Favorite quotations

There are some things which cannot
be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have,
must be paid heavily for their acquiring.
They are the very simplest things,
and because it takes a man's life to know them
the little new that each man gets from life
is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
- Ernest Hemingway
(From A. E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, Random House, NY, 1966)

We see things not as they are, but as we are.
- The Talmud

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), German playwright, poet.

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Those born with a talent which is meant to be used find their greatest joy in using it.
- Johann von Goethe

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful;
he studies it because he delights in it,
and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
If nature were not beautiful,
it would not be worth knowing,
and if nature were not worth knowing,
life would not be worth living.
- Henri Poincaré

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
- Joseph Conrad

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr

What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living.
- Doug Larson

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
- Christopher Morley

Believe that none of the effort you put into coming closer to God is ever wasted - even if in the end you don't achieve what you are striving for.
- Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.
- Will Rogers

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
- Henri Bergson

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
- Albert Pike

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

The ultimate test of a man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
- Gaylord Nelson

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We cannot hold a torch to light another person's path without brightening our own.
- Ben Sweetland

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
- George Bernard Shaw

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
- Derek Bok

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln

When you come to the end of all the light you know,
and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown,
faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen:
Either you will be given something solid to stand on
or you will be taught to fly.
- Edward Teller

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
- Sydney J. Harris

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.
- Johann Goethe
(John Anster's translation of Faust)

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome K. Jerome

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
- Mignon McLaughlin

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
- James D. Miles

The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi

Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all.
- Buddha

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. The rain falls soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the Palm of His hand.
- An Irish blessing for journey

If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
- Thomas Merton

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
- Bertrand Russell

If a dog barks his head off in the forest and no human hears him, is he still a bad dog?
- Anonymous

The right time to show your good character is when you are pestered by somebody weaker than you.
- Buddha

I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.
- Pablo Picasso

This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare

If the world is cold make it your business to build fires.
- Horace Traubel

Self-discipline is when your conscience tells you to do something and you don't talk back.
- W.K. Hope

Think you can, think you can't; either way, you'll be right.
- Henry Ford

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.
- Arthur Rubenstein

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Your work is to discover your work and then, with all your heart, to give yourself to it.
- Buddha

Strive to realize a state of inward happiness, independent of circumstances.
- J.P. Greaves

It's important the people should know what you stand for.
It's equally important that they know what you won't stand for.
- Mary H. Waldrip

I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work the more of it I seem to have.
- Coleman Cox

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
- George Bernard Shaw

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows,
but only empties today of its strength.
- Charles Spurgeon

Patience is also a form of action.
- Auguste Rodin

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
- Helen Keller

One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
- Sigmund Freud

I keep six honest serving men
(They taught me all I know)
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who
- Rudyard Kipling, in Just So Stories

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
- Putt's Law

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
- Alice Kahn

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
- Isaac Asimov

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.
- Marie Curie

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
- Richard Feynman

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.
- Baruch Spinoza

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
- William James

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.
- Pearl Bailey

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

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
- Albert Schweitzer

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
- Warren Buffet

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Frank Outlaw

Creativity is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to God.
- Bob Moawad

Maturity is the ability to do a job whether or not you are supervised, to carry money without spending it, and to bear an injustice without wanting to get even.
- Ann Landers

A desire to be in charge of our own lives, a need for control, is born in each of us. It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control.
- Robert F. Bennett

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
- Lee Holz

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

1. The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners.
2. Unix is user friendly - it's just picky about it's friends.
3. Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good. And when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
- - Dick Brandon

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - try to please everybody.
- Herbert Bayard Swope

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
- Charles Kingsley

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather-who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.
- Author Unknown

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if theres a man on base.
- Dave Barry

If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
- Grace Murray Hopper

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison

I have always believed that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
- Hermann Hesse

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
- Leo Tolstoy

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
- Lao Tzu

The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
- T. H. White, in The Once and Future King

It is an important thing, in our never-ending pursuit of happiness, to stop and just be happy for a while.
- Mark Twain

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
- B. F. Skinner

The advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
- Norbert Wiener, in Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth

Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen.
- David Hilbert [Engraved on his tombstone in Göttingen]

What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence.
- Samuel Johnson

Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men.
- Andre Weil

Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.
- Alan Turing

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short... if one follows patterns.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.
- Frederick Douglass

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
- Carl Sagan

Principles for the Development of a Complete Mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.
- Leonardo DaVinci

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where the words come out
From the depth of truth
Where the tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
In ever widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my father
Let my country awake.
- Rabindranath Tagore (from Gitanjali- a book of poems)