Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
---------------------------------------------
"The Man in the Glass" by Anonymous
When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
and the world makes you king for the day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself,
and see what the man has to say!
It isn't your mother or father or wife,
who's judgment upon you must pass,
for the fellow who's verdict counts most in your life,
is that one starring back from the glass!
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
for he's with you clear up to the end.
And you've passed the most dangerous, difficult test,
if the man in the glass is your friend!
You may fool the whole world down the pathways of years,
and get pats on the back as you pass,
but your final reward will be heartaches and tears,
if you've cheated the man in the glass!
--------------------------------------------
”Know thyself."
-- Socrates
--------------------------------------------
"The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."
-- Søren Kierkegaard
--------------------------------------------
"Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
--------------------------------------------
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
-- Socrates
--------------------------------------------
"I do not pretend to know what ignorant men are sure of."
-- Clarence Darrow (observation about the existence vis-a-vis non-existence of God)
--------------------------------------------
"There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."
-- Gertrude Stein
"Conquer yourself rather than the world."
-- René Descartes
--------------------------------------------
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
-- Jesus from “The Gospel According to Thomas”
--------------------------------------------
"You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your country-men. Love your fellow as yourself: I am the Lord.
-- Leviticus 19:18
--------------------------------------------
"I loathe, I spurn your festivals,
I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies
If you offer me burnt offerings—or your meal offerings—
I will not accept them;
I will pay no heed
To your gifts of fatlings.
Spare me the sounds of your hymns,
And let me not hear the music of your lutes.
But let justice well up like water,
Righteousness like an unfailing stream."
-- Amos 5:21-24
--------------------------------------------
"As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead."
-- James 2:26
--------------------------------------------
"It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read."
-- Thomas Jefferson
--------------------------------------------
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple. The philosophy is kindness."
-- Dali Lama
--------------------------------------------
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
-- Marcus Aurelius
--------------------------------------------
"To the corruptions of Christianity, I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other."
-- Thomas Jefferson
--------------------------------------------
"I believe in one God, Creator of the universe.... That the most acceptable service we can render Him is doing good to His other children.... As to Jesus... I have... some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."
-- Benjamin Franklin
--------------------------------------------
"Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be. Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life."
-- Protagoras
--------------------------------------------
"You only need 3 beliefs—believe in A God even if he/she/it doesn't do anything for you; believe in yourself even if you think you're a loser; believe in life even if it seems pointless. Believing gives them value and they become something of importance to center your existence."
-- Moi
--------------------------------------------
"There was a Door to which I found no key.
There was a Veil past which I could not see."
-- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
--------------------------------------------
"It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil—which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."
-- Richard Feynman
--------------------------------------------
"Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."
-- Albert Einstein
--------------------------------------------
"There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculation have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain."
-- A. N. Whitehead
--------------------------------------------
"People would not worry so much about what others think of them if they realized how little they did."
-- Oscar Wilde
--------------------------------------------
”A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares."
-- Louis Auchincloss
--------------------------------------------
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. You must do the things you think you cannot do.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
--------------------------------------------
”If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much."
-- Jim Rohn
--------------------------------------------
"But now old friends are acting strange.
They shake their heads. They say I've changed.
Well, something's lost, but something's gained
in living everyday.
I've looked at life from both sides now."
-- Judy Collins in “Both Sides Now”
-------------------------------------------
"I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet."
-- Gandhi
--------------------------------------------
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."
-- Agnes Repplier
--------------------------------------------
"A rose is a rose is a rose"
-- Gertrude Stein
"To be alive at all involves some risk."
-- Harold MacMillan
--------------------------------------------
"Wherever you go, go with all your heart."
-- Confucius
--------------------------------------------
"One thing about trains. It doesn't matter where they're going. What really matters is deciding to get on!"
-- from “The Polar Express”
--------------------------------------------
"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
-- Anaïs Nin
--------------------------------------------
"Nothing changes if nothing changes."
-- Unknown Source
--------------------------------------------
"There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy."
-- Jonathan Swift
--------------------------------------------
"There is no knowledge of true being. The world is fundamentally in a state of becoming."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
--------------------------------------------
"When you’re finished changing, you’re finished."
-- Benjamin Franklin
--------------------------------------------
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
-- Pablo Picasso
--------------------------------------------
"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"Ithaca" by Constantine P. Cavafy
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.
Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.
--------------------------------------------
"The god forsakes Antony" by Constantine P. Cavafy
When suddenly, at the midnight hour,
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.
--------------------------------------------
”The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out, but I'm glad I had them."
-- from "The Bridges of Madison County"
--------------------------------------------
"I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer."
-- Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (French writer, usually known simply by her pen-name "Colette") from "The Last of Cheri", 1926
--------------------------------------------
"If you want to touch the past, touch a rock". Yet, I do think it's important to remember that not all rocks are just rocks; some are beautiful gems if you look closely enough.
-- The Optimism Revolution with editorial comment by Moi
--------------------------------------------
"Keep memories in their place—a record only of the past, with no life of their own, to be used judiciously to guide our present."
-- Moi
--------------------------------------------
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
-- The Great Gatsby
--------------------------------------------
"Destinations are where we begin again."
-- from the song "Believe" in the movie "The Polar Express"
--------------------------------------------
"Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"There is no formula for success except perhaps unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings."
-- Arthur Rubinstein
--------------------------------------------
"Analysis destroys wholes. Some things, magic things, are meant to stay whole. If you look at their pieces, they go away."
-- from "The Bridges of Madison County"
--------------------------------------------
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
-- Albert Einstein
--------------------------------------------
"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
-- John Muir
--------------------------------------------
"You have to think like water."
-- Anonymous Plumber from Nantucket
--------------------------------------------
"Everything has its secrets. Dark matter and dark energy seem to make up most of the mass of the universe (matter and energy are considered to be two forms of the same thing, thanks to Einstein's famous equation E=Mc^2). Dark energy accounts for about 74% of the universe, while dark matter adds about 22%, and normal, visible matter adds a puny 4%. By contrast 10% to 20% of an iceberg is visible!"
-- Moi
--------------------------------------------
{structural engineering is}...
“the art of molding materials we do not really understand
into shapes we cannot really analyze,
so as to withstand forces we cannot really assess,
in such a way that the public does not really suspect.”
-- Eric H. Brown
--------------------------------------------
"Irrationality is the square root of all evil."
-- Douglas Hofstadter
--------------------------------------------
"While you're talking, you're not learning anything."
-- Richard Feynman
--------------------------------------------
"The Song Of Wandering Aengus" - by W. B. Yeats
Music by Philip Leitch Donovan on verses by W.B.Yeats. Illustrations by Cronogeo
--------------------------------------------
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned"
-- William Congreve
--------------------------------------------
"...the art of politics must be the art of engaging the passions, first by exciting them, then by moderating and directing them to a worthy end, one that reason may reveal but cannot achieve."
-- Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University
--------------------------------------------
"It's easy. Pretend to know what you don't, and pretend not to know when you do. Hear what you don't understand and don't hear what you do. Promise what you cannot deliver, what you have no intention of delivering. Make a great secret of hiding what isn't there. Plead you're busy as you spend your time sharpening pencils. Speak profoundly to cover up you emptiness, encourage spies, reward traitors, tamper with seals, intercept letters, hide the ineptitude of your goals by speaking of them glowingly—that's all there is to politics, I swear."
--Pierre Beaumarchais writes in "The Marriage of Figaro"
--------------------------------------------
"Politics only rewards success. Best efforts earn only a bitter smile."
--Pierre Beaumarchais
--------------------------------------------
"Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Truth is incontrovertible,
ignorance can deride it,
panic may resent it,
malice may destroy it,
but there it is."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another … has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. … makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself."
-- Immanuel Kant
--------------------------------------------
"a very wholesome and comfortable doctrine to which (there is) but one objection: namely, that it is not true."
-- Henry Fielding
--------------------------------------------
"Don't write it if you can speak it; and don't speak it if you can just nod."
-- Unknown
--------------------------------------------
"It is accepted that a man’s first truth is what he hides."
-- André Malraux
--------------------------------------------
"It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian."
-- John Updike
--------------------------------------------
"No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar."
-- Abraham Lincoln
--------------------------------------------
"O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
-- Sir Walter Scott, Marmion
--------------------------------------------
"A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future."
-- Author Unknown
--------------------------------------------
"If it's a cloudy day, saying repeatedly that the sun is shining does not make it a sunny day."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Anybody can claim to be a bird, but jumping off the edge of a cliff is the real test."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it."
-- Emily Dickinson
--------------------------------------------
"The cruelest lies are often told in silence"
-- Adlai Stevenson
--------------------------------------------
"A half truth is a whole lie."
-- Yiddish Proverb
--------------------------------------------
"There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other."
-- O. Henry
--------------------------------------------
"Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread."
-- Josh Billings
--------------------------------------------
"Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so."
-- Mark Twain
--------------------------------------------
"Too much honor destroys a man quicker than too much of any other fine quality."
-- Ernest Hemingway in “Death in the Afternoon”
--------------------------------------------
"Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words!...If you're on fire, show me!"
-- Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady”
--------------------------------------------
“Listen—I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.”
-- Thrasymachus in Plato's "Republic"
--------------------------------------------
"You see, Socrates, immorality if practiced on a large enough scale has more power, license and authority than morality."
-- Thrasymachus in Plato's 'Republic'
--------------------------------------------
"A man who doesn't trust himself can never really trust anyone else."
-- Cardinal De Retz
--------------------------------------------
"Trust is always earned, never given."
-- R. Williams
--------------------------------------------
"Trust is the easiest thing in the world to loose, and the hardest thing in the world to get back."
-- R. Williams
--------------------------------------------
"We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy."
-- Walter Anderson
--------------------------------------------
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough."
-- Frank Crane
--------------------------------------------
"If you have one ounce of common sense and one good friend, you don't need an analyst."
-- Joan Crawford
--------------------------------------------
"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."
-- Walter Winchell
--------------------------------------------
"Friendship is a sheltering tree."
-- S. Taylor-Coleridge
--------------------------------------------
"Friendship is a SPECIAL relationship embodying the qualities of trust, respect, caring, and reliance which may develop between two people who actively share a personally significant real-life goal, purpose, or experience on a regular basis and in close proximity to each other."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Never confuse being CORDIAL (i.e., courteous or gracious—connoting behavior that is guarded, formal, and perhaps disingenuous and dictated by protocol since you can be cordial to someone you don't even like) with being FRIENDLY (characteristic of or befitting a friend, kind, helpful, favorably disposed, amicable—connoting behavior that is more honest, informal, relaxed, and casual) or with being A FRIEND (a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard; a supporter, comrade, or ally—connoting behavior that is real and based on honesty and trust)."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship -- never."
-- Charles Caleb Colton
--------------------------------------------
"Love is friendship set to music."
-- E. Joseph Crossmann
--------------------------------------------
"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
--------------------------------------------
"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands."
-- Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self
--------------------------------------------
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
--------------------------------------------
"For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe... Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end."
-- H. L. Mencken
--------------------------------------------
"Trust lies at the core of love; there can be no true love without trust."
-- M.K.Soni
--------------------------------------------
"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."
-- Euripides
--------------------------------------------
"A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative."
-- George Ade
--------------------------------------------
"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer"
-- Michael Corleone in “The Godfather—Part II”
--------------------------------------------
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names"
-- John F. Kennedy
--------------------------------------------
"Living well is the best revenge."
-- George Herbert; English clergyman & metaphysical poet (1593 - 1633)
--------------------------------------------
"The price of greatness is responsibility."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity."
-- Humanist Manifesto III
--------------------------------------------
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Never abandon life. There is a way out of everything except death."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Success is never final, and failure never fatal; it’s courage that counts."
-- Unknown Source
--------------------------------------------
"The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!"
-- George S. Patton
--------------------------------------------
"Worry is the interest you pay on trouble before it is due."
-- Unknown Source
--------------------------------------------
"I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often."
-- Brian Tracy
--------------------------------------------
"Chance favors only those who court her."
-- Charles Nicolle
--------------------------------------------
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
--------------------------------------------
"Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door."
-- Milton Berle
--------------------------------------------
"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"You’re a woman if others say you are ... femaleness is in the eye of the beholder"
-- Cynthia Eller
--------------------------------------------
"There are two kinds of women: those who want power in the world, and those who want power in bed."
-- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
--------------------------------------------
"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."
-- Anaïs Nin
--------------------------------------------
"Chicks were born to give you fever,
be it farenheit or centigrade.
They give ya fever when you kiss them;
fever if you live and learn.
Fever ‘till you sizzle.
What a lovely way to burn."
-- Peggy Lee, “Fever”
--------------------------------------------
"Sex is dirty sheets."
-- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
--------------------------------------------
"There have already been two Duchesses of Westminster; there is only one Mademoiselle Chanel."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"The first time you marry for love; the second for money; and the third for companionship."
-- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
--------------------------------------------
"A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil—which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama."
-- Richard Feynman
--------------------------------------------
"Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."
-- Albert Einstein
--------------------------------------------
"There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculation have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain."
-- A. N. Whitehead
--------------------------------------------
"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated."
-- Poul Anderson
--------------------------------------------
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.... The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”
-- Steven Weinberg
--------------------------------------------
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being."
-- Carl Jung
--------------------------------------------
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-- William Shakespeare in “Macbeth” (spoken by Macbeth in Act 5, Scene 5, lines 19-28)
--------------------------------------------
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…
-- William Shakespeare in “As You Like It” (spoken by Jaques in Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)
"People would not worry so much about what others think of them if they realized how little they did."
-- Oscar Wilde
--------------------------------------------
”A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares."
-- Louis Auchincloss
--------------------------------------------
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. You must do the things you think you cannot do.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
--------------------------------------------
”If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much."
-- Jim Rohn
--------------------------------------------
"But now old friends are acting strange.
They shake their heads. They say I've changed.
Well, something's lost, but something's gained
in living everyday.
I've looked at life from both sides now."
-- Judy Collins in “Both Sides Now”
-------------------------------------------
"I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet."
-- Gandhi
--------------------------------------------
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."
-- Agnes Repplier
--------------------------------------------
"A rose is a rose is a rose"
-- Gertrude Stein
--------------------------------------------
-- Harold MacMillan
--------------------------------------------
"Wherever you go, go with all your heart."
-- Confucius
--------------------------------------------
"One thing about trains. It doesn't matter where they're going. What really matters is deciding to get on!"
-- from “The Polar Express”
--------------------------------------------
"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
-- Anaïs Nin
--------------------------------------------
"Nothing changes if nothing changes."
-- Unknown Source
--------------------------------------------
"There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy."
-- Jonathan Swift
--------------------------------------------
"There is no knowledge of true being. The world is fundamentally in a state of becoming."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
--------------------------------------------
"When you’re finished changing, you’re finished."
-- Benjamin Franklin
--------------------------------------------
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
-- Pablo Picasso
--------------------------------------------
"In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"Ithaca" by Constantine P. Cavafy
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.
Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.
--------------------------------------------
"The god forsakes Antony" by Constantine P. Cavafy
When suddenly, at the midnight hour,
an invisible troupe is heard passing
with exquisite music, with shouts --
your fortune that fails you now, your works
that have failed, the plans of your life
that have all turned out to be illusions, do not mourn in vain.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself
it was a dream, that your ears deceived you;
do not stoop to such vain hopes.
As if long prepared, as if courageous,
as it becomes you who have been worthy of such a city,
approach the window with firm step,
and with emotion, but not
with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,
as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,
the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,
and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.
--------------------------------------------
”The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out, but I'm glad I had them."
-- from "The Bridges of Madison County"
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"I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer."
-- Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (French writer, usually known simply by her pen-name "Colette") from "The Last of Cheri", 1926
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"If you want to touch the past, touch a rock". Yet, I do think it's important to remember that not all rocks are just rocks; some are beautiful gems if you look closely enough.
-- The Optimism Revolution with editorial comment by Moi
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"Keep memories in their place—a record only of the past, with no life of their own, to be used judiciously to guide our present."
-- Moi
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"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
-- The Great Gatsby
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"Destinations are where we begin again."
-- from the song "Believe" in the movie "The Polar Express"
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"Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
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”Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it."
-- Salvadore Dali
"There is no formula for success except perhaps unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings."
-- Arthur Rubinstein
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"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there. You must go beyond them."
-- Bruce Lee
"Analysis destroys wholes. Some things, magic things, are meant to stay whole. If you look at their pieces, they go away."
-- from "The Bridges of Madison County"
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"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
-- Albert Einstein
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"The power of imagination makes us infinite."
-- John Muir
--------------------------------------------
"You have to think like water."
-- Anonymous Plumber from Nantucket
--------------------------------------------
"Everything has its secrets. Dark matter and dark energy seem to make up most of the mass of the universe (matter and energy are considered to be two forms of the same thing, thanks to Einstein's famous equation E=Mc^2). Dark energy accounts for about 74% of the universe, while dark matter adds about 22%, and normal, visible matter adds a puny 4%. By contrast 10% to 20% of an iceberg is visible!"
-- Moi
--------------------------------------------
{structural engineering is}...
“the art of molding materials we do not really understand
into shapes we cannot really analyze,
so as to withstand forces we cannot really assess,
in such a way that the public does not really suspect.”
-- Eric H. Brown
--------------------------------------------
"Irrationality is the square root of all evil."
-- Douglas Hofstadter
--------------------------------------------
"While you're talking, you're not learning anything."
-- Richard Feynman
--------------------------------------------
"The Song Of Wandering Aengus" - by W. B. Yeats
Music by Philip Leitch Donovan on verses by W.B.Yeats. Illustrations by Cronogeo
--------------------------------------------
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned"
-- William Congreve
--------------------------------------------
"...the art of politics must be the art of engaging the passions, first by exciting them, then by moderating and directing them to a worthy end, one that reason may reveal but cannot achieve."
-- Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University
--------------------------------------------
"It's easy. Pretend to know what you don't, and pretend not to know when you do. Hear what you don't understand and don't hear what you do. Promise what you cannot deliver, what you have no intention of delivering. Make a great secret of hiding what isn't there. Plead you're busy as you spend your time sharpening pencils. Speak profoundly to cover up you emptiness, encourage spies, reward traitors, tamper with seals, intercept letters, hide the ineptitude of your goals by speaking of them glowingly—that's all there is to politics, I swear."
--Pierre Beaumarchais writes in "The Marriage of Figaro"
--------------------------------------------
"Politics only rewards success. Best efforts earn only a bitter smile."
--Pierre Beaumarchais
--------------------------------------------
"Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Truth is incontrovertible,
ignorance can deride it,
panic may resent it,
malice may destroy it,
but there it is."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another … has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. … makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself."
-- Immanuel Kant
--------------------------------------------
"a very wholesome and comfortable doctrine to which (there is) but one objection: namely, that it is not true."
-- Henry Fielding
--------------------------------------------
"Don't write it if you can speak it; and don't speak it if you can just nod."
-- Unknown
--------------------------------------------
"It is accepted that a man’s first truth is what he hides."
-- André Malraux
--------------------------------------------
"It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian."
-- John Updike
--------------------------------------------
"No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar."
-- Abraham Lincoln
--------------------------------------------
"O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
-- Sir Walter Scott, Marmion
--------------------------------------------
"A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future."
-- Author Unknown
--------------------------------------------
"If it's a cloudy day, saying repeatedly that the sun is shining does not make it a sunny day."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Anybody can claim to be a bird, but jumping off the edge of a cliff is the real test."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it."
-- Emily Dickinson
--------------------------------------------
"The cruelest lies are often told in silence"
-- Adlai Stevenson
--------------------------------------------
"A half truth is a whole lie."
-- Yiddish Proverb
--------------------------------------------
"There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other."
-- O. Henry
--------------------------------------------
"Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread."
-- Josh Billings
--------------------------------------------
"Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so."
-- Mark Twain
--------------------------------------------
"Too much honor destroys a man quicker than too much of any other fine quality."
-- Ernest Hemingway in “Death in the Afternoon”
--------------------------------------------
"Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words!...If you're on fire, show me!"
-- Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady”
--------------------------------------------
“Listen—I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.”
-- Thrasymachus in Plato's "Republic"
--------------------------------------------
"You see, Socrates, immorality if practiced on a large enough scale has more power, license and authority than morality."
-- Thrasymachus in Plato's 'Republic'
--------------------------------------------
"A man who doesn't trust himself can never really trust anyone else."
-- Cardinal De Retz
--------------------------------------------
"Trust is always earned, never given."
-- R. Williams
--------------------------------------------
"Trust is the easiest thing in the world to loose, and the hardest thing in the world to get back."
-- R. Williams
--------------------------------------------
"We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy."
-- Walter Anderson
--------------------------------------------
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough."
-- Frank Crane
--------------------------------------------
"If you have one ounce of common sense and one good friend, you don't need an analyst."
-- Joan Crawford
--------------------------------------------
"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."
-- Walter Winchell
--------------------------------------------
"Friendship is a sheltering tree."
-- S. Taylor-Coleridge
--------------------------------------------
"Friendship is a SPECIAL relationship embodying the qualities of trust, respect, caring, and reliance which may develop between two people who actively share a personally significant real-life goal, purpose, or experience on a regular basis and in close proximity to each other."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Never confuse being CORDIAL (i.e., courteous or gracious—connoting behavior that is guarded, formal, and perhaps disingenuous and dictated by protocol since you can be cordial to someone you don't even like) with being FRIENDLY (characteristic of or befitting a friend, kind, helpful, favorably disposed, amicable—connoting behavior that is more honest, informal, relaxed, and casual) or with being A FRIEND (a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard; a supporter, comrade, or ally—connoting behavior that is real and based on honesty and trust)."
-- Me
--------------------------------------------
"Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship -- never."
-- Charles Caleb Colton
--------------------------------------------
"Love is friendship set to music."
-- E. Joseph Crossmann
--------------------------------------------
"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
--------------------------------------------
"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands."
-- Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self
--------------------------------------------
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
--------------------------------------------
"For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe... Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end."
-- H. L. Mencken
--------------------------------------------
"Trust lies at the core of love; there can be no true love without trust."
-- M.K.Soni
--------------------------------------------
"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."
-- Euripides
--------------------------------------------
"A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative."
-- George Ade
--------------------------------------------
"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer"
-- Michael Corleone in “The Godfather—Part II”
--------------------------------------------
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names"
-- John F. Kennedy
--------------------------------------------
"Living well is the best revenge."
-- George Herbert; English clergyman & metaphysical poet (1593 - 1633)
--------------------------------------------
"The price of greatness is responsibility."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity."
-- Humanist Manifesto III
--------------------------------------------
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Never abandon life. There is a way out of everything except death."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
--------------------------------------------
"Success is never final, and failure never fatal; it’s courage that counts."
-- Unknown Source
--------------------------------------------
"The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!"
-- George S. Patton
--------------------------------------------
"Worry is the interest you pay on trouble before it is due."
-- Unknown Source
--------------------------------------------
"I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often."
-- Brian Tracy
--------------------------------------------
"Chance favors only those who court her."
-- Charles Nicolle
--------------------------------------------
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
--------------------------------------------
"Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door."
-- Milton Berle
--------------------------------------------
"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"You’re a woman if others say you are ... femaleness is in the eye of the beholder"
-- Cynthia Eller
--------------------------------------------
"There are two kinds of women: those who want power in the world, and those who want power in bed."
-- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
--------------------------------------------
"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."
-- Anaïs Nin
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"Chicks were born to give you fever,
be it farenheit or centigrade.
They give ya fever when you kiss them;
fever if you live and learn.
Fever ‘till you sizzle.
What a lovely way to burn."
-- Peggy Lee, “Fever”
--------------------------------------------
"Sex is dirty sheets."
-- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
--------------------------------------------
"There have already been two Duchesses of Westminster; there is only one Mademoiselle Chanel."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"The first time you marry for love; the second for money; and the third for companionship."
-- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
--------------------------------------------
"A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
"Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future."
-- Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel
--------------------------------------------
