quotespage

Thomas Carlyle

(1795 - 1881)

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

Olin Miller

You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

Daniel Webster

(1782 - 1852)

The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.

Alice Thomas Ellis

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.

Oscar Wilde

(1854 - 1900)

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Robert Graves

(1895 - 1985)

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.

Richard Feynman

(1918 - 1988)

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Bertrand Russell

(1872 - 1970)

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

Ray Bradbury

(1920 - )

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

George Eliot

(1819 - 1880)

We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.

Abraham Lincoln

(1809 - 1865)

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Samuel Johnson

(1709 - 1784)

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Albert Schweitzer

(1875 - 1965)

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

Jonathan Swift

(1667 - 1745)

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

E. B. White

(1899 - 1985)

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

Gustave Flaubert

(1821 - 1880)

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Stephen Jay Gould

(1941 - 2002)

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Joe Ancis

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.

John Stuart Mill

(1806 - 1873)

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.

George Bernard Shaw

(1856 - 1950)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Ernest Hemingway

(1899 - 1961)

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

Ernest Hemingway

(1899 - 1961)

Never confuse movement with action.

Ernest Hemingway

(1899 - 1961)

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Zach Braff

I'm kind of jealous of the life I'm supposedly leading.

Horace Walpole

(1717 - 1797)

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

Horace Walpole

(1717 - 1797)

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Henry Ward Beecher

(1813 - 1887)

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

David Brin

(1950 - )

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

Edward Gibbon

(1737 - 1794)

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.

Samuel Johnson

(1709 - 1784)

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Edith Wharton

(1862 - 1937)

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.

Oscar Levant

(1906 - 1972)

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

Sophocles

(496 BC - 406 BC)

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

George F. Will

(1941 - )

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

Thomas A. Edison

(1847 - 1931)

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Arnold Toynbee

(1889 - 1975)

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

Bertrand Russell

(1872 - 1970)

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Gore Vidal

(1925 - )

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Mahatma Gandhi

(1869 - 1948)

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

Thomas Szasz

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844 - 1900)

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

Eric Hoffer

(1902 - 1983)

We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.

Christopher Morley

(1890 - 1957)

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

George Santayana

(1863 - 1952)

Music is essentially useless, as life is.

John Gaule

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

Thomas Szasz

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

Bruce Barton

When you're through changing, you're through.

Bertrand Russell

(1872 - 1970)

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.

Unknown

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.

Roald Amundsen

(1872 - 1928)

Adventure is just bad planning.

Chuck Palahniuk

(1962 - )

It's not living alone if you keep a rifle under the bed.

Oscar Wilde

(1854 - 1900)

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

John Burroughs

(1837 - 1921)

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

Alfred North Whitehead

(1861 - 1947)

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

Samuel Butler

(1835 - 1902)

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

Robertson Davies

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

Arnold Lobel

Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.

Margaret Bonnano

It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.

Benjamin Disraeli

(1804 - 1881)

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Bertrand Russell

(1872 - 1970)

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Thomas Jefferson

(1743 - 1826)

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Charles M. Schulz

(1922 - 2000)

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."

Robertson Davies

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

Bertrand Russell

(1872 - 1970)

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

John Ruskin

(1819 - 1900)

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.

John H. Patterson

An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.

Thomas Jefferson

(1743 - 1826)

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

George Orwell

(1903 - 1950)

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Robert Frost

(1874 - 1963)

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for.

Donald Foster

No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar.