged my pores. It literally blinded me so that I lost my peripheral vision.
-- Maya Angelou --
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
-- Maya Angelou --
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
-- Maya Angelou --
You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.
-- Maya Angelou --
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.
-- Maya Angelou --
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
-- Maya Angelou --
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning "Good morning" at total strangers.
-- Maya Angelou --
In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.
-- Maya Angelou --
The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain.
-- Jennifer Aniston --
Oh, love is real enough, you will find it some day but it has one archenemy, and that is life.
-- Jean Anouilh --
Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
-- Jean Anouilh --
Everything ends this way in France. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings. affairs of state - everything is a pretext for a good dinner.
-- Jean Anouith --
Your interpretation of what you see and hear is just that - your interpretation.
-- Dr. Robert Anthony --
Your enemy might become your friend, if you allow him to become who he is.
-- Dr. Robert Anthony --
Others can stop you temporarily. Only you can do it permanently.
-- Dr. Robert Anthony --
Some people are willing to work only if they can start at the top and work up.
-- Dr. Robert Anthony --
If you are honest because honesty is the best policy, then your honesty is corrupt.
-- Dr. Robert Anthony --
If you are honest because honesty is the best policy, then your honesty is corrupt.
-- Dr. Robert Anthony --
Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.
-- Susan B. Anthony --
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
-- Marie Antoinette --
Nature and certainty are very hard to come at, and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense.
-- Marcus Antoninus --
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
-- Sir Edward Appleton --
He who is dying of hunger must be fed rather than taught.
-- Thomas Aquinas --
Pull off a coup and you're a national hero, fail and you're an evil criminal; in business it's the same difference between bankruptcy and making a fortune.
-- Jeffrey Archer --
Dear, never forget one little point. It's my business. You just work here.
-- Elizabeth Arden, To Her Husband --
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.
-- Hannah Arendt --
Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.
-- Hannah Arendt --
It is well known that the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
-- Hannah Arendt --
It is far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.
-- Hannah Arendt --
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
-- Hannah Arendt --
Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.
-- Hannah Arendt --
So poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.
-- Aristotle --
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
-- Aristotle --
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
-- Aristotle --
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
-- Aristotle --
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but the inward significance.
-- Aristotle --
Young people have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things.
-- Aristotle --
Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.
-- Aristotle --
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle --
Wit is educated insolence.
-- Aristotle --
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
-- Aristotle --
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
-- Aristotle --
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
-- Aristotle --
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
-- Aristotle --
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
-- Aristotle --
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
-- Aristotle --
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
-- Aristotle --
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
-- Aristotle --
Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.
-- Aristotle --
Honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
-- Aristotle --
Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.
-- Aristotle --
Most people would rather get than give affection.
-- Aristotle --
We make war that we may live in peace.
-- Aristotle --
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
-- Aristotle --
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
-- Aristotle --
It is amazing how nice people are to you when they know you are going away.
-- Michael Arlen --
Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.
-- Dick Armey --
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.
-- Dick Armey --
Hard labor: a redundancy, like "working mother."
-- Joyce Armor --
There may be luck in getting a job, but there's no luck in keeping it.
-- Ogden Armour --
When it comes to eating, you can sometimes help yourself more by helping yourself less.
-- Richard Armour --
Here is where people, 0ne frequently finds, Lower their voices And raise their minds.
-- Richard Armour, "Library" --
The conscience is a built-in feature / That haunts the sinner, helps the preacher. / Some sins it makes us turn and run from, / But most it simply takes the fun from.
-- Richard Armour --
I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love, and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety or fear try to call me, they keep getting a busy signal - and soon they'll forget my number.
-- Edith Armstrong --
Toil and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone.
-- J. Armstrong --
Houston, tranquility base here. The "Eagle" has landed.
-- Neil A. Armstrong --
A cat refuses to be the object of sentimentality - If she doesn't want to be cuddled. that's it.
-- Samantha Armstrong --
I am convinced that the Muses and the Graces never thought of having breakfast anywhere but in bed.
-- Mary Arnim --
The worst bankrupt in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm.
-- H. W. Arnold --
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
-- Mathew Arnold --
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
-- Matthew Arnold --
The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
-- Matthew Arnold --
Culture is "to know the best that has been said and thought in the world."
-- Matthew Arnold --
One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common - discontent.
-- Matthew Arnold --
Now the great winds shorewards blow; Now the salt tides seawards flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
-- Matthew Arnold --
We do not what we ought; What we ought not, we do; And lean upon the thought, that chance will bring us through.
-- Matthew Arnold --
I never had a huge need to be a big movie star or a billionaire.
-- Patricia Arquette --
The best way you can surprise a woman with an anniversary gift is to give her just what she wanted.
-- Arbuth Arundale --
Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.
-- Sholem Asch --
There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.
-- Roger Ascham --
Through politics men can learn to use ballots instead of bullets, symbols instead of weapons.
-- M. Ascoli --
If you think you can, you're right. And if you think you can't, you're right.
-- Mary Kay Ash --
Sandwich every bit of criticism between two heavy layers of praise.
-- Mary Kay Ash --
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to server others at whatever cost.
-- Arthur Ashe --
I learned to play tennis because the tennis courts were the closest athletic facility to my house.
-- Arthur Ashe --
People pay all that money to sit in a chair in the theater mainly because it is a respectable way to see and experience things they cannot see and experience in their own lives.
-- Elizabeth Ashley --
In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the other really likes.
-- Elizabeth Ashley --
We must find methods of maintaining a healthy ecological balance on earth. If there is any spare effort left over from these absolute necessities, we can put them into other projects - otherwise not.
-- Isaac Asimov --
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov --
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."
-- Isaac Asimov --
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
-- Herbert Henry Asquith --
He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.
-- Margot Asquith --
She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.
-- Margot Asquith --
I have always wanted to be a man, if only for the reason that I would like to have been gauged by the value of my intellect.
-- Margot Asquith --
Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.
-- Fred Astaire --
Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.
-- Mary Astell --
In a story, the craftsmanship is fully exposed. A novel is like charity; it covers a multitude of faults.
-- Thea Astley --
It isn't the common man at all who is important; it's the uncommon man.
-- Lady Nancy Astor --
We women do talk too much, but even then we don't tell half of what we know.
-- Nancy Astor --
From the American newspapers you'd think America was populated solely by naked women and cinema stars.
-- Lady Astor --
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything or nothing.
-- Nancy Astor --
I refuse to admit that I am more than fifty-two, even if that does make my sons illegitimate.
-- Lady Astor --
This nation was built by men who took risks - pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.
-- Brooks Atkinson --
In every age "the good old days" were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
-- Brooks Atkinson --
It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
-- Brooks Atkinson --
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
-- Clement Attlee --
Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.
-- Margaret Atwood --
LSD? Nothing much happened, but I did get the distinct impression that some birds were trying to communicate with me.
-- W. H. Auden --
Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
-- W. H. Auden --
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop.
-- W. H. Auden --
And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching the apple falling towards England, became aware between himself and her of an eternal tie.
-- W. H. Auden --
Your cameraman might enjoy himself, because my face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.
-- W. H. Auden --
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
-- W. H. Auden --
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar, and is shocked by the unexpected: the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel, and is bored by repetition.
-- W. H. Auden --
No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.
-- W. H. Auden --
It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.
-- W. H. Auden --
To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith.
-- W. H. Auden --
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
-- W. H. Auden --
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
-- W. H. Auden --
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
-- W. H. Auden --
Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
-- W. H. Auden --
God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.
-- John Aughey --
Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.
-- David Augsburger --
He who is good is free, even if he is a slave. He who is evil is a slave, even if he is a king.
-- Augustine of Hippo --
Bulls do not win bullfights. People do. People do not win people fights. Lawyers do.
-- Norman R. Augustine --
A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission
-- Marcus Aurelius --
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
-- Marcus Aurelius --
Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
-- Marcus Aurelius --
Nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind as the ability to examine systematically and honestly everything that meets us in life.
-- Marcus Aurelius --
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. be one.
-- Marcus Aurelius --
Everything that happens, happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.
-- Marcus Aurelius --
Take full account of the excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them if you had them not.
-- Marcus Aurelius --
A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another.
-- Marcus Aurelius --
Nothing more detestable does the earth produce than an ungrateful man.
-- Ausonius --
He and I should not in the least agree of course, in our ideas of nobels and heroines; pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked.
-- Jane Austen --
Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply.
-- Jane Austen --
We met Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.
-- Jane Austen --
A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.
-- Jane Austen --
The younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder.
-- Jane Austen --
There is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry... It is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.
-- Jane Austen --
One man's way may be as good as another, but we all like our own best.
-- Jane Austen --
Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.
-- Jane Austen --
One cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
-- Jane Austen --
Solemn history, I cannot be interested in: the quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences on every page, and hardly any women at all.
-- Jane Austen --
I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
-- Jane Austen --
She was not a woman of many words: for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas.
-- Jane Austen --
Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
-- Jane Austen, "Emma" --
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
-- Jane Austen, "Emma" --
Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
-- Jane Austen, "Mansfield Park" --
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
-- Jane Austen --
Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
-- Jane Austen --
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
-- Jane Austen --
One of the conditions of being human is that, even if we're surrounded by others, we essentially live our lives alone: Real life takes place inside us.
-- Paul Auster --
There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
-- Alfred Austin --
This is when we say "words fail" and mean this literally. We should need new words. The old ones just would not fit. They aren't meant to cover this kind of case.
-- John Austin, on Kafka's "Metamorphosis" --
People would be surprised to know how much I learned about prayer from playing poker.
-- Mary Austin --
I should like my epitaph to say, “He helped people see God in the ordinary things of life, and he made children laugh.”
-- Rev. W. Awdry --
I honestly don't think you possibly share a small tent for any length of time with someone who's ebullient.
-- Alan Ayckbourn --
If I had been someone not very clever, I would have done an easier job like publishing. That's the easiest job I can think of.
-- A. J. Ayer --
Better to lose count while naming your blessings than to lose your blessings to counting your troubles.
-- Maltbie D. Babcock --
Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people, but to get ahead of ourselves.
-- M. D. Babcock --
Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.
-- Roger Babson --
I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
-- Lauren Bacall --
Your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
-- Lauren Bacall --
What I learned from Mr. Bogart - I learned from a master, and that, God knows, has stood me in very good stead.
-- Lauren Bacall --
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Bach --
To the timid soul, nothing is possible.
-- John Bach --
The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel. The same questions, asked again, bring you just the answers you need just the minute you need them.
-- Richard Bach --
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
-- Richard Bach --
What the student calls a tragedy, the master calls a butterfly.
-- Richard Bach --
Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.
-- Richard Bach --
A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
-- Richard Bach --
A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
-- Gaston Bachelard --
Take only pictures and leave only footprints.
-- The Backpacker's Code --
Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success.
-- Jim Backus --
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
-- Francis Bacon --
Remember this December, that love weighs more than gold!
-- Josephine Bacon --
I've been a film star so long that I don't know what it would feel like not to be one.
-- Kevin Bacon --
Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt.
-- Roger Bacon --
Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt; when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
-- Francis Bacon --
In taking revenge a man is equal to his enemy, but in passing it over he is his superior.
-- Bacon --
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
-- Francis Bacon --
The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.
-- Francis Bacon --
The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before.
-- Francis Bacon --
I knew one that when he wrote a letter he would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a bymatter.
-- Francis Bacon --
It is in life as it is in ways. The shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.
-- Francis Bacon --
The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs.
-- Francis Bacon --
Knowledge itself is power.
-- Francis Bacon --
A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal.
-- Francis Bacon --
Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds; they ever fly by twilight.
-- Francis Bacon --
Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.
-- Sir Francis Bacon --
As the births of living creatures, at first, are ill-shapen: so are all innovations, which are the birth of time.
-- Francis Bacon --
Love can find an entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept.
-- Francis Bacon --
Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
-- Sir Francis Bacon --
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out.
-- Sir Francis Bacon --
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
-- Sir Francis Bacon --
Without friends, the world is but a wilderness.
-- Francis Bacon --
Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.
-- Francis Bacon --
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
-- Francis Bacon --
He of whom many are afraid ought to fear many.
-- Sir Francis Bacon --
Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
-- Arthur Baer --
You can take a boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy.
-- Arthur "Bugs" Baer --
A good neighbor is a fellow who smiles at you over the back fence but doesn't climb over it.
-- Arthur "Bugs" Baer --
A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
-- Arthur "Bugs" Baer --
What's good economics is bad politics; what's bad economics is good politics.
-- Eugene W. Baer --
The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
-- Joan Baez --
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
-- Joan Baez --
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
-- Walter Bagehot --
Public opinion requires us to think other men's thought, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
-- Walter Bagehot --
An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
-- Walter Bagehot --
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
-- Walter Bagehot --
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
-- Walter Bagehot --
Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
-- Walter Bagehot --
Why do birds sing in the morning? It's the triumphant shout: “We got through another night.”
-- Enid Bagnold --
The fear is worse than the pain.
-- Shannon Bahr --
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
-- Bernard Bailey --
The origin of civilization is man's determination to do nothing for himself which he can get done for him.
-- H. C. Bailey --
Any young man with good health and a poor appetite can save up money.
-- J. Bailey --
What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.
-- Pearl Bailey --
There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
-- Pearl Bailey --
One is tempted to say that old myths never die; they just become embedded in the textbooks.
-- Thomas A. Bailey --
Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.
-- Beryl Bainbridge --
Son, you have to guard against speaking more clearly than you think.
-- Howard Baker's Father --
Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless.
-- Kenneth Baker --
Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.
-- Russell Baker --
Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down, and those that get lost.
-- Russell Baker --
While edging toward a coma during the endless years of baseball this weekend, I suddenly realized I didn't know what a slider was.
-- Russell Baker --
When compelled to cook, I produce a meal that would make a sword-swallower gag.
-- Russell Baker --
The magic of children is their ability to cloud our memories so that when we look back we recall only the golden moments, the sweet laughter and the sentimental tears, and none of the awful trials.
-- Russell Baker --
Lobbies exist to behave swinishly on behalf of people too delicate to behave swinishly for themselves.
-- Russell Baker --
In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.
-- Russell Baker --
Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.
-- Faith Baldwin --
One thing I know about march - whether it storms or shines, it is the key to spring.
-- Faith Baldwin --
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
-- James Baldwin --
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
-- James Baldwin --
The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
-- James Baldwin --
We live in an age when silence is not only criminal but suicidal. If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.
-- James Baldwin --
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
-- James Baldwin --
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
-- James Baldwin --
The determination to outwit one's situation means that one has no models, only object lessons.
-- James Baldwin --
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
-- James Arthur Baldwin --
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
-- James Baldwin --
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
-- James Baldwin --
I thought he was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.
-- Arthur James Balfour --
Civilization is the upward struggle of mankind, in which millions are trampled to death that thousands may mount on their bodies.
-- Charles Balfour --
He who fishes for compliments can expect to be handed a line.
-- Ivern Ball --
Ever notice that people never say "It's only a game" when they're winning?
-- Ivern Ball --
In life, all things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.
-- Lucille Ball --
Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.
-- Lucille Ball --
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.
-- Lucille Ball --
In my ballets, woman is first, men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men; they are better.
-- George Ballanchine --
Californians are good at planning for the earthquake, while simultaneously denying it will happen.
-- Sheila Ballantyne --
A single bad habit will mar an otherwise flawless character as a single ink drop soils the pure white page.
-- Hosea Ballou --
He stood spellbound, like a child to whom his nurse is telling him some wonderful story.
-- Honere De Balzac --
Society, like the Roman youth at the circus, never shows mercy to the fallen gladiator.
-- Balzac --
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
-- Honore De Balzac --
Talent, like gout, sometimes skips two generations.
-- Honore De Balzac --
Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.
-- Honore Balzac --
She walked with a proud, defiant step, like a martyr to the coliseum.
-- Honore De Balzac --
It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.
-- Honore de Balzac --
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.
-- Honore de Balzac --
An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
-- Honore De Balzac --
By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.
-- George Bancroft --
The measure of the progress of civilization is the progress of the people.
-- George Bancroft --
It's one of the tragic ironies of the theater that only one man in it can count on steady work, the night watchman.
-- Tallulah Bankhead --
The less I behave like Whistler's Mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.
-- Tallulah Bankhead --
I was a hedonist long before I knew what a hedonist was.
-- Tallulah Bankhead --
Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny, in which case I definitely said it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead --
I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
-- Tallulah Bankhead --
I read Shakespeare and the Bible and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.
-- Tallulah Bankhead --
I'm miserable if I'm not in love and, of course, I'm miserable if I am.
-- Tallulah Bankhead --
Facts do not make history; facts do not even make events. A fact is an isolated particle of experience, is reflected light without a source, planet with no sun, star without constellation, constellation beyond galaxy, galaxy outside the universe - fact is nothing.
-- Russell Banks --
She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along.
-- Margaret Culkin Banning --
Athletics is a luxury.
-- Roger Bannister --
The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.
-- Roger Bannister --
The reason that good women flock to see my pictures is that there is a little bit of vampire instinct in every woman.
-- Theta Bara --
God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air-conditioning.
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka --
I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.
-- Brigitte Bardot --
The cinema means nothing to me, I cannot remember it.
-- Brigitte Bardot --
The marvelous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing.
-- Ronnie Barker --
They say they climb mountains because they are there. I wonder if it would astound them to know that the very same reason is why the rest of us go around them.
-- S. Omar Barker --
The best audience is intelligent, well educated and a little drunk.
-- Alben W. Barkley --
If I weren't earning three million dollars a year to dunk a basketball, most people on the street would run in the other direction if they saw me coming.
-- Charles Barkley --
I am not a role model. I am paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court. Parents should be role models. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids.
-- Charles Barkley --
We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.
-- Djuna Barnes --
There's a sucker born every minute.
-- P. T. Barnum --
Money is, in some respects, like fire; it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
-- P. T. Barnum --
More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.
-- P. T. Barnum --
Experts say you should never hit your children in anger. When is a good time? When you're feeling festive?
-- Roseanne --
There's a lot more to being a woman than being a mother, but there's a hell of a lot more to being a mother than most people suspect.
-- Roseanne --
When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.
-- Colleen C. Barrett --
Nothing can be accomplished by denying that man is an essentially troubled being, except to make more trouble.
-- William Barrett --
The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
-- James M. Barrie --
You have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.
-- J. M. Barrie --
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.
-- J. M. Barrie --
When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.
-- J. M. Barrie --
The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
-- James M. Barrie --
Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.
-- Isaac Barrow --
Crabgrass can grow on bowling balls in airless rooms, and there is no known way to kill it that does not involve nuclear weapons.
-- Dave Barry --
I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry --
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
-- Dave Barry --
The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside we all believe that we are above-average drivers.
-- Dave Barry --
No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
-- Dave Barry --
Both your socks should always be the same color, or at least both be fairly dark.
-- Dave Barry --
I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show, which would be called, "A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark."
-- Dave Barry --
A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person.
-- Dave Barry --
The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.
-- Dave Barry --
Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
-- Dave Barry --
Love is an exploding cigar which we willingly smoke.
-- Lynda Barry --
The people are unreal. The flowers are unreal, they don't smell. The fruit is unreal, it doesn't taste of anything. The whole place is a glaring, gaudy, nightmarish set, built up in the desert.
-- Ethel Barrymore, on Hollywood --
Happiness sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
-- John Barrymore --
It (rain) sounds like all the little beggars of the world, tapping their canes and crutches on the roof as they go out to ask for bread.
-- John Barrymore --
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
-- John Barrymore --
The trouble with this life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.
-- John Barrymore --
If it isn't the sheriff, it's the finance company. I've got more attachments on me than a vacuum cleaner.
-- John Barrymore --
The good die young - because they see no point in living if you have to be good.
-- John Barrymore --
If tolerance of diversity involves an admitted element of risk to national unity, intolerance involves a certainty that unity will be destroyed.
-- Alan Barth --
To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.
-- Roland Barthes --
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
-- Roland Barthes --
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
-- Roland Barthes --
Cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals, the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists.
-- Roland Barthes --
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
-- Albert A. Bartlett --
Even when we know what is right, too often we fail to act. More often we grab greedily for the day letting tomorrow bring what it will, putting off the unpleasant and unpopular.
-- Bernard M. Baruch --
I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
-- Bernard Baruch --
The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
-- Bernard M. Baruch --
No man should think himself a zero, and think he can do nothing about the state of the world.
-- Bernard Baruch --
Don't try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. This can't be done – except by liars.
-- Bernard Baruch --
I am a speculator. The word comes from the latin "speculari," which means "observe." I observe.
-- Bernard Baruch --
If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right.
-- Bernard M. Baruch --
An elder statesman is somebody old enough to know his own mind and to keep quiet about it.
-- Bernard M. Baruch --
We can't cross a bridge until we come to it, but I always like to lay down a pontoon ahead of time.
-- Bernard Baruch --
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
-- Bernard Baruch --
I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.
-- Georges Bataille --
What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.
-- Mary Catherine Bateson --
The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.
-- Mary Catherine Bateson --
Of any stopping place in life. it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
-- Mary Catherine Bateson --
A Jaywalker is a bird of the Schmo Family who can be found in traffic jams and morgues.
-- Phyllis Battelle --
If you haven't at least a slight poetic crack in the heart, you have been cheated by nature.
-- Phyllis Battelle --
Marriage will fast disappear unless it is limited strictly to only one to a customer.
-- O. A. Battista --
A sick boy is one who comes down with a bug on Saturday morning.
-- O. A. Battista --
One time you can be sure you have twenty-twenty vision is when you go looking for trouble.
-- O. A. Battista --
Tolerance consists in seeing things with your heart instead of with your eyes.
-- O. A. Battista --
The man in the greatest danger always is the one who has climbed to the top of the ladder.
-- O. A. Battista --
Frequently the fellow who doesn't let grass grow under his feet is too lazy to plant some.
-- O. A. Battista --
There is no better medicine for ailing grandparents than baby grandchildren.
-- O. A. Battista --
A great speaker is one who rises to the occasion, and promptly sits down.
-- O. A. Battista --
The trouble with some mothers who raise their children by the books is they use the comic books.
-- O. A. Battista --
When it comes to visitors, the most hospitable ones are those who like to listen.
-- O. A. Battista --
The shortest distance between two jokes makes a perfect speech.
-- O. A. Battista --
The trait most people enjoy inheriting from their ancestors is trust in the form of an estate
-- O. A. Battista --
Each time the November elections are over, it's easy to understand why Thanksgiving Day always follows them.
-- O. A. Battista --
A smart wife is one who knows how to retie the Christmas package her husband has hidden from her.
-- O. A. Battista --
An easy chair is one that is hard to get in and even harder to get out of.
-- O. A. Battista --
The only fair way to talk about somebody is to imagine he is listening to every word you say.
-- O. A. Battista --
There is no flower in the world that breathes a sweeter fragrance than a freshly bathed baby.
-- O. A. Battista --
Many times I am asked, "How can you be from a small town in the Midwest and sing Mozart?" Mozart was a human being with emotions and a sense of humor. We all share these qualities as human beings.
-- Kathleen Battle --
A precious liquid, a poison dearer than that of the Borgias - because it is made from our blood, our health, our sleep, and two-thirds of our love - we must be stingy with it.
-- Charles Baudelaire, on hatred --
[Victor] Hugo, like a priest, always has his head bowed - bowed so low that he can see nothing except his own navel.
-- Charles Baudelaire --
Now is the time to get drunk! To stop being the martyred slaves of time to get absolutely drunk - on wine, poetry, or on virtue, as you please.
-- Charles Baudelaire --
Even if God did not exist, religion would still be holy and divine. God is the only being who, in order to reign, need not even exist.
-- Charles Baudelaire --
Anyone, provided he can be amusing, has the right to talk to himself.
-- Charles Baudelaire --
Hard work never kills anybody who supervises it.
-- Harry Bauer --
I don't kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, "Whoa, I'm way too high!"
-- Bruce Baum --
I don't know what's wrong with my television set. I was getting C-Span and the Home Shopping Network on the same station. I actually bought a congressman.
-- Bruce Baum --
The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
-- Stephen Bayley --
I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp: I know what I ought to do, but I don't know where to begin.
-- Stephen Bayne --
Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
-- Louise Beal --
Too few people truly understand a good sandwich.
-- James Beard --
Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore.
-- Cecil Beaton --
The truly fashionable are beyond fashion.
-- Cecil Beaton --
In all those expressions of conscious beauty, which when imitated become clumsy, or arrogant, or ridiculous, there is a manifestation of what Hollywood cannot destroy.
-- Cecil Beaton, on Greta Garbo --
There are things that get whispered about that writers are there to overhear.
-- Ann Beattie --
"Oscar night" is enjoyable in the way that bobbing for apples is enjoyable. You can't take the game seriously.
-- Warren Beatty --
It is not necessary to believe things in order to reason about them.
-- Beaumarchais --
The ideal of the average western man is a woman who freely accepts his domination, who does not accept his ideas without discussions, but who yields to his arguments, who resists him intellectually, and ends by being convinced.
-- Simone de Beauvoir --
One's life has value so long as one attribute value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion.
-- Simone de Beauvoir --
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
-- Simone de Beauvoir --
In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.
-- Simone de Beauvoir --
No one can really know the life of his own day, let alone that of times long past. Always the historian sees as in a mirror darkly, the reds and golds rendered drab by the shadows of time.
-- Earl R. Beck --
Better are the blows of a friend than the false kisses of an enemy.
-- Thomas a Becket --
There are two golden rules for an orchestra; start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
-- Thomas Beecham --
Good music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and quits the memory with difficulty.
-- Thomas Beecham --
When inviting company, do not tempt the palate with a great variety of unhealthful dainties.
-- Catherine Beecher --
The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor; and no man can tell what becomes of his influence.
-- Henry W. Beecher --
It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secrets acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
It is not what we intend but what we do that makes us useful.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
The cynic puts all human actions into two classes: openly bad and secretly bad.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
He who hunts for flowers will find flowers; and he who loves weeds may find weeds.
-- H. W. Beecher --
Nowhere can one find so miscellaneous, so various an amount of knowledge as is contained in a good newspaper.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
We grow best when clouds hang over us because clouds bear rain and rain refreshes us.
-- H. W. Beecher --
I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
Every man should have a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
-- H. W. Beecher --
A proud man is seldom a grateful man for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
-- H. W. Beecher --
God pardons like a mother kisses away the tears of a repentant child.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself.
-- H. W. Beecher --
Fear is a kind of bell ...it is the soul's signal for rallying.
-- H. W. Beecher --
Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
-- H. W. Beecher --
Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.
-- H. W. Beecher --
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
You cannot teach a child to take care of himself unless you will let him take care of himself. He will make mistakes, and out of these mistakes will come his wisdom.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
Conceit is the most incurable disease that is known to the human soul.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
There are many persons who look on Sunday as a sponge to wipe out the sins of the week.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
In this world, often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
The head learns new things, but the heart forever more practices old experiences.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
Every charitable act is a stepping-stone toward heaven.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
A man should fear when he enjoys only the good he does publicly. Is it not publicity rather than charity, which he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities?
-- Henry Ward Beecher --
No great advance has been made in science, politics or religion without controversy.
-- Lyman Beecher --
Never chase a lie; let it alone and it will soon run itself to death.
-- Lyman Beecher --
I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
-- Sir Max Beerbohm --
To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.
-- Max Beerbohm --
There is much to be said for failure. It is more interesting than success.
-- Max Beerbohm --
Man sinks almost to the level of an animal when eating becomes his chief pleasure.
-- Ludwig Von Beethoven --
I will seize Fate by the throat; It shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven --
Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.
-- Aphra Behn --
You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're having a good day.
-- Daniel Behrman --
You can cage the singer but not the song.
-- Harry Belafonte --
If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea.
-- David Belasco --
Evaluate what you want - because what gets measured, gets produced.
-- James A. Belasco --
Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
-- Alexander Graham Bell --
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
-- Alexander Graham Bell --
A man who talks a great deal talks a great deal of nonsense; he who talks very little hardly ever talks sense.
-- Hilaire Belloc --
I'm tired of love, i'm still more tired of rhyme, but money gives me pleasure all the time.
-- Hilaire Belloc --
She was what we used to call a suicide blonde - dyed by her own hand.
-- Saul Bellow --
Nobody likes being written about in their lifetime, it's as though the FBI and the CIA were suddenly to splash your files in the paper.
-- Saul Bellow --
The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absentmindedness is spurious innocence.
-- Saul Bellow --
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
-- Saul Bellow --
There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort.
-- Eleanor Robson Belmont --
England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example.
-- Robert Benchley --
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at the moment.
-- Robert Benchley --
I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.
-- Robert Benchley --
There seems to be no limits to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them. They can't believe that anything could be so funny just on its own hook.
-- Robert Benchley --
My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.
-- Robert Benchley --
In America there are two classes of travel; first class and with children.
-- Robert Benchley --
Drawing on my fine command of the language, I said nothing.
-- Robert Benchley --
If you think that you have caught a cold, call in a good doctor. Call in three good doctors and play bridge.
-- Robert Benchley --
If we justify war it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed.
-- Ruth Benedict --
Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future.
-- Ruth Benedict --
A man's indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.
-- Ruth Benedict --
We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong. We though because we had power, we had wisdom.
-- Stephen Vincent Benet --
In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben-Gurion --
It is well, when judging a friend, to remember he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
-- A. Bennett --
We were put to dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
-- Alan Bennett --
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
-- Alan Bennett --
A cause is like champagne and high heels – one must be prepared to suffer for it.
-- Arnold Bennett --
You are not in charge of the universe; you are in charge of yourself.
-- Arnold Bennett --
To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.
-- Arnold Bennett --
Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.
-- Arnold Bennett --
I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else; hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.
-- Arnold Bennett --
Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.
-- Arnold Bennett --
A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating.
-- Arnold Bennett --
It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
-- Arnold Bennett --
The man of thirty who loves for the first time is usually the embodiment of cautious discretion. He does not fall in love with a violent descent, but rather lets himself gently down, continually testing the rope.
-- Arnold Bennett --
The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
-- Thomas Arnold Bennett --
I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.
-- Tony Bennett --
Blessed is he who expects no gratitude, for he shall not be disappointed.
-- W. C. Bennett --
Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.
-- William Bennett --
Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.
-- Warren Bennis --
Managers are people who do things right, and leaders are people who do the right thing.
-- Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus --
Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air.
-- Jack Benny --
A recipe is only a theme which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation.
-- Madame Benoit --
It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps on to see, not, perhaps, the way out, but the way in.
-- A. C. Benson --
I believe in instinct, not in reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong.
-- A. C. Benson --
One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
-- A. C. Benson --
They know, they just know where to grow, how to dupe you, and how to camouflage themselves among the perfectly respectable plants, they just know, and therefore, I've concluded weeds must have brains.
-- Dianne Benson --
None of us wants to be average. That we are so is a melancholy fact borne in upon us in middle life, and we do not always relish it.
-- Margaret Benson --
If we all wore crowns, the kings would go bareheaded.
-- R. H. Benson --
A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old.
-- Jeremy Bentham --
The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
-- Jeremy Bentham --
One should not exaggerate the importance of trifles. Life, for instance, is much too short to be taken seriously.
-- Nicolas Bentley --
The good may prove to be a hidden form of evil. The evil may prove to be a new and not yet recognized form of good.
-- Nicholas Berdyaev --
I wish I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
-- Bernard Berenson --
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
-- Bernard Berenson --
All of the arts - poetry, music, ritual, the visible arts, the theater - must singly and together create the most comprehensive art of all: a humanized society, and its masterpiece, free man.
-- Bernard Berenson --
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
-- Jose Bergamin --
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
-- John Berger --
At times, failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
-- John Berger --
Reinhart was never his mother's favorite - and he was an only child.
-- Thomas Berger --
Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that's really where you wish they were.
-- George E. Bergman --
After years of playing with images of life and death, life has made me shy.
-- Ingmar Bergman --
I am not a writer. My plays and scripts are skeletons awaiting sinew.
-- Ingmar Bergman --
Old age is like climbing a mountain. You climb from ledge to ledge. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your views become more extensive.
-- Ingmar Bergman --
I always wanted to do comedies but nobody discovered this until my old age. They think all Swedes are like Garbo.
-- Ingrid Bergman --
I've never sought success in order to get fame and money; it's the talent and the passion that count in success.
-- Ingrid Bergman --
It is the emotion which drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.
-- Hens Bergson --
A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.
-- Milton Berle --
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business.
-- Irving Berlin --
Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.
-- Irving Berlin --
Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience.
-- Isaiah Berlin --
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Henry Berlioz --
The sooner you are there (at the airport), the sooner you will find out how long you will be delayed.
-- Shelley Berman --
To be able to find joy in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness.
-- Georges Bernanos --
Journalism is the only thinkable alternative to working.
-- Jeffrey Bernard --
Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.
-- Sandra Bernhardt --
The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing.
-- Carl Bernstein --
The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed garbage.
-- Carl Bernstein --
It would be nice to hear someone accidentally whistle something of mine, somewhere, just once.
-- Leonard Bernstein --
You can't win all the time. There are guys out there who are better than you.
-- Yogi Berra --
You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
-- Yogi Berra --
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
-- Yogi Berra --
The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.
-- John Berry --
A good idea plus capable men cannot fail; it is better than money in the bank.
-- John Berry --
Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
-- Mary Frances Berry --
The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.
-- Wendell Berry --
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so... And moreover my mother taught me as a boy (repeatingly) "ever to confess you're bored means you have no inner resources."
-- John Berryman --
We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.
-- Andre Berthiaume --
For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.
-- Henry Beston --
Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.
-- Mary McLeod Bethune --
Friendly attacks should begin with faint praise, but be careful not to use adjectives or phrases of which the publisher can make use in advertisements.
-- John Betjeman --
Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber.
-- Ugo Betti --
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road: they get run over.
-- Aneurin Bevan --
He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind. He does not have to struggle with the crowded pulsations of a fecund imagination.
-- Aneurin Bevan, on Neville Chamberlain --
Much better to do one's own work, even if you have to do it imperfectly, than it is to do somebody else's work perfectly.
-- Bhagavad-Gita --
There is nothing lost or wasted in this life.
-- Bhagavad-Gita --
When a thing is true, there is no need to use any arguments to substantiate it.
-- Vinoba Bhave --
One of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.
-- Niels Bhor --
He is invariably in a hurry. Being in a hurry is one of the tributes he pays to life.
-- Elizabeth Bibesco --
The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
-- Georges Bidault --
International arbitration can be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoldering one.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Responsibility: a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Knowledge: The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Dentist: a prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coins out of your pocket.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
The gambling known as business looks with austere displeasure upon the business known as gambling.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Future: that period of time when our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
When Eve first saw her reflection in a pool, she sought Adam and accused him of infidelity.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Clergyman: A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Consul: in American politics, a person who, having failed to secure an office from the people, is given one by the administration on condition that he leave the country.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
The ocean is a body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Hospitality: The virtue that induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Day: n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary --
Absurdity, noun: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" --
Here's to woman! Would that we could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary --
An international political alliance is the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Peace - in international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Politics - a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Beauty: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Philosophy: a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
The covers of this book are too far apart.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" --
Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Fashion: A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Optimism: The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
-- Ambrose Bierce --
The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force, but of dedication, of moral persuasion.
-- Steve Biko --
Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
-- Josh Billings --
Fame is climbing a greasy pole for ten dollars and ruining trousers worth fifteen dollars.
-- Josh Billings --
Most people repent of their sins by thanking God they ain't so wicked as their neighbors.
-- Josh Billings --
Ambition is like hunger; it obeys no law but its appetite.
-- Josh Billings --
The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.
-- Josh Billings --
As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.
-- Josh Billings --
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
-- Josh Billings --
A man with a small head is like a pin without any, very apt to get into things beyond his depth.
-- Josh Billings --
Man is my brother, and I am nearer related to him through his vices than I am through his virtue.
-- Josh Billings --
Nature never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.
-- Josh Billings --
I don't care how much a man talks if he only says it in a few words.
-- Josh Billings --
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
-- Josh Billings --
Solitude: a good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.
-- Josh Billings --
There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together
-- Josh Billings --
The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.
-- Josh Billings --
When a man gets talking about himself, he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.
-- Josh Billings --
Better that a girl has beauty than brains, because boys see better than they think.
-- Josh Billings --
Friendship is like earthenware, once broken it can be mended; Love is like a mirror, once broken that ends it.
-- Josh Billings --
Advice is like castor oil, easy to give, but dreadful to take.
-- Josh Billings --
There are people so addicted to exaggeration they can't tell the truth without lying.
-- Josh Billings --
If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.
-- Josh Billings --
The best time to hold your tongue is the time when you feel you must say something or bust.
-- Josh Billings --
There's lots of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.
-- Josh Billings --
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
-- Josh Billings --
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
-- Josh Billings --
Genuine grief is like penitence, not glamorous, but subdued.
-- Josh Billings --
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing well those cards you hold.
-- Josh Billings --
The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.
-- Josh Billings --
The road to ruin is always kept in good repair, and the travelers pay the expense of it.
-- Josh Billings --
Every man has a perfect right to his opinion, provided it agrees with ours.
-- Josh Billings --
It is very easy to manage your neighbor's business, but our own sometimes bothers us.
-- Josh Billings --
The Devil is the father of lies, but he neglected to patent the idea. and the business now suffers from competition.
-- Josh Billings --
I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.
-- Josh Billings --
I have seen hypocrisy that was so artful that it was good judgment to be deceived by it.
-- Josh Billings --
The morning paper is just as necessary to an American as dew is to the grass.
-- Josh Billings --
In youth, we run into difficulties. And in old age, difficulties run into us.
-- Josh Billings --
It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; We can dodge an elephant but we can't dodge a fly.
-- Josh Billings --
There are two things in this life for which we are never fully prepared, and that is twins.
-- Josh Billings --
There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't.
-- Josh Billings --
Fiftieth birthdays should be times of huge goodwill. Only people who put on fake tan and pretend to be younger than they are don't get to join the party.
-- Maeve Binchy --
I had to face the facts. I was pear shaped. I was a bit depressed because I hate pears. 'Specially their shape.
-- Charlotte Bingham --
Push yourself again and again. Don't give an inch until the final buzzer sounds.
-- Larry Bird --
A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.
-- Larry Bird --
I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they are still going.
-- Lord Birkett --
Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.
-- Augustine Birrell --
(Those born in November) ... should prize the topaz's amber hue - emblem of friends and lovers true.
-- Birthstone Rhymes --
We get so much in the habit of wearing a disguise before others that we eventually appear disguised before ourselves.
-- Jim Bishop --
Passions are like the trout in a pond; one devours the others until only one fat old trout is left.
-- Otto von Bismarck --
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
-- Otto von Bismarck --
When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.
-- Otto von Bismarck --
Politics is the art of the possible.
-- Otto von Bismarck --
With a gentleman, I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
-- Otto von Bismarck --
A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.
-- Otto von Bismarck --
The chance of bread falling with the buttered side up is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
-- Arthur Black --
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.
-- William Blackstone --
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffers.
-- William Blackstone --
For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.
-- Elizabeth Blackwell --
This is not the time for sound bites. I can feel the hand of history on our shoulders.
-- Tony Blair, on talks with Northern Ireland --
The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.
-- Tony Blair --
Most of the worthwhile, the beautiful, the progressive, and the useful achievements of Homo sapiens had been produced by introverted neurotics.
-- Anne Blaisdell --
If I'd known I was gonna live this long (100 years), I'd have taken better care of myself.
-- Eubie Blake --
Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind; listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody.
-- Eubie Blake --
A robin red breast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage.
-- William Blake --
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
-- William Blake --
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
-- William Blake --
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
-- William Blake --
When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
-- William Blake --
It's not that women try to do too much. It's that women have too much to do.
-- Mary Kay Blakely --
The obstacles you face are ... mental barriers which can be broken by adopting a more positive approach.
-- Clarence Blasier --
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our buried hopes.
-- Lady Blessington --
Mountains appear more lofty the nearer they are approached, but great men resemble them not in this particular.
-- Lady Blessington --
There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.
-- Allan Bloom --
Fashion matters considerably more than horoscopes, rather more than dog shows, and slightly more than hockey.
-- Roy Blount, Jr. --
As dreams are the fancies of those that sleep, so fancies are but the dreams of those awake.
-- Sir Thomas Pope Blount --
I have a great diet. Eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.
-- Ed Bluestone --
If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.
-- Judy Blume --
I learned to trust my obsessions. It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
-- Robert Bly --
Let us not say, every man is the architect of his own fortune; but let us say, every man is the architect of his own character.
-- G. D. Boardman --
They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world. Someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
-- Tom Bodett --
The good life is the healthful life, the merry life. Life is health, joy, laughter.
-- Jean Bodin --
Actors have always been a suspect breed. Socially, I find myself more admissible now in England because I've written books.
-- Dirk Bogarde --
Money has only one use - to give one independence from his enemies.
-- Humphrey Bogart --
A hot dog at the ball game beats roast beef at the Ritz.
-- Humphrey Bogart --
Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.
-- Humphrey Bogart --
The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
-- Humphrey Bogart --
When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
-- John B. Bogart --
In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.
-- David Bohm --
Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
-- Niels Bohr --
Gold gives even to plainness the color of beauty.
-- Nicolas Boileau --
Your families are extremely proud of you. You can't imagine the sense of relief they are experiencing. This would be a most opportune time to ask for money.
-- Gary Bolding, in a commencement speech --
The king has been very good to me. He promoted me from a simple maid to be a marchioness. Then he raised me to be a queen. Now he will raise me to a martyr.
-- Anne Boleyn --
Airline travel is hours of boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror.
-- Al Boliska --
One of the saddest lines in the world is, "Oh come now - be realistic." The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and gave them horses to ride.
-- Richard Nelson Bolles --
A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.
-- Robert Bolton --
To use a method is to compare the realm of mind to a stool. The true thinker walks freely.
-- Godfried Bomans --
The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean.
-- Erma Bombeck --
What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
-- Erma Bombeck --
Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the door handles still intact.
-- Erma Bombeck --
Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class, or, on special occasions, for the working class.
-- Erma Bombeck --
In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV.
-- Erma Bombeck --
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
-- Erma Bombeck --
I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away.
-- Erma Bombeck --
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
-- Erma Bombeck --
People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow room to grow.
-- Erma Bombeck --
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, "I used everything you gave me."
-- Erma Bombeck --
When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.
-- Erma Bombeck --
I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of a hill.
-- Erma Bombeck --
For some unexplained reason, it's always the other end of the table that's wild and raucous, with screaming laughter and a fella who plays "Holiday for Strings" on water glasses.
-- Erma Bombeck --
Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they're not trying to keep up with you.
-- Erma Bombeck --
As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.
-- Erma Bombeck --
There is no legitimacy on earth but in a government which is the choice of the nation.
-- Joseph Bonaparte --
Come, let us give a little time to folly, and even in a melancholy day let us find time for an hour of pleasure.
-- Saint Bonaventura --
The test of morality of a society is what it does for its children.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer --
The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer --
Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer --
In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer --
It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.
-- Margaret Bonnano --
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, o Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.
-- Book of Common Prayer --
Give, and it shall be given to you. For whatever measure you deal out to others, it will be dealt to you in return.
-- Book of Luke --
All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.
-- Daniel Boone --
Although politicians hold no monopoly on speaking without thinking, they certainly have a knack for it.
-- Louis E. Boone --
Formerly a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary, to keep him properly in the public eye.
-- Daniel Boorstin --
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
-- Daniel Boorstin --
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
-- Daniel Boorstin --
When the gods wish to punish us, they make us believe our own advertising.
-- Daniel Boorstin --
I've never been married, but I tell people I'm divorced so they won't think something's wrong with me.
-- Elayne Boosler --
Laundry's easier when you live alone. Fifteen minutes before a date, put 'em on, dry 'em with a hair blower.
-- Elayne Boosler --
My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions.
-- Elayne Boosler --
I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.
-- Elayne Boosler --
A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together.
-- James H. Boren --
There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.
-- Jorge Luis Borges --
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.
-- Jorge Luis Borges --
You can't measure life in days the way you do money in dollars, because every day is different.
-- Jorge Luis Borges --
In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.
-- Jorge Luis Borges --
Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
-- Jorge Luis Borges --
You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.
-- Hal Borland --
I, who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.
-- James Boswell --
Nothing really sets human nature free but self-control.
-- Paul Bottome --
Where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness.
-- Phyllis Bottome --
There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them.
-- Phyllis Bottome --
Anyone who believes the exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
-- Kenneth Boulding --
When a man can observe himself suffering, and is able, later, to describe what he's gone through, that means he was born for literature.
-- Edouard Bourdet --
Good talk is like good scenery - continuous, yet constantly varying, and full of the charm of novelty and surprise.
-- Randolph Bourne --
Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?
-- Jim Bouton --
The same wind that carries one vessel into port may blow another off shore.
-- C. N. Bovee --
Active natures are rarely melancholy; Activity and sadness are incompatible.
-- C. N. Bovee --
Kindess is a language the mute can speak and the deaf can hear.
-- Christian Bovee --
Honesty is not only the first step toward greatness - it is greatness itself.
-- C. N. Bovee --
Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.
-- C. N. Bovee --
On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do.
-- Elizabeth Bowen --
It is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.
-- Elizabeth Bowen --
The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
-- Elizabeth Bowen --
When I hear of an “equity” in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room – looking for a black hat – which isn't there.
-- Lord Bowen --
I want to be a Frank Sinatra figure. And I will succeed.
-- David Bowie --
It wasn't why he painted a Campbell's soup can. It was "What sort of man paints a Campbell's soup can?" That's what aggravates people.
-- David Bowie, on Andy Warhol --
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
-- David Bowie --
Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand why cookbooks outsell sex books three to one.
-- L. M. Boyd --
You are not as bright as you feel after the second drink.
-- Meg Bracken --
What most of us are after, when we have a picture taken, is a good natural-looking picture that doesn't resemble us.
-- Peg Bracken --
I've noticed your hostility towards him - I ought to have guessed you were friends.
-- Malcolm Bradbury --
The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.
-- Malcolm Bradbury --
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
-- Ray Bradbury --
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
-- Ray Bradbury --
Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.
-- Ray Bradbury --
I love writing, it's the center of my life. If you don't love what you do, you'd better find something else to love. Otherwise, you don't have a reason for living.
-- Ray Bradbury --
Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it.
-- Ray Bradbury --
I've found two gray hairs in my head the week before last, and an impertinent crow has planted a delicate impression of his foot under my right eye.
-- Mary Elizabeth Braddon --
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.
-- Gen. Omar Bradley --
Far from being a handicap to command, compassion is the measure of it. For unless one values the lives of his soldiers and is tormented by their ideals, he is unfit to command.
-- Omar N. Bradley --
Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
-- Gen. Omar N. Bradley --
Leadership is intangible, and therefore no weapon ever designed can replace it.
-- Gen. Omar N. Bradley --
Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.
-- Gen. Omar N. Bradley --
I've never met a person, I don't care what his condition, in whom I could not see possibilities.
-- Preston Bradley --
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. If we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
-- Anne Bradstreet --
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
-- Anne Bradstreet --
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
-- Harriet Braiker --
Snobbery is the pride of those who are not sure of their position.
-- Berton Braley --
Like mothers, taxes are often misunderstood, but seldom forgotten.
-- Lord Bramwell --
Why is the king of hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?
-- James Branch --
When fantasy turns you on, you're obligated to God and nature to start doing it right away.
-- Stewart Brand --
If we would be guided by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.
-- Louis D. Brandeis --
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
-- Louis Brandeis --
I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.
-- Louis D. Brandeis --
If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.
-- Marlon Brando --
The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.
-- Marlon Brando --
There would be no pleasure properly so called if a man were sure to win. It is the reconciling of uncertainty to our desires that creates the satisfaction.
-- Frederick Brandt --
A heretic is a fellow who disagrees with you regarding something neither of you knows anything about.
-- William Cowper Brann --
Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share, and sought advantage over no one.
-- Robert Brault --
Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
-- Robert Brault --
With every new answer unfolded, science has consistently discovered at least three new questions.
-- Wernher Von Braun --
For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.
-- Wernher Von Braun --
I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
-- Wernher von Braun --
The source of status is no longer the ability to make things but simply the ability to purchase them.
-- Harry Braverman --
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well-informed about the United States.
-- J. Bartlet Brebner --
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
-- Bertolt Brecht --
Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.
-- Bertolt Brecht --
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
-- Bertolt Brecht --
Because I don't trust him, we are friends.
-- Bertolt Brecht --
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.
-- Marjorie Barstow Breenbie --
Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. the poor know that it is money.
-- Gerald Brenan --
A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children.
-- David Brenner --
As a reporter, I like to keep in the middle and be disliked by both sides.
-- Jimmy Breslin --
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
-- Robert Bresson --
When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration.
-- Robert Bresson --
All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.
-- Andre Breton --
Diligence is that energy and industry which we show when we do what we like.
-- E. C. Brewer --
I know that if odor were visible, as color is, I'd see the summer garden in rainbow clouds.
-- Robert Bridges --
There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.
-- Percy Williams Bridgman --
Animals feed; man eats. Only the man of intellect knows how to eat.
-- Brillat-Savarin --
It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant --
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant --
No man is an island, but some of us are pretty long peninsulas.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant --
My life has a superb cast, but I cannot figure out the plot.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant --
When something bad happens to me, I think I'm able to deal with it in a pretty good way. That makes me lucky. Some people fall apart at the first little thing that happens.
-- Christie Brinkley --
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
-- David Brinkley --
To be constantly skeptical is to believe in doubt, which is after all a form of faith.
-- Crane Brinton --
The vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.
-- William Broad --
Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.
-- Lou Brock --
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
-- David Broder --
Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off.
-- Paul Brodeur --
A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.
-- Fawn M. Brodie --
Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain.
-- Fawn M. Brodie --
The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
-- Jacob Bronowski --
The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.
-- Jacob Bronowski --
I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.
-- Charlotte Bronte --
A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years.
-- Rupert Brooke --
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks --
Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.
-- Garth Brooks --
With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.
-- Gwendolyn Brooks --
Directing is preventing the bad picture from happening, rather than making the good movie.
-- James L. Brooks --
Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.
-- Mel Brooks --
I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.
-- Mel Brooks --
It is almost as presumptuous to think you can do nothing as to think you can do everything.
-- Phillips Brooks --
Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
-- Phillips Brooks --
Emerson advised his fellow townsmen to manufacture schoolteachers and make them the best in the world.
-- Van Wyck Brooks --
Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
-- Joyce Brothers --
Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.
-- Dr. Joyce Brothers --
Marriage is not just spiritual communion; It is also remembering to take out the trash.
-- Joyce Brothers --
Listening, not imitation, may be the sheerest form of flattery.
-- Joyce Brothers --
My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my needs.
-- Brotherton --
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive, easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
-- Henry Brougham --
Being a well-dressed man is a career, and he who goes in for it has no time for anything else.
-- Heywood Broun --
Almost nobody means precisely what he says when he makes the declaration, "I'm in favor of free speech."
-- Heywood Broun --
The underdog can and will lick his weight in the wildcats of the world.
-- Heywood Broun --
Repartee is what you wish you'd said.
-- Heywood Broun --
The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil.
-- Heywood Broun --
Brotherhood is not just a bible word. Out of comradeship can come and will come the happy life for all.
-- Heywood Broun --
Sports do not build character. They reveal it.
-- Heywood Hale Broun --
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip, and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.
-- Charlie Brower --
I have always thought the nuclear threat was blown way out of proportion. I have a feeling our descendants are going to look back at all this nuclear hysteria from the bottom of their toxic waste dumps and laugh their feelers off. Philosophically, I would much rather die in a nuclear holocaust along with three or four hundred million of my fellow world citizens than die alone in the gutter from some chemical induced cancer. I suppose that's because I'm basically a people person.
-- A. Whitney Brown --
Actually, I became a vegetarian not so much because I love animals but because I hate plants. I still like to hunt though. In fact, I've found that plants are a lot easier than animals to sneak up on.
-- A. Whitney Brown --
Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Kuwait.
-- A. Whitney Brown --
There must be millions of people all over the world who never get any love letters - I could be their leader.
-- Charlie Brown --
The only reason you were born was to be better than your parents and to make this world better for your children.
-- Drew Brown --
Spy and the world spies with you; get caught and you're on your own.
-- G. Brown --
Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and integrity, they think of you.
-- H. Jackson Brown Jr. --
Opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor.
-- H. Jackson Brown Jr. --
Time is God's way to keep everything from happening at once.
-- James Brown --
Reasoning with a child is fine, If you can reach the child's reason without destroying your own.
-- John Mason Brown --
How prophetic L'Enfant was when he laid out Washington D. C. as a city that goes around in circles.
-- John Mason Brown --
Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
-- Les Brown --
Review your goals twice every day in order to be focused on achieving them.
-- Les Brown --
Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.
-- Les Brown --
Your goals are the road maps that guide you and show you what is possible for your life.
-- Les Brown --
You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail. Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path.
-- Les Brown --
You know you're old when you have lost all your marvels.
-- Merry Brown --
Sisters don't need words. They have perfected a language of snarls and smiles and frowns and winks - expressions of shocked surprise and incredulity and disbelief. Sniffs and snorts and gasps and sighs - that can undermine any tale you're telling.
-- Pam Brown --
If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater.
-- Pam Brown --
You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans are suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
Once you know what women are like, men get kind of boring.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If somebody drives it off a cliff, that's it.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people of earth.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.
-- Rita Mae Brown --
The only person who listens to both sides of an argument is the fellow in the next apartment.
-- Ruth Brown --
The blues itself knows no color line. It is about people learning how to go inside themselves and touch something. The blues is like vocal crying. It is a way for a man to cry with dignity.
-- Ruth Brown --
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown --
It costs to be stupid. The stupider you are, the more it costs.
-- Sherrill Brown --
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well.
-- Steve Brown --
The sweetest sounds to mortals given; are heard in mother, home and heaven.
-- William Goldsmith Brown --
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike
-- Thomas Browne --
It is a brave act to despise death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.
-- Sir Thomas Browne --
A man may be in as just possession of truth as a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
-- Sir Thomas Browne --
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
-- Sir Thomas Browne --
Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, by reiteration chiefly.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning --
I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement, as the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning --
What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning --
Since when was genius found respectable?
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning --
When the fight begins within himself, a man's worth something.
-- Robert Browning --
The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.
-- Lenny Bruce --
You are more likely to act yourself into feelings, than feel yourself into action.
-- Jerome Brunner --
New Yorkers are nice about giving street directions - in fact, they seem proud of knowing where they are themselves.
-- Katherine Brush --
Weep not that the world changes - did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.
-- William Cullen Bryant --
Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.
-- James Bryce --
Medicine: the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence.
-- James Bryce --
I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted - stay up all night or eat ice cream straight out of the container.
-- Bill Bryson --
It is the mistake of youth to think imagination a substitute for experience; it is the mistake of age to think experience a substitute for intelligence.
-- Lyman Bryson --
True ecstasy hails neither from spirit nor from nature, but from the union of these two.
-- Martin Buber --
The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.
-- Martin Buber --
Solitude is the place of purification.
-- Martin Buber --
The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.
-- John Buchan --
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
-- Edna Buchanan --
I always warn aspiring reporters to observe three basic rules: 1. Never trust an editor; 2. Never trust an editor; 3. Never trust an editor.
-- Edna Buchanan --
There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.
-- Frank Buchman --
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.
-- Art Buchwald --
It is indeed exasperating to have a memory that begins too young and continues too long.
-- Pearl Buck --
None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
-- Pearl S. Buck --
Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
-- Pearl S. Buck --
One faces the future with one's past.
-- Pearl S. Buck --
All civilized men want peace. And all truly civilized men must despise pacifism.
-- William F. Buckley --
There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.
-- William F. Buckley, Jr. --
The Beatles are not merely awful ... they are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic.
-- William F. Buckley, Jr. --
Never in this world can hatred be stilled by hatred; it will be stilled only by non-hatred - this is the law eternal.
-- The Buddha --
As a solid rock is not shaken by a strong gale, so wise persons remain unaffected by praise or censure.
-- Buddha --
Times of luxury do not last long, but pass away very quickly; nothing in this world can be long enjoyed.
-- Buddha --
Sound health is the greatest of gifts; contentedness, the greatest of riches; trust the greatest of qualities.
-- Buddha --
Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
-- Buddha --
Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.
-- Buddha --
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
-- Buddha --
Do not dwell in the past. Do not dream of the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment.
-- Buddha --
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
-- Buddha --
When you have gained a victory, do not push it too far.
-- Eustace Budgell --
You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.
-- Frederick Buechner --
It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sheriock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
-- Frederick Buechner --
It has been said that cigarettes are the only product that, if used according to the manufacturer's instructions, have a very high chance of killing you.
-- Michael Buerk --
Advertising - the driving force behind supply-and-demand economics: the stimulation of demand for useless products through the supply of misleading claims.
-- Chaz Bufe --
Wall street is the only place people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from people who take the subway.
-- Warren Buffett --
In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitations on stupidity.
-- Warren Buffett --
Investment must be rational. If you can't understand it, don't do it.
-- Warren Buffett --
Rule Number One: Never lose money. Rule Number Two: Never forget Rule Number One.
-- Warren Buffett --
We might have had a two party system, but one of the two parties would be in office and the other in prison.
-- Nikolai Bukharin --
Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and eight times out of nine, I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.
-- Charles Bukowski --
The difference between a Democracy and a Dictatorship is that in a Democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a Dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.
-- Charles Bukowski --
You must have the score (music) in your head, not your head in the score.
-- Hans von Bulow --
Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.
-- Bulwer --
Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness; and concealed often hardens into revenge.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton --
It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when he loves.
-- Baron Bulwer-Lytton --
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
-- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton --
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton --
Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.
-- Bulwer-Lytton --
Everyone who observes vigilantly and observes steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton --
A fool flatters himself; the wise man flatters the fool.
-- Bulwer-Lytton --
The cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton --
Most people are brave only in the dangers to which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or practice.
-- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton --
Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.
-- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton --
No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton --
Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset.
-- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton --
The prudent person may direct a state, but it is the enthusiast who regenerates or ruins it.
-- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton --
There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache.
-- Henry Bulwer-Lytton --
Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than winning an Oscar. Nothing in the world would make me accept it. I wouldn't have it in my home.
-- Luis Bunuel --
There was a man, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away, the more he had.
-- John Bunyan --
Dust is a protective coating for fine furniture.
-- Mario Burata --
Men should stop fighting among themselves and start fighting insects.
-- Luther Burbank --
The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.
-- Robert Burchfield --
Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.
-- Julie Burchill --
Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there.
-- Virginia Burden --
There are two days in the week when I never worry: one is yesterday, the other is tomorrow.
-- Robert Burdette --
You've got to create a dream. You've got to uphold the dream. If you can't, go back to the factory or go back to the desk.
-- Eric Burdon --
In biblical times, a man could have as many wives as he could afford. Just like today.
-- Abigail Van Buren --
Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
-- Abigail Van Buren --
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone
-- Anthony Burgess --
When a person visits you, remember he's your guest; receive him very kindly, and be sure he has the best.
-- Gelett Burgess --
When the waitress puts the dinner on the table, the old men look at the dinner. The young men look at the waitress.
-- Gelett Burgess --
If you stop and think about it, you'll realize that three out of four persons do not know exactly what they're doing a large part of the time.
-- Gelett Burgess --
A woman and a mouse, they carry a tale wherever they go.
-- Gelett Burgess --
If you want to say it with flowers, a single rose says: I'm cheap."
-- Delta Burke --
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
-- Edmund Burke --
Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend.
-- Edmund Burke --
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
-- Edmund Burke --
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
-- Edmund Burke --
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
-- Edmund Burke --
Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
-- Edmund Burke --
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke --
The people have been in the wrong, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.
-- Edmund Burke --
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
-- Edmund Burke --
Good order is the foundation of all things.
-- Edmund Burke --
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
-- Edmund Burke --
In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish. But the works of malice and injustice are finished with a bold, masterly hand.
-- Edmund Burke --
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
-- Edmund Burke --
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
-- Edmund Burke --
The elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our studies.
-- Edmund Burke --
The husband who doesn't tell his wife everything probably reasons that what she doesn't know won't hurt him.
-- Leo Burke --
Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.
-- Michael Burke --
When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.
-- Leo Burnett --
It's a delightful thing to think of perfection; but it's vastly more amusing to talk of errors and absurdities.
-- Fanny Burney --
Angels come in all sizes and shapes and colors, visible and invisible to the physical eye. But always you are changed from having seen one.
-- Sophy Burnham --
A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts.
-- Charles Wesley Burns --
Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
-- George Burns --
There were twelve kids in my family, and my mother's idea of liberation was to get into the kitchen.
-- George Burns --
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
-- George Burns --
I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than most western countries.
-- George Burns --
When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it's time to turn out the lights.
-- George Burns --
I smoke cigars because at my age, if I don't have something to hang on to I might fall down.
-- George Burns --
You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.
-- George Burns --
It's hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
-- George Burns --
I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than be a success at something I hate.
-- George Burns --
When I went to school, I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.
-- George Burns --
Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal. a good cigar, and a good woman - or a bad woman; it depends on how much happiness you can handle.
-- George Burns --
I have seen the Mississippi. That is muddy water. I have seen the St. Lawrence. That is crystal water. But the Thames is liquid history.
-- John Burns --
Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.
-- Robert Burns --
Some parents get better children than they deserve.
-- Raymond Burr --
All that I have accomplished has been by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant heap particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact.
-- Elihu Burritt --
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
-- John Burroughs --
Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.
-- William Burroughs --
I am an American and therefore what I do, however small, is of importance.
-- Struthers Burt --
When the chips are not exactly down but just scattered about, you discover who your real friends are.
-- Richard Burton --
A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.
-- Robert Burton --
If there is a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart.
-- Robert Burton --
Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well!
-- Barbara Bush --
Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens at the White House, but on what happens inside your house.
-- Barbara Bush --
I've watched so much Olympics that when Barbara asked me to move a piece of furniture, I asked her, "What's the degree of difficulty?"
-- George Bush --
Giving peace a chance does not mean taking a chance on peace.
-- George Bush --
I don't want to win? If that were the case, why the heck am I on the bus sixteen hours a day, shaking thousands of hands, giving hundred of speeches, getting pilloried in the press and cartoons and still staying on message to win?
-- George W. Bush --
Chew before you swallow.
-- George W. Bush, about his passing out while eating a pretzel --
I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.
-- George W. Bush --
The peaceful transfer of authority is rare in history, yet common in our country. With a simple oath, we affirm old traditions and make new beginnings.
-- George W. Bush --
By being myself I will distinguish myself from my father, because we're two separately different people.
-- George W. Bush --
No matter how old you are and no matter what you do, you can never escape your mother.
-- George W. Bush --
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
-- George W. Bush --
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing should be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler --
The lions would not eat Daniel; they would eat most anything but they drew the line at prophets.
-- Samuel Butler --
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
-- Samuel Butler --
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
-- Samuel Butler --
Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
-- Samuel Butler --
The body is but a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stewpan, and the whole fixed upon stilts.
-- Samuel Butler --
To live is to love; all reason is against it; instinct is for it.
-- Samuel Butler --
He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. It is in strife that life lies, and were there no opposing forces there would be neither moral nor immoral, neither victory nor defeat.
-- Samuel Butler --
All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
-- Samuel Butler --
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
-- Samuel Butler --
Example is not only the best way of propagating an opinion, but it is the only way worth taking into account.
-- Samuel Butler --
"The Ancient Mariner" would not have taken so well if it had been called "The Old Sailor."
-- Samuel Butler --
Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.
-- Samuel Butler --
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
-- Samuel Butler --
A definition is the enclosing of a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
-- Samuel Butler --
Though wisdom cannot be gotten with gold, still less can it be gotten without it.
-- Samuel Butler --
Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
-- Samuel Butler --
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
-- Samuel Butler --
An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.
-- Samuel Butler --
America was too big to have been discovered all at one time. It would have been better for the graces if it had been discovered in pieces of about the size of France or Germany at a time.
-- Samuel Butler --
If the better part of valor is discretion, how much more is not discretion the better part of vice?
-- Samuel Butler --
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
-- Samuel Butler --
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
-- Samuel Butler --
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
-- Samuel Butler --
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
-- Samuel Butler --
Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their hearts.
-- Martin Buxbaum --
You have not fulfilled every duty unless you have fulfilled that of being cheerful and pleasant.
-- C. Buxton --
The fact is, nothing comes; at least, nothing good. All has to be fetched.
-- Charles Buxton --
Silence is sometimes the severest criticism.
-- Charles Buxton --
Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul.
-- Charles Buxton --
A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable.
-- Richard E. Byrd --
A library, a garden, a grove, a purling stream, are the innocent scenes that divert our leisure
-- William Byrd --
Society is now one polish'd horde, formed of two might tribes, the bores and the bored.
-- Lord Byron --
No hand can make the clock strike for me the hours that are passed.
-- Byron --
All is to be feared where all is to be lost.
-- Lord Byron --
Man's love is of man's life a part; it is woman's whole existence.
-- Byron --
It is to be hoped that, with all the modern improvements, a mode will be discovered of getting rid of bores.
-- Lord Byron --
Here's a sigh to those who love me, and a smile to those who hate; and whatever sky's above me, here's a heart for every fate.
-- Lord Byron --
But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.
-- Lord Byron --
All who would win joy must share it - Happiness was born a twin.
-- Lord Byron --
It is the hour when from the boughs the nightingale's high note is heard.
-- Lord Byron --
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
-- Lord Byron --
'Tis strange - but true, for truth is always strange, Stranger than fiction.
-- Lord Byron --
I wish he would explain his explanation.
-- Lord Byron --
As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.
-- Lord Byron --
The American dream is that any citizen can rise to the highest office in the land. The British dream is that the Queen drops in for tea.
-- Michael Bywater --
Virtue has always been conceived of as victorious resistance to one's vital desire.
-- James Branch Cabell --
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.
-- James Branch Cabell --
I regret that I have but one life to live in San Francisco.
-- Herb Caen --
The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.
-- Sid Caesar --
The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.
-- Sid Caesar --
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.
-- Sid Caesar --
With me, a career was the simple matter of putting groceries on the table.
-- James Cagney --
It is an article of faith in my creed to pick the man who does not take himself seriously, but does take his work seriously.
-- Michael C. Cahill --
Do something for the joy of doing it and pray you won't be punished.
-- Sammy Cahn --
The sins of the flesh have always been very attractive to me - all of them.
-- Michael Caine --
The secret of negotiation is to harmonize the real interests of the parties concerned.
-- Francois de Calieres --
A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose.
-- Hortense Calisher --
A lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has its boots on.
-- James Callaghan --
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
-- Italo Calvino --
I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an extreme of their cycle and there is no imagining what new forms they may assume.
-- Italo Calvino --
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.
-- Helder Camara --
You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too.
-- Roy Campanella --
Quality isn't something that can be argued into an article or promised into it. It must be put there. If it isn't put there, the finest sales talk in the world won't act as a substitute.
-- C. G. Campbell --
Let me be a little kinder, let me be a little blinder to the faults of those around me.
-- Glenn Campbell --
The departure from the world is regarded not as a fault, but as the first step into that noble path at the remotest turn of which illumination is to be won.
-- Joseph Campbell --
Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall.
-- Joseph Campbell --
Tallulah Bankhead is always skating on thin ice. Everyone wants to be there when it breaks.
-- Mrs. Patrick Campbell --
Wedlock: The deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise.
-- Mrs. Patrick Campbell --
Golf is the only game in the world in which a precise knowledge of the rules can earn you a reputation for bad sportsmanship.
-- Patrick Campbell --
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but most certainly, without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
-- Albert Camus --
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Albert Camus --
With freedom of the press, nations are not sure of going toward justice and peace. But without it, they are sure of not going there.
-- Albert Camus --
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
-- Albert Camus --
I don't want to be a genius; I have enough problems just trying to be a man.
-- Albert Camus --
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having to ask any clear question.
-- Albert Camus --
I have said the world is absurd but I spoke too soon. All we can say is that this world in and of itself is not reasonable. What is absurd, though, is the conflict between this irrationality and man's desperate wish for intelligibility.
-- Albert Camus --
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
-- Albert Camus --
It is indeed true that we live in tragic times, but too many people confuse tragedy with despair.
-- Albert Camus --
If there is a sin against life, it lies perhaps less in despairing of it than in hoping for another and evading the implacable grandeur of the one we have.
-- Albert Camus --
Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction: therefore it destroys freedom.
-- Albert Camus --
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
-- Albert Camus --
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
-- Albert Camus --
Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into a liar than into a person telling the truth. Truth, like light, is blinding. Falsehood, on the other hand, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
-- Albert Camus --
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
-- Albert Camus --
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worst.
-- Albert Camus --
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
-- Albert Camus --
If it is true that talent recreates life while genius has the additional gift of crowning it with myths, Melville is first and foremost a creator of myths.
-- Albert Camus --
A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.
-- Albert Camus --
Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and "historical tasks" is an actual or potential assassin.
-- Albert Camus --
If you don't realize there is always somebody who knows how to do something better than you, then you don't give proper respect for others' talents.
-- Hortense Canady --
We are drawn to our television sets each year the way we are drawn to the scene of an accident.
-- Vincent Canby on the Academy Awards Show --
Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word "I."
-- Elias Canetti --
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
-- Elias Canetti --
When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.
-- Elias Canetti --
Some people think doctors and nurses can put scrambled eggs back into the shell.
-- Dorothy Canfield --
The two most common causes of divorce? Men and women.
-- Eddie Cantor --
I know one star in Hollywood who hasn't been spoiled by success and that is Mickey Mouse.
-- Eddie Cantor --
It takes twenty years to make an overnight success.
-- Eddie Cantor --
Many women are poor cooks only because their native greatness has been beaten down by ingratitude.
-- Robert Capon --
You can get much further with a kind word and a gun that you can get with a kind word alone.
-- Al Capone --
Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for a the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.
-- Truman Capote --
Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.
-- Truman Capote --
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
-- Truman Capote --
Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
-- Al Capp --
Art is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
-- Al Capp --
Make a blockbuster - you're the lion of the cocktail circuit. Make a bomb - you buy your own drinks.
-- Frank Capra --
We give them the love we can spare, the time we can spare. In return dogs have given us their absolute all. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.
-- Roger Caras --
All living things are manipulated. As long as there is a will, it is bent and twisted constantly. Only the dead are allowed the luxury of freedom, and then only because they want nothing, and therefore can't be thwarted.
-- Orson Scott Card --
If you're not English, you're a foreigner, so you must be sexy. It's an old British film cliche.
-- Claudia Cardinale --
Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more.
-- Benjamin Cardozo --
Unaccompanied Bach is for me one of the severest hardships of the calling of musical critic. It is probably good, even jolly, to play, but to have to listen to it is worse than breaking stones.
-- Neville Cardus --
I see my face in the mirror and go, "I'm a Halloween costume? That's what they think of me?"
-- Drew Carey --
I was raised by just my mom. See, my father died when I was eight years old. At least, that's what he told us in the letter.
-- Drew Carey --
The road winds up the hill to meet the height; Beyond the locust hedge it curves from sight - And yet no man would foolishly contend. That where he sees it not, it makes an end.
-- Emma Carleton --
I enjoy chaos and disorder, and not just because they help me professionally.
-- George Carlin --
Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.
-- George Carlin --
I don't like to lose my bearings, so I keep them in the cabinet near my bed.
-- George Carlin --
The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-- George Carlin --
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
-- George Carlin --
I saw a sign that said, "coming soon - a 24-hour restaurant." and I thought, "well, that's unusual. At least try it for a week or two, and see if you can build a clientele."
-- George Carlin --
As grown-ups, we never get to "wave bye-bye." I think it would be fun. "Steve, the boss is sailing for Europe; we're all going down to the dock to wave bye-bye."
-- George Carlin --
I think when you eat out you should have a little fun; it's good for digestion. Simple things. After the waiter recites a long list of specials, ask him if they serve cow feet.
-- George Carlin --
My parents chose what, at the time, was the very latest method of childbirth. You've heard of Lamaze? This was La Paz. The mother receives powerful narcotics, the father is sent to Bolivia, and the nurse does all the screaming.
-- George Carlin --
It is impossible to know accurately how you look in your sunglasses.
-- George Carlin --
If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
-- George Carlin --
They keep saying you can't compare apples and oranges. I can. An apple is red and distinctly non-spherical; an orange is orange and nearly spherical. So, what's the big problem?
-- George Carlin --
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
-- George Carlin --
As a matter of principle. I never attend the first annual anything.
-- George Carlin --
If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted?
-- George Carlin --
There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.
-- George Carlin --
Sometimes, when I'm told to use my own discretion, if no one is looking I'll use someone else's. But I always put it back.
-- George Carlin --
Do you know why hurricanes have names instead of numbers? To keep the killing personal. No one cares about a bunch of people killed by a number. "200 dead as Number Three slams ashore" is not nearly as interesting a headline as "Charlie kills 200." Death is much more satisfying and entertaining if you personalize it.
-- George Carlin --
Scientists announced today that they have discovered a cure for apathy. However, they claim no one has shown the slightest interest in it.
-- George Carlin --
After the Go-Gos sold three or four million albums, we thought we wouldn't be treated like an all-girl band anymore, but as a rock 'n' roll band. That never really worked.
-- Belinda Carlisle --
TV cameras seem to add ten pounds to me. So I make it a point never to eat TV cameras.
-- Kitty Carlisle --
Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Of all acts of man, repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Thought works in silence, so does virtue. One might erect statues to silence.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him. It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man!
-- Thomas Carlyle --
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.
-- Carlyle --
It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, give her the benefit of the doubt.
-- Thomas Carlyle --
A "fact" merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.
-- Bliss Carman --
Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
Concentrate your energy, thought, and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is all wrong. I tell you "put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket."
-- Andrew Carnegie --
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
You cannot push a man up a ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
Eight hours to work; Eight hours to play; Eight hours to sleep; seems the ideal division.
-- Andrew Carnegie --
Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.
-- Dale Carnegie --
You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.
-- Dale Carnegie --
The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
-- Dale Carnegie --
Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
-- Dale Carnegie --
The best things in life are yours, if you can appreciate yourself.
-- Dale Carnegie --
The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?
-- Dale Carnegie --
If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
-- Dale Carnegie --
Little acts of kindness, little words of love make our earth an Eden like heaven above.
-- Julia Carney --
What the historian is called on to investigate is what lies behind the act; and to this the conscious thought or motive of the individual actor may be quite irrelevant.
-- Edward Hallett Carr --
After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.
-- Emily Carr --
All students are gifted; Some just open their packages earlier than others.
-- Michael Carr --
The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed.
-- Alexis Carrel --
The difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism is simple: any criticism you give is constructive; any criticism you get is destructive.
-- Jon Carroll --
Curtsy while you're thinking what to say. It saves time.
-- Lewis Carroll --
They drew all manner of things – everything that begins with M, such as mousetraps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness.
-- Lewis Carroll --
Begin at the beginning ... and go on till you come to the end: Then stop.
-- Lewis Carroll --
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
-- Lewis Carroll --
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
-- Lewis Carroll --
No experiment is ever a complete failure. It can always be used as a bad example.
-- Johnny Carson --
If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners.
-- Johnny Carson --
Any time four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has taken place.
-- Johnny Carson --
If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
-- Johnny Carson --
Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.
-- Johnny Carson --
It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.
-- Rachel Carson --
For all at last return to the sea - to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the ever-flowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.
-- Rachel Carson --
The "control of nature" is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.
-- Rachel Carson --
In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand there is the story of the earth.
-- Rachel Carson --
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.
-- Hodding Carter --
The sheltering of upper-income children in private schools not only accelerates the deterioration of public education, it hides its consequences from precisely those people who could do something about it.
-- Hodding Carter --
A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong.
-- Jimmy Carter --
The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself - always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.
-- Jimmy Carter --
Public opinion is the last refuge of a politician without any opinion of his own.
-- Mark Bonham Carter --
First Ladies throughout our history have been expected to be adoring wives and perfect mothers.
-- Rosalyn Carter --
Once you accept the fact that you're not perfect, then you develop some confidence.
-- Rosalynn Carter --
The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson --
The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.
-- Margaret Carty --
Watermelon, it's a good fruit. You eat, you drink, you wash your face.
-- Enrico Caruso --
I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast, but there was no one to tell me.
-- George Washington Carver --
Nature is the greatest teacher and I learn from her best when others are asleep. In the still dark hours before sunrise God tells me of the plans I am to fulfill.
-- George Washington Carver --
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
-- Pablo Casals --
A woman broke up with me and sent me pictures of her and her new boyfriend in bed together. Solution? I sent them to her dad.
-- Christopher Case --
Nightclubs are places where the tables are reserved and the guests aren't.
-- Frank Caspar --
The biggest word in the language of business is not gross, but net.
-- Herbert Casson --
The more parking spaces you provide, the more cars will come to fill them. It's like feeding pigeons.
-- Sir Hugh Casson --
The one big target for the crusaders was the tango. I suppose its opponents objected to the man bending the woman over backwards and peering into her eyes with a smoldering passionate look.
-- Irene Castle --
I would not vote for the mayor. It's not just because he didn't invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes.
-- Fidel Castro --
Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
-- Willa Cather --
What was any art but a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.
-- Willa Cather --
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
-- Willa Cather --
In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.
-- Willa Cather --
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
-- Willa Cather --
To simplify is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process, finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without - and yet preserve the spirit of the whole.
-- Willa Cather --
The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new.
-- Cato --
We cannot control the evil tongues of others, but a good life enables us to disregard them.
-- Cato --
The wise man does no wrong in changing his habits with the times.
-- Cato --
Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses.
-- Cato the Elder --
Progress is the sum of small victories won by individual human beings.
-- Bruce Catton --
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either.
-- Dick Cavett --
The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.
-- Camillo Di Cavour --
I have a great dog. She's half Lab, half pit bull. A good combination. Sure, she might bite off my leg, but she'll bring it back to me.
-- Jim Celeste --
Good Manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup.
-- Bennett Cerf --
Take care, your worship, those things over there are not giants but windmills.
-- Miguel Cervantes --
Delay always breeds danger, and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
-- Miguel de Cervantes --
Make it your business to know yourself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.
-- Cervantes --
No man is more than another unless he does more than another.
-- Miguel De Cervantes --
There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
-- Cervantes --
Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
-- Cervantes --
Those who play with cats must expect to be scratched.
-- Cervantes --
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
-- Cervantes --
By the street of by-and-by one arrives at the house of never.
-- Cervantes --
Valor lies just halfway between rashness and cowardice.
-- Cervantes --
'Tis a dainty thing to command, though 'twere but a flock of sheep.
-- Miguel de Cervantes --
When the severity of the law is to be softened, let pity, not bribes, be the motive.
-- Miguel de Cervantes --
Experience is the universal mother of sciences.
-- Miguel de Cervantes --
When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God-made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.
-- Marc Chagall --
Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.
-- Marc Chagall --
All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.
-- Marc Chagall --
The Americans are a funny lot. They drink whiskey to keep them warm, then they put ice in it to make it cool; then they put some sugar in it to make it sweet, and then they put a slice of lemon in it to make it sour. Then they say, "Here's to you" and drink it themselves.
-- B. N. Chakravarty --
The grand essentials of life are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for
-- Allan Chalmers --
In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.
-- Neville Chamberlain --
Human nature, if healthy, demands excitement; and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way, it will seek if in the wrong. God never makes bloodless stoics; He makes no passionless saints.
-- Oswald Chambers --
When a man is at his wits' end, it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way he can get in touch with Reality.
-- Oswald Chambers --
Nowadays, those who love nature are accused of being romantic.
-- Chamfort --
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
-- Nicolas Chamfort --
Fortune, in order to come to me, must conform to certain conditions imposed on her by my character.
-- Chamfort --
If we would please in society, we must be prepared to be taught many things we know already by people who do not know them.
-- Sebastien Chamfort --
A little drowsing cat is an image of perfect beatitude.
-- Champfleury --
Big results require big ambitions.
-- James Champy --
Take away the newspaper and this country of ours would become a scene of chaos.
-- Harry Chandler --
A smile appeared upon her face as if she'd taken it directly from her handbag and pinned it there.
-- Loma Chandler --
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.
-- Raymond Chandler --
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
-- Raymond Chandler --
The edges of the folded handkerchief in her breast pocket looked sharp enough to slice bread.
-- Raymond Chandler --
If I'm going slow I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
-- Raymond Chandler --
Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.
-- Coco Chanel --
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
-- Coco Chanel --
God knows I wanted love. But the moment I had to choose between the man I loved and my dresses, I chose the dresses.
-- Coco Chanel --
Youth is something very new: Twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
-- Coco Chanel --
You ask if they were happy. This is not a characteristic of a European. To be contented - that's for the cows.
-- Coco Chanel --
There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
-- Coco Chanel --
April is the month when the green returns to the lawn, the lilac, and the IRS.
-- Changing Times --
Laughter is much more important than applause. Applause is almost a duty. Laughter is a reward.
-- Carol Channing --
He is to be educated not because he is to make shoes, nails and pins, but because he is a man.
-- William Ellery Channing --
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
-- W. E. Channing --
A man in earnest finds means, or if he cannot find, creates them.
-- W. E. Channing --
Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
-- William Channing --
No human being, man or woman, can act up to a sublime standard without giving offense.
-- W. E. Channing --
The young soldier is taught as his first duty to obey his superior without consulting his conscience.
-- William Ellery Channing --
Have you ever noticed that life consists mostly of interruptions, with occasional spells of rush work in between?
-- Buwei Yan Chao --
At the bottom of a good deal of bravery lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they cannot face public opinion.
-- Edwin H. Chapin --
Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury.
-- E. H. Chapin --
Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there, in the course of ages, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world.
-- Edwin Hubbell Chapin --
Be ready when opportunity comes. Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.
-- Roy Chapin, Jr. --
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.
-- Charlie Chaplin --
They are spoiling the oldest art in the world - the art of pantomime. They are ruining the great beauty of silence.
-- Charlie Chaplin, on talkies --
I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
-- Charlie Chaplin --
People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins, they wonder whether they are catching cold.
-- John Jay Chapman --
So long as there is any subject which men may not freely discuss, they are timid upon all subjects.
-- John Jay Chapman --
Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question "how?," but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question "why?"
-- Erwin Chargaff --
To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers - or both.
-- Elizabeth Charles --
Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.
-- Hare Charles --
Politicians are necessary, and it'd be foolish to blame them for our troubles. They're just doing what they've always done - looking to survive, looking to climb, trying to please everyone at once, and grinning and lying while they're doing it.
-- Ray Charles --
Little comfort can be sucked from a perhaps.
-- Stephen Charnock --
He who receives a benefit should never forget it; he who bestows should never remember it.
-- Pierre Charron --
The obstinacy of human beings is exceeded only by the obstinacy of inanimate objects.
-- Alexander Chase --
There are few successful adults who were not at first successful children.
-- Alexander Chase --
The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened with convictions.
-- Alexander Chase --
Like building a house, travel always costs more than you estimate.
-- Ilka Chase --
When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beaten us to it.
-- Ilka Chase --
The only people who never fail are those who never try.
-- Ilka Chase --
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
-- Viscount De Chateaubriand --
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
-- Chateaubriand --
Good and bad luck is a synonym, in the great majority of instances, for good and bad judgment.
-- John Chatfield --
In some cases, non-violence requires more militancy than violence.
-- Cesar Chaves --
Homesickness is absolutely nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time. You don't really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don't have, or haven't been able to find.
-- John Cheever --
A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.
-- John Cheever --
If you cry, "forward," you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions.
-- Anton Chekhov --
One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.
-- Anton Chekhov --
Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
-- Anton Chekhov --
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other.
-- Anton Chekhov --
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
-- Anton Chekhov --
All people are made alike. They are made of bones, flesh and dinners. Only the dinners are different.
-- Gertrude L. Cheney --
The trouble with some women is they get all excited about nothing - and then they marry him.
-- Cher --
If grass can grow through cement, love can find you at every time in your life.
-- Cher --
I'm the female equivalent of a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Half of what you see is a pretty good reproduction, and the rest is a fraud.
-- Cher --
They call me the Queen of the Newsstands. There are not enough hours in the day for me to do all the things they say I do, and with all the people they say I do them with.
-- Cher --
Capitalism requires people to be pious souls in the workplace, wily pagans at the cash register.
-- Ron Chernow --
In scandal, as in robbery, the receiver is always as bad as the thief.
-- Earl Of Chesterfield --
Patience is a most necessary qualification for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Abhor a knave and pity a fool in your heart, but let neither of them unnecessarily see that you do.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
I recommend you take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
A wise man will live as much within his wit as within his income.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Never hold any one by the button, or the hand, in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things yet cannot receive giant ones.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Lay aside the best book whenever you can go into the best company; and depend upon it, you change for the better.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
He who has the most friends and the fewest enemies is the strongest.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
It is often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment, the former being never forgiven, but the latter sometimes forgot. Wrongs are often forgiven; contempt never.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
A man who cannot command his temper should not think of being a man of business.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way in the world, without them it is like a great rough diamond very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but most prized when polished.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing and is glad to talk about that one thing.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
When one is learning, one should not think of play; and when one is at play, one should not think of learning.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of forgiving their enemies.
-- Lord Chesterfield --
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump. You may be freeing him from being a camel.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
There are no uninteresting things, only uninteresting people.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
I shall continue to praise the English climate till I die, even if I die of the English climate.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
-- G.K. Chesterton --
A vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
-- G.K. Chesterton --
Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are living.
-- Gilbert Chesterton --
The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Honor is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall porters.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
-- G.K. Chesterton --
Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Music with dinner is an insult to both the cook and violinist.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton --
The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton --
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the dean.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton --
What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; It is rather not finding them in the familiar place.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
-- G. K. Chesterton --
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton --
Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money, power, and influence.
-- Henry Chestor --
Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.
-- Maurice Chevalier --
When the last red man shall have vanished from this earth, and his memory is only a story among the whites, these shores will still swarm with the invisible dead of my people.
-- Chief Seattle --
If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.
-- Chief Seattle --
The dinner table in America is becoming a trap. People are so scared, they don't have any butter or anything. When they talk about healthy food, they usually mean things that don't taste very good.
-- Julia Child --
Noodles are not only amusing but delicious.
-- Julia Child --
It's (food) so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.
-- Julia Child --
Non-cooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.
-- Julia Child --
An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.
-- L. M. Child --
Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.
-- Lydia M. Child --
An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.
-- Lydia M. Child --
Writers are encouraged to "keep ‘em laughing" and complain "with good humor" in order to "win" allies. The joke is always on ourselves.
-- Alice Childress --
I continue to create because writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.
-- Alice Childress --
I was so mad you could have boiled a pot of water on my head.
-- Alice Childress --
Service is the rent that you pay for room on this earth.
-- Shirley Chisholm --
It's possible to have too much in life. Too many clothes jade our appreciation for new ones; too much money can put us out of touch with life; too much free time can dull the edge of the soul.
-- Joan Chittister --
But goodness, how we lose our heads at the mention of a wedding! Especially the older women, who should know better. At the sound of the word, all basic standards of elegance fly to the wind.
-- Susan Chitty --
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
-- Noam Chomsky --
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
-- Kate Chopin --
To think is to practice brain chemistry.
-- Deepak Chopra --
The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.
-- Deepak Chopra --
Happiness is a continuation of happenings which are not resisted.
-- Deepak Chopra --
It was the kind of desperate, headlong, adolescent calf love that he should have experienced years ago and got over.
-- Agatha Christie --
Surfing is like that. You are either vigorously cursing or else you are idiotically pleased with yourself.
-- Agatha Christie --
One of the oddest things in life, I think is the things one remembers.
-- Agatha Christie --
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as well; your taste, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul are revealed by your actions.
-- Agatha Christie --
There is something about conscious tact that is very irritating.
-- Agatha Christie --
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
-- Agatha Christie --
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.
-- Agatha Christie --
Sometimes you have to learn how to give the right answer to a wrong question.
-- Warren Christopher --
No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives and he lives forever.
-- Francis P. Church --
I shall always be glad to have seen it - for the same reason papa gave for being glad to have seen Lisbon - namely "that it will be unnecessary ever to see it again."
-- Winston Churchill, On Calcutta --
Continuous efforts - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.
-- Winston Churchill --
I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
-- Winston Churchill --
It is no use saying, "we are doing our best." you have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
-- Winston Churchill --
It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion's heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
-- Winston Churchill --
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
-- Winston Churchill --
My wife and I used to breakfast together. But we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
-- Winston Churchill --
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they may not dismount and the tigers are getting hungry.
-- Winston Churchill --
There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.
-- Winston Churchill --
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
-- Winston Churchill --
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
-- Winston Churchill --
I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught.
-- Winston Churchill --
The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.
-- Winston Churchill --
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
-- Winston Churchill --
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.
-- Winston Churchill --
In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used frequently to take my advice.
-- Winston Churchill --
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
-- Winston Churchill --
Houses are built of bricks, mortar and good will, not politics, prejudices and spite.
-- Winston Churchill --
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
-- Winston Churchill --
Life is a test and this world a place of trial. Always the problems - or it may be the same problem - will be presented to every generation in different forms.
-- Winston Churchill --
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
-- Winston Churchill --
All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
-- Winston Churchill --
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
Without measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.
-- Winston Churchill --
Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
The fulfillment of spiritual duty in our daily life is vital to our survival.
-- Winston Churchill --
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
-- Winston Churchill --
I do not like elections, but it is in my many elections that I have learnt to know and honor the people of this island. They are good through and through.
-- Winston Churchill --
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
-- Winston Churchill --
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill --
Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.
-- Winston Churchill --
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me.
-- Winston Churchill --
It's not good enough that we do our best; Sometimes we have to do what's required.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
-- Winston Churchill --
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
-- Sir Winston Churchill --
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
-- Winston Churchill --
Modem art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
-- John Ciardi --
The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
-- John Ciardi --
Old houses mended cost little less than new before they're ended.
-- Colley Cibber --
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
-- Cicero --
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain a perennial child.
-- Cicero --
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
-- Cicero --
No man who depends on the caprice of the ignorant rabble can be accounted great.
-- Cicero --
As if anything were so common as ignorance! The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise.
-- Cicero --
The good of the people is the chief law.
-- Cicero --
What one has, one ought to use; and whatever he does, he should do with all his might.
-- Cicero --
The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he comes down to human affairs.
-- Cicero --
Even the best pilots are willing to take advice from their passengers in bad weather.
-- Cicero --
Let us not go over old ground; let us rather prepare for what is to come.
-- Cicero --
What I enjoy is not the fruits alone, but I also enjoy the soil itself, its nature and its power.
-- Cicero --
No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.
-- Cicero --
Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.
-- Cicero --
It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post.
-- Cicero --
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
-- Cicero --
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
-- Cicero --
Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency, in giving them no offense.
-- Cicero --
Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.
-- Cicero --
Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.
-- Cicero --
A life of peace, purity, and refinement leads to a calm and untroubled old age.
-- Cicero --
A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues.
-- Cicero --
Let arms give place to the robe, and the laurel of the warriors yield to the tongue of the orator.
-- Cicero --
A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.
-- Cicero --
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
-- Cicero --
In men of the highest character and noblest genius there is to be found an insatiable desire for honor, command, power, and glory.
-- Cicero --
Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.
-- Cicero --
No man can be brave who considers pain the greatest evil of life; or temperate, who regards pleasure as the highest good.
-- Cicero --
I will go further, and assert that nature without culture can often do more to deserve praise than culture without nature.
-- Cicero --
A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
-- E. M. Cioran --
We had seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and it was out
-- John C. Clancy --
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy --
We didn't really have a band with Cream. We rarely played as an ensemble; We were three virtuosos, all of us soloing all the time.
-- Eric Clapton --
No man is so insignificant as to be sure his example can do no hurt.
-- Lord Clarendon --
There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.
-- Alan Clark --
Let us watch well our beginnings, and results will manage themselves.
-- Alexander Clark --
What a lot of people are saving for a rainy day is somebody else's umbrella.
-- Caroline Clark --
Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around.
-- Frank A. Clark --
If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
-- Frank A. Clark --
It's hard to detect good luck – it looks so much like something you've earned.
-- Frank A. Clark --
Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.
-- Frank A. Clark --
We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don't.
-- Frank A. Clark --
Why not upset the apple cart? If you don't, the apples will rot anyway.
-- Frank A. Clark --
The only thing that continues to give us more for our money is a weighing machine.
-- George Clark --
A right is not what someone gives you, it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark --
You've got to sing like you don't need the money. You've got to love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like there's nobody watching. You've got to come from the heart, if you want it to work.
-- Susanna Clark --
There is no such thing as chance or accident, the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.
-- Adam Clarke --
It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.
-- Arthur C. Clarke --
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.
-- Arthur C. Clarke --
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
-- Arthur C. Clarke --
The intelligence of the planet is constant and the population is growing.
-- Arthur C. Clarke --
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.
-- Arthur C. Clarke --
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke --
It has yet to be proved that intelligence has any survival value.
-- Arthur C. Clarke --
And O! She was the Sunday, in every week.
-- Austin Clarke --
A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation.
-- J. F. Clarke --
He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.
-- J. F. Clarke --
Better to be alone than in bad company.
-- John Clarke --
A word spoken is past recalling.
-- John Clarke --
The most terrible of lies is not that which is uttered but that which is lived.
-- W. G. Clarke --
A successor is almost always deemed not as adequate as the incumbent, and that's almost always not true.
-- A. W. Clausen --
The treacherous, unexplored areas of the world are not in continents or the seas; they are in the hearts and minds of men.
-- Allen E. Claxton --
The time will come when winter will ask you what you were doing all summer.
-- Henry Clay --
The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity - unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.
-- Henry Clay --
Political parties serve to keep each other in check, one keenly watching the other.
-- Henry Clay --
If you do everything you should do, and do not do anything you should not do, you will, according to the best available statistics, live exactly eighteen hours longer than you would otherwise.
-- Logan Clendening --
We should render a service to a friend to bind him closer to us, and to an enemy in order to make a friend of him.
-- Cleobulus --
The ship of democracy, which has weathered many storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.
-- Grover Cleveland --
The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work.
-- Patricia Clifford --
We have a generation enslaving itself to drugs, young men and women doing to our race what slavery couldn't.
-- Lucille Clifton --
There is no such thing as other people's children.
-- Hillary Rodham Clinton --
All our artists and cultural institutions are an integral part of what we call America, and we must work very hard not only to preserve and nurture, but to love them, because of the impact they make on our lives.
-- Hillary Rodham Clinton --
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right in America.
-- William J. Clinton --
The bad news is our only child is going to college. The good news is it opens up another bedroom.
-- Bill Clinton --
All great art comes from a sense of outrage.
-- Glenn Close --
His face looked like a face that had refused to gel and was about to run down on his clothes.
-- Irvin S. Cobb --
If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.
-- Irvin S. Cobb --
As I understand it, sport is hard work for which you do not get paid.
-- Irvin S. Cobb --
It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap, that so much misery is caused in the world.
-- William Cobbett --
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
-- Sir Barnett Cocks --
Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
-- Jean Cocteau --
When I wrote that Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo, I was not joking.
-- Jean Cocteau --
History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.
-- Jean Cocteau --
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
-- Jean Cocteau --
Silence moves faster when it's going backward.
-- Jean Cocteau --
An artist cannot speak about his work any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
-- Jean Cocteau --
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
-- Jean Cocteau --
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life trying to untie.
-- Jean Cocteau --
I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul.
-- Jean Cocteau --
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
-- Jean Cocteau --
The only thing worse than an active conscience is one that's retroactive.
-- Harold Coffin --
I don't care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.
-- George M. Cohan --
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
-- Leonard Cohen --
Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
-- Leonard Cohen --
I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.
-- Leonard Cohen --
To be celebrated is nothing. To be loved is everything.
-- Claudette Colbert --
It matters more what's in a woman's face than what's on it.
-- Claudette Colbert --
A "new thinker," when studied closely, is merely a man who does not know what other people have thought.
-- Frank L. Colby --
Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?
-- Frank Moore Colby --
Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.
-- Frank Moore Colby --
Prose is words in their best order; poetry is the best words in the best order.
-- Charles Coleridge --
She is not fair to outward view, as many maidens be; her loveliness I never knew, until she smiled on me.
-- Hartley Coleridge --
The fruits of the tree of knowledge are various; he must be strong indeed who can digest all of them.
-- Mary Coleridge --
Solitude affects some people like wine; they must not take too much of it, for it flies to the head.
-- Mary Coleridge --
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.
-- Samuel Coleridge --
Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon and the deeper it sinks into the mind
-- Samuel Coleridge --
Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause - a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
I have no faith in act-of-parliament reform. All the great - the permanently great - things that have been achieved in the world have been so achieved by individuals, working from the instinct of genius or of goodness.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
A man of maxims only is like a cyclops with one eye, and that eye placed in the back of his head.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heart-felt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
Some men are like musical glasses; to produce their finest tones, you must keep them wet.
-- Samuel Coleridge --
Poor little Foal of an oppressed race, I love the languid patience of thy face.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her.
-- Colette --
You go through so many changes as a child, then you grow up and discover that none of that stuff mattered, except for the impression it made on your mind.
-- Joan Walton Collaso --
Music is almost as dangerous as gunpowder; and it maybe requires looking after no less than the press, or the mint. 'Tis possible a public regulation might not be amiss.
-- Jeremy Collier --
See things as you would have them be instead of as they are.
-- Robert Collier --
The mere fact that you have obstacles to overcome is in your favor.
-- Robert Collier --
Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.
-- R. G. Collingwood --
One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.
-- Billy Collins --
If you want to be a writer, stop talking about it and sit down and write!.
-- Jackie Collins --
I've never yet met a man who could look after me. I don't need a husband. What I need is a wife.
-- Joan Collins --
"Dynasty" was the opportunity to take charge of my career rather than walking around like a library book waiting to be loaned out.
-- Joan Collins --
To ask for advice is in nine cases out of ten to tout for flattery.
-- John Churton Collins --
What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.
-- Kitty O'Neill Collins --
The good teacher makes the poor student good, and the good student superior.
-- Marva Collins --
If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you.
-- C. C. Colton --
Men are born with two eyes, but only one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
None are so fond of secrets as those who do not keep them.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, but by rising above them.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life: by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
Marriage is like a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.
-- Charles Caleb Colton --
True friendship is like sound health; The value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
-- Charles Colton --
Wealth after all is a relative thing, since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.
-- C. C. Colton --
By paying our other debts, we are equal with mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.
-- C. C. Colton --
If the music doesn't say it, how can the words say it for the music?
-- John Coltrane --
Although it is dangerous to have too much knowledge of certain subjects, it is still more dangerous to be totally ignorant of them.
-- Columbat --
A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins.
-- Laurie Colwin --
I don't call it gossip. I call it "emotional speculation."
-- Laurie Colwin --
Management must be concerned first with the opportunity for a decent living.
-- Hugh Comer --
We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.
-- Alexander Comfort --
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.
-- David H. Comins --
The conservation of natural resources is, and has been for half a century, the paramount domestic issue before the American people.
-- Henry Steele Commager --
We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past while we silence the rebels of the present.
-- Henry Steele Commager --
The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.
-- Henry Steele Commager --
Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change.
-- Henry Steele Commager --
For a people to be without history, or to be ignorant of its history, is as for a man to be without memory.
-- Henry Steele Commager --
If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are looking the wrong way.
-- Barry Commoner --
The audience knows I'm not going to do anything after all these years to upset them.
-- Perry Como --
Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth. But we seem to have no other.
-- Ivy Compton-Burnett --
Slogans are both exciting and comforting, but they are also powerful opiates for the conscience.
-- James Conant --
Virtue is like the polar star, which keeps its place, and all stars turn toward it.
-- Confucius --
I hear and forget. I see and remember. I do and understand.
-- Confucius --
In education there should be no class distinction.
-- Confucius --
Chi Wen Tsu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough.
-- Confucius --
Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues.
-- Confucius --
It is by the odes that the man is aroused. It is by the rules of propriety that the character is established. It is from music that the finish is received.
-- Confucius --
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-- Confucius --
The people may be made to follow a course of action, but they may not be made to understand it.
-- Confucius --
It is man that makes truth great, not truth that makes man great.
-- Confucius --
Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or stars.
-- Confucius --
When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself.
-- Confucius --
The mirror reflects all objects without being sullied.
-- Confucius --
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
-- Confucius --
The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.
-- Confucius --
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
-- Confucius --
There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life: reciprocity.
-- Confucius --
Study the past if you would define the future.
-- Confucius --
He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.
-- Confucius --
What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.
-- Confucius --
Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof when your own doorstep is unclean.
-- Confucius --
As the water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it, so a wise man adapts himself to circumstances.
-- Confucius --
The superior man thinks only of virtue; the common man thinks only of comfort.
-- Confucius --
The perfecting of one's self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development.
-- Confucius --
They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
-- Confucius --
Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.
-- Confucius --
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
-- Confucius --
With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of all these things.
-- Confucius --
Not to alter one's faults is to be faulty indeed.
-- Confucius --
The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
-- Confucius --
When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
-- Confucius --
If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?
-- Confucius --
Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
-- Confucius --
What, he speaks unseasonable truths sometimes, because he has not wit enough to invent an evasion.
-- William Congreve --
I felt the rush of happiness and warmth coming out of the people and I was carried out among them on a surge of joy. I suppose when you die and go to heaven you get a feeling like that.
-- Gerry Conlon --
More than anything else, I'd like to be an old man with a good face, like Hitchcock or Picasso.
-- Sean Connery --
If you compromise your independence for any reason, there's not much use for living. If you compromise it for something as fleeting as money you are already dead.
-- Sean Connery --
I like women. I don't understand them, but I like them.
-- Sean Connery --
I've always wanted to go to Switzerland to see what the army does with those wee red knives.
-- Billy Connolly --
Marriage is a wonderful invention; but, then again, so is a bicycle repair kit.
-- Billy Connolly --
Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away, and you've got his shoes.
-- Billy Connolly --
Have you heard about the oyster who went to a disco and pulled a mussel?
-- Billy Connolly --
Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
-- Cyril Connolly --
Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk.
-- Cyril Connolly --
He could not blow his nose without moralizing on the state of the handkerchief industry.
-- Cyril Connolly --
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
-- Cyril Connolly --
I like my image. It's me. I'm a louse, but if you're going to be a louse, I say be a good one. I play to win and I play to entertain.
-- Jimmy Connors --
I take it that what all men are really after is some form of, perhaps only some formula of, peace.
-- James Conrad --
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upwards on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
-- Joseph Conrad --
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
-- Joseph Conrad --
The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.
-- Joseph Conrad --
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love and to put its trust in life.
-- Joseph Conrad --
The intention of every other piece of prose may be discussed and even mistrusted; but the purpose of a cookery book is one and unmistakable. Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of mankind.
-- Joseph Conrad --
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.
-- Joseph Conrad --
The sea never changes, and its works, for all the talk of men, are wrapped in mystery.
-- Joseph Conrad --
It is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself the face of pain.
-- Joseph Conrad --
Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.
-- Pat Conroy --
I believe in opening mail once a month, whether it needs it or not.
-- Bob Considine --
St. Patrick's day is an enchanted time - a day to begin transforming winter's dreams into summer's magic.
-- Adrienne Cook --
Though language forms the preacher, 'Tis "good works" make the man.
-- Eliza Cook --
Calvin Coolidge's perpetual expression was of smelling something burning on the kitchen stove.
-- Sherwin L. Cook --
Curiosity ... endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.
-- Alistair Cooke --
Nearly every move in baseball - the windup, the pitch, the motion of the infielders - is different from other games.
-- Alistair Cooke --
Don't fight with the pillow, but lay down your head and kick every worriment out of the bed.
-- Edmund Cooke --
We rarely gain a high or larger view except as it is forced upon us through struggles which we would have avoided if we could.
-- Charles Horton Cooley --
No matter what a man does, he is not fully sane or human unless there is a spirit of freedom in him, a soul unconfined by purpose and larger than the practicable world.
-- Charles Horton Cooley --
Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also.
-- Charles Horton Cooley --
Writers tell more truths, and more lies, than most.
-- Mason Cooley --
One of the first lessons a president has to learn is that every word he says weighs a ton.
-- Calvin Coolidge --
No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
-- Calvin Coolidge --
A school is not the end but only the beginning of an education.
-- Calvin Coolidge --
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
-- Calvin Coolidge --
Few men are lacking in capacity, but they fail because they are lacking in application.
-- Calvin Coolidge --
Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow.
-- Calvin Coolidge --
Patriotism is easy to understand in america. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.
-- Calvin Coolidge --
If the shoe fits, you're not allowing for growth.
-- Robert N. Coons --
I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.
-- Gary Cooper (on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone with the Wind.") --
Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs equally to the honest man and to the gentleman.
-- James Fenimore Cooper --
Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake in the afternoon.
-- Jilly Cooper --
Bloody men are like bloody buses - you wait for about a year and as soon as one approaches your stop two or three others appear.
-- Wendy Cope --
I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers; whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots.
-- Wendy Cope --
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
-- Aaron Copeland --
When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.
-- Bill Copeland --
To get something done a committee should consist of no more than three people, two of whom are absent.
-- Robert Copeland --
Listening to the fifth symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes.
-- Aaron Copland --
The difference between Beethoven and Mahler is the difference between watching a great man walk down the street and watching a great actor act the part of a great man walking down the street.
-- Aaron Copland --
Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business.
-- Francis Ford Coppola --
I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.
-- Marie Corelli --
The Act of God designation on all insurance policies means roughly that you cannot be insured for the accidents that are most likely to happen to you. If your ox kicks a hole in your neighbor's Maserati, however, indemnity is instantaneous.
-- Alan Coren --
Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country (Holland) is advocaat, a drink made from lawyers.
-- Alan Coren --
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you think you want to hear.
-- Alan Coren --
TV is more interesting than people. If it were not, we should have people standing in the corners of our rooms.
-- Alan Coren --
There is nothing love cannot face; There is no limit to its faith, its hope, and endurance.
-- Corinthians --
He on whom heaven confers a sceptre knows not the weight till he bears it.
-- Corneille --
Propaganda is that branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies.
-- Francis M. Cornford --
I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart that can be cured only with gold.
-- Hernando Cortes --
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
-- Bill Cosby --
My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood, but it didn't, because parenting can be learned only by people who have no children.
-- Bill Cosby --
No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.
-- Bill Cosby --
Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.
-- Bill Cosby --
A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.
-- Bill Cosby --
The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep.
-- Joseph Cossman --
Stopping at third base adds no more to the score than striking out.
-- E. Joseph Cossman --
Love is a friendship set to music.
-- E. Joseph Cossman --
But in truth there are only three types of people in the world: people who work, people who are not allowed to, and people who don't have to.
-- Elvis Costello --
Acting has always been holy to me. When I act I don't get caught lying very often.
-- Kevin Costner --
Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.
-- Smile Coue --
I don't think that a band can really swing on just a kick-off, you know; I think you've got to set the tempo first.
-- Count Basie --
Love matches are formed by people who pay for a month of honey with a life of vinegar.
-- Countess Of Blessington --
Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.
-- Doug Coupland --
I don't answer the phone. I get the feeling whenever I do that there will be someone on the other end.
-- Fred Couples --
Fine art is knowledge made visible.
-- Gustave Courbet --
One of the most obvious results of having a baby around the house is to turn two good people into complete idiots who probably wouldn't have been much worse than mere imbeciles without it.
-- Georges Courteline --
Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice.
-- Victor Cousin --
To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
-- Norman Cousins --
The message from the moon which we have flashed to the far corners of this planet is that no problem need any longer be considered insoluble.
-- Norman Cousins --
How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.
-- Parks Cousins --
At this particular moment, I cannot find so much to laugh at as I would like.
-- Noel Coward --
It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
-- Noel Coward --
I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health. It upsets my stomach more than anything else. I also avoid green vegetables. They're grossly overrated.
-- Noel Coward --
I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden.
-- Abraham Cowley --
Five minutes - Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my lifetime.
-- Hannah Cowley --
Our thoughts are unseen hands shaping the people we meet. Whatever we truly think them to be, that's what they'll become for us.
-- Richard Cowper --
Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
-- William Cowper --
Variety's the very spice of life that gives it all its flavor.
-- William Cowper --
With spots quadrangular of diamond form, Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife, And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.
-- William Cowper --
Boys are, at best, but pretty buds unblown, whose scent and hues are rather guessed than known.
-- William Cowper --
The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
-- William Cowper --
Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
-- William Cowper --
A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.
-- William Cowper --
Keeping your clothes well pressed will keep you from looking hard pressed.
-- Coleman Cox --
Heredity: the thing a child gets from the other side of the family.
-- Marcelene Cox --
Divorce: that's when a husband no longer has to bring the money home to his wife. He can mail it.
-- Morty Craft --
A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope of the world.
-- Dinah Craik --
You put together the best team that you can with the players you've got, and replace those who aren't good enough.
-- Robert Crandall --
You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.
-- Frank Crane --
The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.
-- Frank Crane --
To be a genuine individualist requires a great deal of strength and courage. It is never easy to chart new territory, to cross new frontiers, or to introduce subtle shadings to an established color.
-- Toller Cranston --
I think women see me on the cover of magazines and think I never have a pimple or bags under my eyes. You have to realize that's after two hours of hair and makeup, plus retouching. Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.
-- Cindy Crawford --
I need sex for a clear complexion, but I'd rather do it for love.
-- Joan Crawford --
Don't think of it as wrinkles. Think of it as relaxed fit skin.
-- Cathy Crimmins --
There was no need to do any housework after all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
-- Quentin Crisp --
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
-- Quentin Crisp --
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
-- Quentin Crisp --
Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.
-- Quentin Crisp --
There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.
-- Walter Cronkite --
Make a bigger space in the universe for you head to live in and it will grow to fill the space.
-- David Crosby --
Angels descending, bring from above, Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
-- Fanny Crosby --
In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.
-- Amanda Cross --
Life has this in common with prizefighting: If you've received a belly blow, it's likely to be followed by a right to the jaw.
-- Amanda Cross --
Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
-- Samuel McChord Crothers --
God has editing rights over our prayers. He will edit them, correct them, bring them in line with His will and then hand them back to us to be resubmitted.
-- Stephen Crotts --
War destroys men but luxury destroys mankind; at once it corrupts the body and mind.
-- John Crowne --
Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigor, and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.
-- Ralph Cudworth --
Games must be regarded not as conscious inventions, but as survivals from primitive conditions, under which they originated in magical rites and chiefly as means of divination.
-- Stewart Culin --
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
-- Richard Cumberland --
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
-- e. e. cummings --
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
-- e. e. cummings --
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
-- e. e. cummings --
He had no nose, properly speaking, but a large beak of preposterous widthlessness, which gave his whole face the expression of falling gravely downstairs, and quite obliterated the unimportant chin.
-- e. e. cummings --
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
-- e. e. cummings --
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
-- e. e. cummings --
Do not save your loving speeches for you friends till they are dead; do not write them on their tombstones, speak them rather now instead.
-- Anna Cummins --
I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in fifty years what my father taught by example in one week.
-- Mario Cuomo --
A belief is made religious, not so much by its content, as rather by the way it is held.
-- Don Cupitt --
Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.
-- Will Cuppy --