975 Incredibly Profound Quotes Worth Sharing
Humanity is always looking for sources of enlightenment. It should come as no surprise, then, that quotes are so highly sought after. Whether it’s a familiar proverb, a motivational adage, a provocative opinion, or an entertaining quip, great quotations are often bite-sized lessons condensed into just a few lines.
With that said, we decided it was time to put together the ultimate collection of wit and wisdom from the most brilliant minds in philosophy, politics, and entertainment. 975 Incredibly Profound quotes worth sharing.
Every personality is embodied, including famous quotes from Maya Angelou, Vince Lombardi, Aristotle, and Jerry Seinfeld, among many others. And no genre was ignored, with inspirational quotes, funny quotes, and everything in between.
The quotations are categorized into twenty topics — each with picture quotes that you can easily share with your friends. Now, enough with the introduction, and on to the mind candy. Oh, and don’t forget to comment with any of your favorite quotes we might have missed.
Note: Quotes are sourced from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Quote Investigator, Quotery, and Wikiquote.
Adversity Quotes (1–61)
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Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
— Peter Gay
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Worry is like a rocking chair, it will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.
— Vance Havner
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Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.
— Fred Rogers
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The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
— Nelson Mandela
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Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
— James Russell Lowell
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
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When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
— Henry Ford
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If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
— Socrates
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Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
— Henry Ford
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Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.
— William Ralph Inge
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Know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
— Richard L. Evans
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Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Mistakes are the portals for discovery.
— James Joyce
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain!
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Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain!
— Vivian Greene
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People are like tea bags — they never know their own strength until they get into hot water.
— Anonymous
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The next time you’re faced with something that’s unexpected, unwanted and uncertain, consider that it just may be a gift.
— Stacey Kramer
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When you look at the Moon, you think, “I’m really small. What are my problems?” It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
— Alain de Botton
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Never share your problems with anyone — eighty percent don’t care, and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.
— Lou Holtz
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If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.
— Elbert Hubbard
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It isn’t life that weighs us down — it’s the way we carry it.
— Elizabeth Potier
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Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
— Benjamin Franklin
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If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.
— Tallulah Bankhead
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Life is a series of commas, not periods.
— Matthew McConaughey
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
— Oscar Wilde
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Difficulties break some men but make others.
— Nelson Mandela
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Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
— Helen Keller
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If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
— Swami Sivananda
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It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after a committee of sleep has worked on it.
— John Steinbeck
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Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
— Washington Irving
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
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What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
— Henry Stanley Haskins
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There are flowers everywhere, for those who bother to look.
— Henri Matisse
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Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
— Martin Luther
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Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
— Orison Swett Marden
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Tough times don’t last, tough people do.
— Robert H. Schuller
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Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
— Oprah Winfrey
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You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do!
— Olin Miller
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It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.
— Marcel Proust
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Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
— Maori Proverb
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Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
— William Hazlitt
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I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.
— Maya Angelou
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We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.
— E. Joseph Cossman
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Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
— Lance Armstrong
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The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
— Kahlil Gibran
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Some people believe that holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go — and then do it.
— Ann Landers
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You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
— George Lorimer
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If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.
— Fred DeVito
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The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
— Henri Frédéric Amiel
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In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
— Paul Harvey
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Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.
— John de Paola
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Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
— Joshua J. Marine
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The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
— Winston Churchill
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One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.
— Jack Penn
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Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
— Albert Einstein
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Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
— Allen Saunders
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Every moment is a fresh beginning.
— T. S. Eliot
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The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
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A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
— Robert Frost
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Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
— Erica Jong
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Never let yesterday use up too much of today.
— Will Rogers
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Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
Age Quotes (62–83)
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Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.
— Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
— Mark Twain
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The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
— Doug Larson
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You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.
— George Burns
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
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A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
— Robert Frost
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Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty in every age of life really never grows old.
— Franz Kafka
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It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old; they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.
— Gabriel García Márquez
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A birthday is a good time to begin anew; throwing away the old habits, as you would old clothes, and never putting them on again.
— Amos Bronson Alcott
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All would live long, but none would be old.
— Benjamin Franklin
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Middle age is when you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you.
— Ogden Nash
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Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
— Mark Twain
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The greatest thing in life is to die young — but delay it as long as possible.
— George Bernard Shaw
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Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
— François VI (Duc de La Rochefoucauld)
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Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.
— Benjamin Franklin
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Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.
— Fred Astaire
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Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
— Tom Stoppard
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The older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune.
— Irish Proverb
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Growing old is no more than a bad habit that a busy person has not time to form.
— André Maurois
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Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
— Herbert Asquith
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Old is always fifteen years from now.
— Bill Cosby
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There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch.
— Robert Brault
Character Quotes (84–169)
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The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
— Thomas Paine
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Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.
— William Shakespeare
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Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
— André Gide
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It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers.
— Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis
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When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
— Wayne Walter Dyer
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Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
— Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
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There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.
— French Proverb
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He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.
— Honoré de Balzac
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Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
— E. M. Forster
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Beware the fury of a patient man!
— John Dryden
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You must be the change that you wish to see in the world.
— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the mean man seeks is in others.
— Confucius
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Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
— Albert Einstein
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Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in one ahead.
— Bill McGlashen
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How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.
— Coco Chanel
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As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.
— Marian Anderson
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In order for three people to keep a secret, two must be dead.
— Benjamin Franklin
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He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
— John Milton
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It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.
— Peter Ustinov
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He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn’t reserve a plot for weeds.
— Dag Hammarskjöld
I believe in one thing — that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.
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I believe in one thing — that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.
— Albert Einstein
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In life you will meet two kinds of people: Those who build you up and those who tear you down. But in the end, you will thank them both.
— Anonymous
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A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
— Nelson Mandela
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A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
— Charles Evans Hughes
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Don’t find fault. Find remedy. Anyone can complain.
— Henry Ford
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A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
— Mark Twain
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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.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
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A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
— Ayn Rand
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Hire character. Train skill.
— Peter Schutz
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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
— H. L. Mencken
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No one beneath you can offend you. No one your equal would.
— Jan L. Wells
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No one has ever become poor by giving.
— Anne Frank
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Negative words are powerful boomerangs so be careful what you say about people and yourself.
— Mary J. Blige
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Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.
— Karen Armstrong
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It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.
— Dick Cavett
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Don’t wait until you make your first million to make a difference in somebody’s life. If you have something to give, give it now.
— Mark Bezos
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I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
— Oprah Winfrey
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Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing had happened.
— Winston Churchill
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Aspire rather to be a hero than merely appear one.
— Baltasar Gracian
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Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
— G. K. Chesterton
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Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.
— Athenaeus
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Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.
— Charles Dickens
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The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example.
— Benjamin Disraeli
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On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.
— George Orwell
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The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
— William Arthur Ward
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We are persuaded to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.
— Tim Jackson
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Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
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He who slings mud generally loses ground.
— Adlai E. Stevenson II
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In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
— Thomas Jefferson
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Who we are in the present includes who we were in the past.
— Fred Rogers
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Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty.
— Jefferson Davis
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It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.
— W. C. Fields
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A mind is like a parachute; it doesn’t work if it isn’t open.
— Frank Zappa
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Give a man a mask and he will show his true face.
— Oscar Wilde
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The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
— Voltaire
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It is our choices . . . that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
— J. K. Rowling
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No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
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Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
— Oscar Wilde
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I believe it is the nature of people to be heroes, given the chance.
— James A. Autry
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Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!
— Walter Scott
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The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is. It’s that you can see the world as it isn’t.
— Kathryn Schulz
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If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.
— Catherine Aird
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I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
— Winston Churchill
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What we must decide is how we are valuable rather than how valuable we are.
— Edgar Z. Friedenberg
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That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it.
— Abraham Lincoln
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Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
— Eric Hoffer
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To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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We don’t know who we are until we see what we can do.
— Martha Grimes
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We get so much in the habit of wearing a disguise before others that we eventually appear disguised before ourselves.
— Jim Bishop
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It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.
— Molière
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This is the first test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.
— William Lyon Phelps
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The man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away.
— Charles Schwab
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Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
— Millicent Fenwick
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Truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
— William Blake
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Unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.
— Peter Marshall
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It is a human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
— Anatole France
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Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
— John Wooden
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Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
— Ambrose Bierce
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Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
— Abraham Lincoln
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If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
— Mark Twain
Courage Quotes (170–198)
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There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
— Alfred Hitchcock
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I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.
— Rosa Parks
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The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
— Joseph Campbell
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All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them.
— Walt Disney
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I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.
— Louisa May Alcott
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As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
— Marianne Williamson
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It is better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand days as a lamb.
— Roman Proverb
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In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
— John A. Shedd
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The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
— Mark Twain
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.
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Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.
— Billy Graham
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Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.
— William Shakespeare
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Confidence is like going after Moby Dick with a rowboat, a harpoon and a jar of tartar sauce.
— Robert Orben
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Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it?
— Caroline Myss
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What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
— Vincent van Gogh
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The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.
— Coco Chanel
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Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
— G. K. Chesterton
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I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
— Nelson Mandela
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Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
— Ambrose Redmoon
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One man with courage makes a majority.
— Andrew Jackson
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It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.
— J. K. Rowling
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Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
— Helen Keller
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Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
— Mary Anne Radmacher
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Let fear be a counselor and not a jailer.
— Anthony Robbins
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When the will defies fear, when the heart applauds the brain, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death–this is heroism.
— Robert Ingersoll
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A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
— Johann Paul Friedrich Richter
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The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.
— Thucydides
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
— Anaïs Nin
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Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
— Winston Churchill
Family Quotes (199–231)
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With kids, the days are long, but the years are short.
— John Leguizamo
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Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.
— Robert A. Heinlein
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If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
— Bruce Barton
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What’s a good investment? Go home from work early and spend the afternoon throwing a ball around with your son.
— Ben Stein
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One of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
— Howard W. Hunter
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It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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A good marriage is like an incredible retirement fund. You put everything you have into it during your productive life, and over the years it turns from silver to gold to platinum.
— Willard Scott
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Marriage is very difficult. It’s like a 5,000–piece jigsaw puzzle, all sky.
— Cathy Ladman
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A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
— Mignon McLaughlin
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Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
— John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester)
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Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
— Martin Luther
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If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
— Abigail Van Buren
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It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.
— Ann Landers
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It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.
— Pope John XXIII
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Mother — that was the bank where we deposited all our hurts and worries.
— T. DeWitt Talmage
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To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the loving cup, whenever you’re wrong admit it; whenever you’re right shut up.
— Ogden Nash
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Adolescence is perhaps nature’s way of preparing parents to welcome the empty nest.
— Karen Savage
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A rich person should leave his kids enough to do something, but not enough to do nothing.
— Warren Buffett
A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.
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A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.
— Carl Sandburg
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The reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
— Sam Levenson
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By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
— Charles Wadsworth
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The quality of a father can be seen in the goals, dreams and aspirations he sets not only for himself, but for his family.
— Reed Markham
My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
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My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
— Clarence B. Kelland
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You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
— Franklin P. Adams
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A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.
— Erma Bombeck
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What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.
— Henry Ward Beecher
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My mom is a never-ending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune.
— Graycie Harmon
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Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother.
— Oprah Winfrey
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My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person; he believed in me.
— Jim Valvano
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The best time to give advice to your children is while they’re still young enough to believe you know what you’re talking about.
— Evan Esar
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Your family is depending on you. No better reason to bring all your game all the time.
— Grant Cardone
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Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
— Robert Brault
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You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around — and why his parents will always wave back.
— William D. Tammeus
Friendship Quotes (232–271)
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In prosperity, our friends know us. In adversity, we know our friends.
— John Churton Collins
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I like friends who, when you tell them you need a moment alone, know enough not to stray too far.
— Robert Brault
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A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
— Elbert Hubbard
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As old wood is best to burn; old horses to ride; old books to read; old wine to drink; so are old friends most trusty to use.
— Leonard Wright
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The mere process of growing old together will make the slightest acquaintance seem a bosom friend.
— Logan Pearsall Smith
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A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.
— Donna Roberts
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Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need most.
— Proverb
The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
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The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
— Elisabeth Foley
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The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
— Henry David Thoreau
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A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.
— Douglas Pagels
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If you have one true friend, you have more than your share.
— Thomas Fuller
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The only way to have a friend is to be one.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.
— William Butler Yeats
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Do I not effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?
— Sigismund
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You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
— Dale Carnegie
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A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
— Walter Winchell
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True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
— Charles Caleb Colton
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I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
— Thomas Edison
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It is a good thing to be rich and a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be loved by many friends.
— Euripides
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It’s not how many friends you can count, it’s how many of those you can count on.
— Anthony Liccione
Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.
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Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.
— George Gordon Byron
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A friend is someone who will bail you out of jail. A best friend is the one sitting next to you saying “boy was that fun.”
— Anonymous
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He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
— Oscar Wilde
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We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.
— Letty Cottin Pogrebin
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It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
— Arnold Bennett
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A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad.
— Arnold H. Glasow
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Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.
— Charles Lamb
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Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life–and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.
— Dean Koontz
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Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
— Aristotle
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Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives and remembering what one receives.
— Alexander Dumas
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You don’t have to have anything in common with people you’ve known since you were five. With old friends, you’ve got your whole life in common.
— Lyle Lovett
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One does not make friends. One recognizes them.
— Garth Henrichs
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I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.
— Robert Brault
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If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
— George MacDonald
Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.
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Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.
— Ed Cunningham
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Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are.
— Russian Proverb
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The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.
— Maya Angelou
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Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.
— Benjamin Franklin
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A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your successes.
— Doug Larson
Gratitude Quotes (272–290)
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If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
— Meister Eckhart
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Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
— Charles Dickens
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Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.
— Alice Walker
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You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot, for the places and people you’re lucky you’re not!
— Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
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Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.
— Doris Mortman
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Let every emotion be capable of becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.
— André Gide
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As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.
— John F. Kennedy
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
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The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
— Oprah Winfrey
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Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you’ll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you’ll find that you have more of it.
— Ralph Marston
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I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
— E. B. White
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One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.
— Andy Rooney
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Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.
— William Faulkner
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To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.
— Betty Smith
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God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?”
— William Arthur Ward
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Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.
— Ingrid Bergman
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What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
— Colette
If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get.
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If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get.
— Frank A. Clark
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Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road.
— John Henry Jowett
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Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Happiness Quotes (291–333)
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The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.
— Marcel Pagnol
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Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond our grasp; but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
— Anonymous
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Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
— Joseph Addison
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For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Happiness is anyone and anything at all, that’s loved by you.
— Clark Gesner
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Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.
— Roy L. Goodman
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Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
— Buddha
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If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.
— Ray Bradbury
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Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
— William Saroyan
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Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
— Sir James Matthew Barrie
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
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The secret of happiness is to find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
— Dan Dennett
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In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
— Margaret Atwood
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The best remedy for anger is delay.
— Brigham Young
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I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.
— Robert Brault
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Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments of life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.
— Susan B. Anthony
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Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
— Maya Angelou
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You’ve gotta’ dance like there’s nobody watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like there’s nobody listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.
— William Watson Purkey
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There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
— Edith Wharton
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Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
— William Bruce Cameron
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Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
— Anonymous
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Unexpected intrusions of beauty. That is what life is.
— Saul Bellow
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I knew a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.
— Johnny Carson
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Sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted.
— Johann Paul Friedrich Richter
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Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
— Kahlil Gibran
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Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
— Roger Miller
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It is better to live rich, than to die rich.
— Samuel Johnson
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Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
— Walt Whitman
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Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length.
— Robert Frost
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You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.
— Buddha
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He who angers you conquers you.
— Elizabeth Kenny
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One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.
— Dale Carnegie
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Most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.
— Abraham Lincoln
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I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
— Diane Ackerman
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If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
— Katharine Hepburn
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If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
— Lin Yutang
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I’ve learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.
— Martha Washington
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As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
— Leonardo da Vinci
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Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.
— Douglas Pagels
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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
— Oscar Wilde
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It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
— J. K. Rowling
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Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.
— Danny Kaye
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We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
— Charles Bukowski
Humor Quotes (334–345)
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There is no such thing as an attention span. People have infinite attention if you are entertaining them.
— Jerry Seinfeld
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You can’t stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh.
— Jay Leno
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The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.
— Johann Friedrich von Schiller
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Humor is a rubber sword — it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.
— Mary Hirsch
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The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter. The moment it arises, all your irritations and resentments slip away, and the sunny spirit takes their place.
— Mark Twain
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The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.
— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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Laughter is an instant vacation.
— Milton Berle
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It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me laugh.
— W. H. Auden
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The only way you can know where the line is, is if you cross it.
— Dave Chappelle
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I’m not funny. What I am is brave.
— Lucille Ball
Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
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Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
— Victor Borge
Individuality Quotes (346–356)
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Stop with the labels, because we are not jam jars. We are extraordinary, different, wonderful people.
— Caroline Casey
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Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde
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Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out?
— Jenny Bicks
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In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
— Coco Chanel
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The pursuit of normality is the ultimate sacrifice of potential.
— Faith Jegede
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To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.
— Bernard M. Baruch
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We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.
— Robert Fulghum
Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!
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Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!
— Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
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The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The chance for greatness, for progress and for change dies the moment we try to be like someone else.
— Faith Jegede
Justice Quotes (357–392)
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A right delayed is a right denied.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
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We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
— Voltaire
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There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
I rather die on my feet than live upon my knees.
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I’d rather die on my feet, than live upon my knees.
— Emiliano Zapata
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If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
— George Orwell
Justice is the insurance we have on our lives, and obedience is the premium we pay for it.
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Justice is the insurance we have on our lives, and obedience is the premium we pay for it.
— William Penn
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I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Envy, among other ingredients, has a mixture of love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good fortune.
— William Hazlitt
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A lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance; its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.
— Pamela Meyer
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I don’t feel threatened by people who ask questions. It’s those who refuse to answer them that frighten me.
— Jason Bacchetta
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A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order. And a great many people are worried about justice. But one thing is certain: you cannot have either until you have both.
— Ramsey Clark
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Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
— Thomas Babington (Lord Macaulay)
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Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
— Voltaire
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Nothing else in the world . . . not all the armies . . . is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
— Victor Hugo
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If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a one-foot chain.
— Theodor Adorno
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I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
— Walter Besant
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A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
— Winston Churchill
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People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
— Søren Kierkegaard
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Facts, like people, want to be free — and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner.
— Paul David Hewson (Bono)
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Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.
— Albert Schweitzer
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You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
— John Morley (Viscount Morley of Blackburn)
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We can never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
— Oscar Wilde
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If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a one-foot chain.
— Theodor Adorno
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People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
— Søren Kierkegaard
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Facts, like people, want to be free — and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner.
— Paul David Hewson (Bono)
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Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded as self-evident.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
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Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.
— Nelson Mandela
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Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
— Adlai E. Stevenson II
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The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
— Hubert H. Humphrey
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A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
— Thomas Paine
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Using freedom to excuse foolishness is the highest form of ignorance. Remember, people died for those rights.
— Jason Bacchetta
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We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
— William Faulkner
Knowledge Quotes (393–451)
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To repeat what others have said requires education. To challenge it requires brains.
— Mary Pettibone Poole
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Education needs to work by pull, not push.
— Charles Leadbeater
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The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
— Sydney J. Harris
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The mind is not a vessel that needs filling but wood that needs igniting.
— Plutarch
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Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
— Will Durant
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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
— Aristotle
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True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.
— Akhenaton
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Wisdom isn’t taught; it’s not a science. Wisdom is a tattoo carved into the mind after a lifetime of failures and achievements.
— Jason Bacchetta
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Students deserve great teachers. And teachers deserve the support they need to become great.
— Bill Gates
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The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
— William Shakespeare
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A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
— Theodore Roosevelt
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True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.
— Miguel de Unamuno
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I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.
— Dudley Field Malone
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People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.
— David H. Comins
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Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
— Isaac Asimov
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Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.
— Mark Twain
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The best questions are the ones that create the most uncertainty.
— Beau Lotto
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Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.
— Charlotte Brontë
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Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.
— Oscar Wilde
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Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
— T. H. Huxley
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The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
— Aristotle
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If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!
— Andy McIntyre
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Time ripens all things; no man is born wise.
— Miguel de Cervantes
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If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
— Anonymous
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Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
— Jane Austen
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Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
— Leonardo da Vinci
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True intelligence very readily conceives of an intelligence superior to its own; and this is why truly intelligent men are modest.
— André Gide
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That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.
— Doris Lessing
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I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
— Woodrow Wilson
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Education is great — but it’s really my creativity that’s taught me that I can be much more than what my education told me I am.
— Raghava KK
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I believe this passionately: that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.
— Ken Robinson
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A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
— Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
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Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
— Lord Henry Brougham
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My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
— Ashleigh Brilliant
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The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
— Gloria Steinem
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Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
— Bernard M. Baruch
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Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
— André Gide
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All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.
— Juvenal
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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
— Miles Kington
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Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
— Ralph W. Sockman
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If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.
— Sir Isaac Newton
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Wise words are like seeds. The more you scatter them, the more they will grow into infinite gardens of knowledge.
— Suzy Kassem
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Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
— Malcolm Forbes
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Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
— Chinua Achebe
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The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
— Bertrand Russell (Earl Russell)
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Be wise with speed; A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
— Edward Young
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Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
— Plato
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To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.
— Jules Henri Poincaré
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Common sense is quite rare.
— Voltaire
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The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
— Eden Phillpotts
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We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
— Anaïs Nin
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Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.
— Gail Godwin
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The fool wonders, the wise man asks.
— Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield)
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To teach is to learn twice.
— Joseph Joubert
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I never learned anything while I was talking.
— Larry King
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The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.
— Socrates
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If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.
— Margaret Fuller
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Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.
— Albert Einstein
Leadership Quotes (452–471)
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Leaders inspire. They aren’t assigned leadership. They command it.
— Phil McGraw
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Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.
— Tom Peters
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Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.
— John C. Maxwell
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The essence of leadership is being able to see the iceberg before it hits the Titanic.
— Arianna Huffington
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No person can be a great leader unless he takes genuine joy in the successes of those under him.
— W. A. Nance
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It’s one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realize whatever he’s dreaming.
— Benjamin Zander
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True leadership is when you are willing to risk your power and voice so that all of ours can be heard.
— Justin Timberlake
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I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.
— Muriel Strode
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If not us, who? If not now, when?
— Hillel (the Elder)
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Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
— Barack Obama
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If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in.
— Derek Sivers
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If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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People cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
— H. Ross Perot
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It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
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The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.
— Benjamin Zander
The day people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.
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The day people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.
— Colin Powell
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
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Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
— Emily P. Bissell
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Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
— Peter F. Drucker
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Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what you want them to achieve, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
— George Smith Patton, Jr.
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The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others.
— Hasidic Proverb
Literature Quotes (472–509)
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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
— Mark Twain
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We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering — these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love — these are what we stay alive for.
— John Keating
Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
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Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.
— Mason Cooley
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Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
— Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
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When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.
— Clifton Fadiman
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To hold a pen is to be at war.
— Voltaire
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There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
— Ernest Hemingway
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History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
— Winston Churchill
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A word after a word after a word is power.
— Margaret Atwood
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What is written without effort in general is read without pleasure.
— Samuel Johnson
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The man who doesn’t read hasn’t any advantage over the man who can’t read.
— Anonymous
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The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.
— André Gide
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Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.
— Jules Renard
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I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.
— Blaise Pascal
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I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.
— Joss Whedon
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A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.
— George R. R. Martin
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We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
— Anaïs Nin
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If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.
— Wilson Mizner
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Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.
— Lloyd Alexander
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The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.
— Samuel Johnson
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An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
— Gustave Flaubert
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A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.
— Jean-Luc Godard
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Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs.
— Jerome Stern
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Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.
— Anonymous
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How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
— Henry David Thoreau
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If you would not be forgotten, As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worthy reading, Or do things worth the writing.
— Benjamin Franklin
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Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason. They made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
— Charles Caleb Colton
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The expression “to write something down” suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.
— William Gass
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A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
— Mignon McLaughlin
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Easy reading is damn hard writing.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
— Anton Chekhov
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A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
— Charles Péguy
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The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.
— Philip Roth
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What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
— Logan Pearsall Smith
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You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
— Saul Bellow
Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
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Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.
— Neil Gaiman
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Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
— Virginia Woolf
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Beware the man of one book.
— Anonymous
Love Quotes (510–587)
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I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
— John Green
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You’ve got to date a lot of Volkswagens before you get to your Porsche.
— Debby Atkinson
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Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
— Oscar Wilde
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Being happily and successfully married is generally not so much a matter of marrying the right person as it is being the right person.
— Howard W. Hunter
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You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
— Indira Gandhi
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Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
— Benjamin Franklin
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Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
— Mother Teresa
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The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
— William Wordsworth
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One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.
— James Earl Jones
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The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
— Bob Marley
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Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.
— Thomas Fuller
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If you have love, you don’t need to have anything else. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter much what else you have.
— Sir James Matthew Barrie
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How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
— Albert Einstein
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It’s a mistake to think that we have to be lovely to be loved by human beings or by God.
— Fred Rogers
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When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.
— Leo Tolstoy
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Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
— Victor Hugo
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Many a man who falls in love with a dimple make the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
— Evan Esar
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Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says “I need you because I love you.”
— Erich Fromm
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Love is friendship set on fire.
— Jeremy Taylor
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Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Love is to love someone for who they are, who they were, and who they will be.
— Chris Moore
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Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.
— Lao Tzu
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Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fire.
— François VI (Duc de La Rochefoucauld)
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Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
— Mark Twain
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Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
— William Shakespeare
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When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.
— Milan Kundera
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You don’t marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as the result of being married to you.
— Richard J. Needham
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If Christmas isn’t found in your heart, you won’t find it under a tree.
— Charlotte Carpenter
People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.
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People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.
— Maya Angelou
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Solitude is a good place to visit but a poor place to stay.
— Josh Billings
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There’s one thing worse than being alone: wishing you were.
— Bob Steele
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The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Kindness is never wasted. If it has no effect on the recipient, at least it benefits the bestower.
— S. H. Simmons
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You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in.
— Bill Copeland
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People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
— Kent M. Keith
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Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.
— Leo Buscaglia
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Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
— Jean Anouilh
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We accept the love we think we deserve.
— Stephen Chbosky
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
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Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
— Robert Heinlein
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Someday, someone will walk into your life and make you realize why it never worked out with anyone else.
— Anonymous
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Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
— Robert Frost
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Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only with what you are expecting to give — which is everything.
— Katharine Hepburn
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Kindness in words creates confidence; kindness in thinking creates profoundness; kindness in giving creates love.
— Lao Tzu
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Love endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other.
— Walter Lippmann
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To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.
— Brandi Snyder
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The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
— Blaise Pascal
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To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.
— Saadi
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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
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There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.
— Sarah Dessen
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We don’t love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
— Jacques Maritain
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Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
— Voltaire
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The heart has no wrinkles.
— Marie de Rabutin-Chantal (Marquise de Sévigné)
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There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson
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I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
— David Viscott
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We need not think alike to love alike.
— Francis David
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.
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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.
— Anne Sullivan
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Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I really need it.
— Swedish Proverb
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There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.
— Mother Teresa
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I would rather have eyes that cannot see; ears that cannot hear; lips that cannot speak, than a heart that cannot love.
— Robert Tizon
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Who, being loved, is poor?
— Oscar Wilde
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Loneliness and the feeling of being uncared for and unwanted are the greatest poverty.
— Mother Teresa
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Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it.
— Josh Billings
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Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
— Carl Gustav Jung
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If you marry for money you will earn every penny.
— Phil McGraw
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Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
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There are only four questions of value in life. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love.
— Don Juan DeMarco
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Hate leaves ugly scars; love leaves beautiful ones.
— Mignon McLaughlin
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You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
— Sam Keen
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For love is immortality.
— Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
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He who cannot forgive others destroys the bridge over which he himself must pass.
— George Herbert
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To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
— Lao Tzu
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Love is a fabric which never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the water of adversity and grief.
— Robert Fulghum
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We cannot really love anybody without whom we never laugh.
— Agnes Repplier
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When a heart finds another, what’s a cloud more or less in the sky?
— Arabian Proverb
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Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.
— Paulo Coelho
Political Quotes (588–654)
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Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
— Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
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What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
— Abraham Lincoln
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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
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When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.
— George Pataki
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We pick politicians by how they look on TV and Miss America on where she stands on the issues. Isn’t that a little backwards?
— Jay Leno
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You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.
— Mario Cuomo
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Where you stand should not depend on where you sit.
— Jane Bryant Quinn
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Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.
— William Ralph Inge
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Politics is the only business where doing nothing other than making the other guy look bad is an acceptable outcome.
— Mark Warner
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Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody, rather than for somebody.
— Franklin P. Adams
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The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
— Winston Churchill
Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
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Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
— John F. Kennedy
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Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
— José Maria de Eça de Queiroz
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A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
— Bill Vaughan
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You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.
— Harry S. Truman
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One of the fondest expressions around is that America can’t be the world’s policeman. But guess who gets called when suddenly someone needs a cop.
— Colin Powell
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Being President is a lot like running a cemetery. You’ve got a lot of people under you and nobody’s listening.
— Bill Clinton
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If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.
— Hamilton Fish
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Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
— Isaac Asimov
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A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
— Barry Goldwater
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The essence of America — that which really unites us — is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion. It is an idea — and what an idea it is — that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.
— Condoleezza Rice
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We’re not going to fix government until we fix citizenship.
— Jennifer Pahlka
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I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
— Voltaire
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Syllables govern the world.
— John Selden
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It’s useless to hold a person to anything he says while he’s in love, drunk, or running for office.
— Shirley MacLaine
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions. It only guarantees equality of opportunity.
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Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions. It only guarantees equality of opportunity.
— Irving Kristol
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A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in, and how many want out.
— Tony Blair
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The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
— Winston Churchill
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Government can’t give us anything without depriving us of something else.
— Henry Hazlitt
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Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
— Mark Twain
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Everybody wants to eat at the government’s table, but nobody wants to do the dishes.
— Werner Finck
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A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
— P. J. O’Rourke
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A committee takes hours to put into minutes what can be done in seconds.
— Judy Castrina
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The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
— Alice Walker
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The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good.
— Abraham Lincoln
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You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.
— Winston Churchill
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What’s right with America is a willingness to discuss what’s wrong with America.
— Harry C. Bauer
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The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
— Niccolò Machiavelli
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A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
— Bertrand de Jouvenel
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You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.
— Abraham Lincoln
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The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
— Theodor Adorno
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Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
— Oscar Ameringer
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Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
— Douglas Adams
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Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
— Groucho Marx
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Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
— James Bovard
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Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
— Ronald Reagan
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Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
— Robert Orben
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Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.
— Pericles
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People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
— Otto von Bismarck
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Political correctness doesn’t change us, it shuts us up.
— Glenn Beck
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The politician is . . . trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.
— Edward R. Murrow
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The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
— Anatole France
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.
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Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.
— Winston Churchill
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A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
— Greek Proverb
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A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
— Theodore Roosevelt
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A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
— Caskie Stinnett
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A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.
— Carl Sandburg
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Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
— James Russell Lowell
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In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
— Charles de Gaulle
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Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.
— Winston Churchill
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From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
— Karl Marx
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The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
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The things that have made America great are being subverted for the things that make Americans rich.
— Lou Erickson
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A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.
— James Freeman Clarke
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Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it.
— Benjamin Lichtenberg
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What is the essence of our America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from.”
— Marilyn vos Savant
Religion Quotes (655–664)
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The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion.
— Thomas Paine
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I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, “How many good things have you done in your life?” Rather he will ask, “How much love did you put into what you did?”
— Mother Teresa
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What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.
— Eleanor Powell
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Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
— Thomas Paine
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How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few, His precepts!
— Benjamin Franklin
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People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.
— Saint Augustine
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God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
— Sir James Matthew Barrie
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Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.
— Gabriela Mistral
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Had mankind listened to the Creator when he advised his children to never create his image, or give him a name, then humanity would not be so confused and divided in believing that every faith is worshiping a different god.
— Suzy Kassem
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Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks!
— Phillips Brooks
Success Quotes (665–868)
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If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
— Anthony Robbins
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Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
— Arthur Ashe
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Perseverance alone does not assure success. No amount of stalking will lead to game in a field that has none.
— Fu Xi
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The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder — a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you.
— Thomas Carlyle
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Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street.
— William Blake
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Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.
— Charles Caleb Colton
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A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
— Epictetus
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He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty or failed to express it; Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; Whose life was an inspiration; Whose memory a benediction.
— Bessie A. Stanley
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The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
— Chinese Proverb
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In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
— Sid Caeser
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It is not enough to be busy… The question is: what are we busy about?
— Henry David Thoreau
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How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
— George Washington Carver
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If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
— Steve Jobs
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The person who knows “how” will always have a job. The person who knows “why” will always be his boss.
— Diane Ravitch
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Those who know how to win are more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.
— Polybius
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I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
— G. K. Chesterton
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Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
— Lou Holtz
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How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
— Trina Paulus
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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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Make voyages! Attempt them! There’s nothing else.
— Tennessee Williams
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Business is a combination of war and sport.
— André Maurois
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There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
— Beverly Sills
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The gods help them that help themselves.
— Aesop
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Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Work like a captain. Play like a pirate.
— Anonymous
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There’s no one way to dance. And that’s kind of my philosophy about everything.
— Ellen DeGeneres
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Celebrate what you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.
— Mia Hamm
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You just don’t luck into things as much as you’d like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it’s friendships or opportunities.
— Barbara Bush
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I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail.
— Woodrow Wilson
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.
— Will Durant
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Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
— Rita Mae Brown
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Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
— Cyril Northcote Parkinson
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There is no such thing as a “self-made” person. . . . Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
— George Matthew Adams
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If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
— Abraham Maslow
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Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
— Richard Branson
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If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.
— Eric Shinseki
“
Worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom with the dishes.
— P. J. O’Rourke
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There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.
— C. S. Lewis
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The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.
— Paul David Hewson (Bono)
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It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
— Philip Dormer Stanhope (Earl of Chesterfield)
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I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.
— D. H. Lawrence
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There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.
— Chinese Proverb
“
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.
— Albert Camus
“
No one ever gets far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.
— L. Ron Hubbard
“
The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.
— Vince Lombardi
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It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.
— Paul Graham
“
Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.
— Seth Godin
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Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.
— Joseph Joubert
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There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
— André Gide
“
A person becomes great not by sitting on some high seat, but through higher qualities. A crow does not become an eagle by simply sitting on the top of a palatial building.
— Chanakya
“
Virtuous persons and fruit-laden trees bow, but fools and dry sticks break because they do not bend.
— Chanakya
“
You have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
— Theodore Hesburgh
“
Oh, the difference between nearly right and exactly right.
— Horace J. Brown
“
A peacock that rests on his feathers is just another turkey.
— Dolly Parton
“
Genius is immediate, but talent takes time.
— Janet Flanner
“
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
— Douglas Adams
“
To be able to look back upon one’s life in satisfaction, is to live twice.
— Kahlil Gibran
“
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
— Henry David Thoreau
“
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
— Theodore Roosevelt
“
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
— William Blake
“
There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes.
— William John Bennett
“
The biggest mistake in helping undeserved kids is not raising the bar high enough. Children will believe if you believe in them.
— Oprah Winfrey
“
Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
— Oprah Winfrey
“
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
— Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield)
“
The road to success is always under construction.
— Lily Tomlin
“
There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.
— Susan Cain
“
The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
— John Stuart Mill
“
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“
The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
— Robert Frost
“
If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It’s tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his jacket on.
— Lou Holtz
“
A journey of a thousand leagues begins beneath one’s feet.
— Lao Tzu
“
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
— Robert Frost
“
All glory comes from daring to begin.
— Eugene F. Ware
“
Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
— Abraham Lincoln
“
Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.
— Babe Ruth
“
Anger is like gasoline. If you spray it around and somebody lights a match, you’ve got an inferno. But if we can put our anger inside an engine, it can drive us forward.
— Scilla Elworthy
“
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
— Margaret Mead
“
Either you run the day, or the day runs you.
— Jim Rohn
“
Like what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
— Henry Van Dyke
“
The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.
— John Ruskin
“
There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.
— Christopher Darlington Morley
“
Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won’t taste good.
— Joe Paterno
“
If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
— Edward Albee
“
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
— Steve Jobs
“
Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got an fifty percent what people think you’ve got.
— Sophia Loren
“
Don’t live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.
— Wendy Wasserstein
“
Don’t just stand there; make something happen.
— Lee Iacocca
“
When opportunity knocks, some people are in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers.
— Polish Proverb
“
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
— Francis Bacon
“
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
— Stewart Brand
“
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.
— George S. Patton
“
I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.
— Coleman Cox
“
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
— Japanese Proverb
“
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
— Michelangelo
“
Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.
— Drew Houston
“
Starting a company is like throwing yourself off the cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down.
— Reid Hoffman
“
Opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“
I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy. I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.
— Art Williams
“
What may be done at any time will be done at no time.
— Scottish Proverb
“
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
— Henry Ford
“
Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.
— Joe Clark
To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
“
To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
— Fred Shero
“
Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.
— Mary Kay Ash
“
Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere.
“
What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere.
— Ovid
“
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
“
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
— Maya Angelou
“
Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.
— Farrah Gray
To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.
“
To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.
— Reba McEntire
“
When the great scorer comes to write against your name, he marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.
— Grantland Rice
“
I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
— Warren Buffett
“
Nothing will work unless you do.
— Maya Angelou
“
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
“
It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
— Theodore Roosevelt
“
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
— Winston Churchill
“
When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less.
— Paul Brown
“
You can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes. After that, you better know something.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“
It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.
— Steve Jobs
“
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
— Jim Rohn
“
Success is not forever, and failure’s not fatal.
— Don Shula
Failure is an event, never a person.
“
Failure is an event, never a person.
— William D. Brown
“
You never conquer a mountain. You stand on the summit a few moments; then the wind blows your footprints away.
— Arlene Blum
“
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.
— Stephen King
“
Clear your mind of can’t.
— Samuel Johnson
“
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
— Napoleon Hill
“
Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
— Ovid
“
If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.
— Simon Sinek
“
Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them.
— Charles J. Sykes
“
God sells us all things at the price of labor.
— Leonardo da Vinci
“
I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
— Pablo Picasso
“
Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.
— Angelo Sotira
“
When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.
— Larry Ellison
“
Always wake up with a smile knowing that today you are going to have fun accomplishing what others are too afraid to do.
— Mark Cuban
“
The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.
— Charles “Casey” Stengel
“
Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.
— Malcolm Forbes
“
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
— Robert Collier
“
Sometimes when you aim for the stars, you hit the moon.
— Ian Holloway
“
To be a champion, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.
— Sugar Ray Robinson
“
If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“
There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
— Sam Walton
“
There’s nothing like biting off more than you can chew, and then chewing anyway.
— Mark Burnett
“
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
— T. S. Eliot
“
Men are made stronger on the realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own right arm.
— Sidney J. Phillips
“
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result.
— James Allen
“
A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.
— Liberty Hyde Bailey
“
Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
— Thomas Edison
“
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
“
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you’ll be a success.
— Albert Schweitzer
“
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
— Michael Jordan
“
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
— John Wooden
People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
“
People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
— Rob Siltanen
“
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
— Denis Waitley
“
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
— Henry David Thoreau
“
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
— Truman Capote
“
You can do anything, but not everything.
— David Allen
“
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.
— Steve Jobs
“
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
— Anne Lamott
“
You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.
— Sam Levenson
“
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.
— Milton Berle
“
The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
— Edward Gibbon
“
You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.
— Henry Ford
“
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.
— Vince Lombardi
“
Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
— Napoleon Hill
“
Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.
— Biz Stone
“
The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs — one step at a time.
— Joe Girard
“
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
— Sidney Greenberg
“
The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job.
— Zig Ziglar
“
Live a life as a monument to your soul.
— Ayn Rand
“
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
— Mae West
“
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma.
— Steve Jobs
“
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
— David Russell
“
When the need to succeed is as bad as the need to breathe, then you’ll be successful.
— Eric Thomas
“
Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
— William Shakespeare
“
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
— Aristotle
“
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
— Richard Bach
“
Just as there are no little people or unimportant lives, there is no insignificant work.
— Elena Bonner
“
The work praises the man.
— Irish Proverb
“
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.
— Donald Trump
“
It’s better to do nothing with your money than something you don’t understand.
— Suze Orman
“
What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
— Bob Dylan
“
Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
— Henry Ford
“
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.
— Zig Ziglar
“
One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.
— André Gide
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
“
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
— Napoleon Hill
“
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
— Alan Kay
“
Challenge yourself with something you know you could never do, and what you’ll find is that you can overcome anything.
— Anonymous
“
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
— Thomas Edison
“
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
— Josh Billings
“
It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.
— Howard Ruff
“
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
— John D. Rockefeller
“
If you live for weekends or vacations, your sh*t is broken.
— Gary Vaynerchuk
“
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
— George Eliot
“
When you have no winds, take to the oars.
— Anonymous
“
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“
The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.
— Nancy Astor
“
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces people into thinking they can’t lose.
— Bill Gates
“
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
— Winston Churchill
“
A man who wants to do something will find a way; a man who doesn’t will find an excuse.
— Stephen Dolley, Jr.
“
The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.
— Sarah Brown
“
God give me work, till my life shall end; and life, till my work is done.
— Winifred Holtby
War Quotes (869–882)
“
Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.
— John F. Kennedy
“
We make war that we may live in peace.
— Aristotle
“
Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.
— George Bernard Shaw
“
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
— Otto von Bismarck
“
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“
Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.
— Winston Churchill
“
When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because of its momentum. When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing.
— Sun Tzu
“
An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.
— Arab Proverb
“
He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.
— Sun Tzu
“
Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.
— Joe Abercrombie
“
How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.
— Salman Rushdie
“
I don’t know [what weapons will be used in the Third World War]. But I can tell you what they’ll use in the Fourth — rocks!
— Albert Einstein
“
People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
— Richard Grenier
“
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
— George Carlin
Miscellaneous Quotes (883–975)
“
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
— Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
“
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.
— Erma Bombeck
“
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
— Winston Churchill
“
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
— Oscar Wilde
“
The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
— Sydney J. Harris
“
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
— Susan Ertz
“
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
— William Hazlitt
“
Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.
— Ronald Wright
“
Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating.
— Jim Carrey
“
If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.
— Winston Churchill
“
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
— Victor Hugo
“
As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown.
— Norman Foster
“
Art is an adventure that never seems to end.
— Anonymous
“
O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless — of cities fill’d with the foolish; . . . What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here — that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
— Walt Whitman
“
Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.
— Steve Maraboli
“
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
— Winston Churchill
“
The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
— G. K. Chesterton
“
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
— Mark Twain
“
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
“
People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.
— Eckhart Tolle
“
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
— Maya Angelou
“
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
— Maya Angelou
“
Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.
— Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“
Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.
— Markus Zusak
“
Health is the greatest of all possessions, and it is a maxim with me that a hale cobbler is a better man than a sick king.
— Isaac Bickerstaff
“
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
— African Proverb
“
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.
— Oprah Winfrey
“
Whether by a Mack truck or by heart failure or faulty lungs, death happens. But life isn’t really just about avoiding death, is it? It’s about living.
— Charity Tillemann-Dick
“
Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.
— Mae Jemison
“
Walls don’t work. … Instead of building walls to create security, we need to build bridges.
— James Stavridis
“
An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.
— Criss Jami
“
Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.
— Paul David Hewson (Bono)
“
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
— Jack London
“
It is a great art to saunter.
— Henry David Thoreau
“
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?
— Robert Browning
“
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
— Charles Caleb Colton
“
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
— Henry Adams
“
Don’t smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much or work too much. We’re all on the road to the grave — but there’s no need to be in the passing lane.
— Robert Orben
“
For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.
— Ivan Panin
“
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
“
— Annie Dillard
“
Natural beauty takes at least two hours in front of a mirror.
— Pamela Anderson
“
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything — or nothing.
— Nancy Astor
“
Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
— André Gide
“
The most decisive actions of our life — I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future — are, more often than not, unconsidered.
— André Gide
“
Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder.
— Daniel Libeskind
“
The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.
— Jonathan Haidt
“
Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It’s a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people’s minds. I’m talking about your language.
— Mark Pagel
“
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.
— Terry Pratchett
“
Our generation does not want its epitaph to read, “We kept charity overhead low.” We want it to read that we changed the world.
— Dan Pallotta
“
It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.
— Maurice Switzer
“
We can choose to live today free from the failures of yesterday. Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment.
— Gary Chapman
“
Let’s get rid of the suffering and bring real peace, which is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all negativity.
— David Lynch
“
There is nothing so annoying as to have two people go right on talking when you’re interrupting.
— Mark Twain
“
At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.
— Italian Proverb
“
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
— Chinese Proverb
“
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
— English Proverb
“
When you are right, you cannot be too radical; When you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
— Charles Darwin
“
One cool judgement is worth a dozen hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.
— Woodrow Wilson
“
He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave.
— William Drummond
“
Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side and it tumbles over on the other.
— Martin Luther
“
The first man to use abusive language instead of his fists was the founder of civilization.
— Sigmund Freud
“
The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.
— Jawaharlal Nehru
“
Beauty in things lies in the mind which contemplates them.
— David Hume
“
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is non the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
— Oscar Wilde
“
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
“
When speaking, be sincere, be brief, and be seated.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
“
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it.
— William Shakespeare
“
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
— George Eliot
“
Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
— Ann Landers
“
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.
— Frank Capra
“
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
— Honoré de Balzac
“
Isn’t having a smoking section in a restaurant like having a peeing section in a swimming pool?
— George Carlin
“
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
— Jean Cocteau
“
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
— William Shakespeare
“
Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.
— E. Y. Harburg
“
I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.
— Albert Camus
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This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is a flash of lightning in the sky. Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.
— Buddha
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Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
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The power of imagination makes us infinite.
— John Muir
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How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world.
— Anne Frank
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I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.
— Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield)
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The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.
— Helen Keller
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The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else do it wrong, without comment.
— T. H. White
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If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
— Carl Gustav Jung
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If we have our own “why” of life, we can bear almost any “how.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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Man loves company — even if it is only that of a small burning candle.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
— Paul Tillich
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Of all things that can happen to us, triumph is the most difficult to endure when we are alone. Deprived of witnesses, it shrinks at once.
— Gabrielle Roy
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No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
— Oscar Wilde
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Live simply, that others may simply live.
— Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.
— Kahlil Gibran
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Not all those who wander are lost.
— J. R. R. Tolkien
