- A -

1. It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
      Aeschylus

    

2. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
      Aesop

    

3. Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
      Aesop

    

4. If you don't have time to do it right you must have time to do it over.
      Anonymous

    

5. The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work.
      Anonymous

    

6. You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.
      Aristophanes

    

7. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
      Aristotle

    

8. Nature does nothing uselessly.
      Aristotle

    

9. In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
      Aristotle

    

10. A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
       Aristotle

     

11. Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
       Berthold Auerbach

     

- B -

1. Nostalgia is a seductive liar.
      George W. Ball

    

2. Memory is the greatest of artists, and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary.
       Maurice Baring

    

3. Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what they are not.
      E.R. Beadle

    

4. What is now proved was once only imagined.
       William Blake

    

5. Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
      Napoleon Bonaparte

    

6. What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.
      Jorge Luis Borges

    

7. My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.
      J. Brotherton

    

8. Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
      Buddha

    

9. The course of true anything does not run smooth.
      Samuel Butler

    

- C -

1. We live in a rainbow of Chaos
      Paul Cezanne

    

2. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
      Dale Carnegie

    

3. When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured.
      Anton Chekhov

    

4. Success is never final.
      Winston Churchill

    

5. By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
      Confucius

    

6. When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it--this is knowledge.
      Confucius

    

7. Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.
      Confucius

    

8. History is a vast early warning system.
      Norman Cousins

    

9. A good book has no ending.
      R.D. Cumming

    

- D -

1. Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
      Benjamin Disraeli

    

2. Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.
      Benjamin Disraeli

    

3. There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
      Isaac Disraeli

    

4. Our deeds follow us, and what we have been makes us what we are.
      John Dykes

    

- E -

1. The environment is everything that isn't me.
      Albert Einstein

    

2. There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
      George Eliot

    

3. Imagination is a poor substitute for experience.
      Havelock Ellis

    

4. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
      Ralph Waldo Emerson

    

5. So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours.
      Ralph Waldo Emerson

    

6. It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.
      Ralph Waldo Emerson

    

7. He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
   And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
      Ralph Waldo Emerson

    

8. The education of the will is the object of our existence.
      Ralph Waldo Emerson

    

9. Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
      Epicurus

    

10. Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.
       Euripides

     

- F -

1. The voice is a second signature.
      R. I. Fitzhenry

    

2. The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one
      Malcom Forbes

    

3. Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
      Benjamin Franklin

    

4. Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.
      Benjamin Franklin

    

5. The simplest questions are the hardest to answer.
      Northrop Frye

    

- G -

1. Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.
      Kahlil Gibran

    

2. Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
      Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet

    

3. The impossible is often the untried.
      Jim Goodwin

    

- H -

1. There is only one way to come into this world; there are too many ways to leave it.
      Donald Harington

    

2. Man is a make-believe animal - he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
      William Hazlitt

    

3. All good work is done the way ants do things, Little by little.
      Lafcadio Hearn

    

4. My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
      Ernest Hemingway

    

5. Nothing endures but change.
      Heraclitus

    

6. You must lose a fly to catch a trout.
      George Herbert

    

7. Hope is the poor man's bread.
      George Herbert

    

8. Great deeds are usually wrought at great risk.
      Herodotus

    

9. We know how to speak many falsehoods that resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.
      Hesiod

    

10. FAme usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.
       Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

     

11. Hunger is not debatable.
       Harry Hopkins

     

12. Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt.
    (The years, as they come, bring many agreeable things with them; as they go, they take many away.)
       Horace, from Ars Poetica

     

13. Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
    (When I labor to be brief, I become obscure.)
       Horace, from Ars Poetica

     

14. A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.
       Edgar Watson Howe

     

- J -

1. Deep experience is never peaceful.
      Henry James

    

2. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
      William James

    

3. Luxury is more deadly than any foe.
      Juvenal

    

- K -

1. From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
      Immanuel Kant

    

2. A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.
      John Keats

    

3. My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
      Clarence Buddinton Kelland

    

4. Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
      Rudyard Kipling

    

5. Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
      Arthur Koestler

    

- L -

1. There is a woman at the begining of all great things.
      Alphonse de Lamartine

    

2. People, like nails, lose their effectiveness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
      Walter Savage Landor

    

3. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
      Lao Tzu

    

4. It is the Vague and Elusive.
5. Meet it and you will not see its head.
6. Follow it and you will not see its back.
      Lao Tzu

    

7. One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.
      Anne Morrow Lindbergh

    

8. It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
      Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    

- M -

1. Conceal a flaw, and teh world will imagine the worst.
      Martial

    

2. The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
      Karl Marx

    

3. It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
      Herman Melville

    

4. We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.
      Menander

    

5. It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
      H. L. Mencken

    

6. That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
      John Stuart Mill

    

7. You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
      Marvin Minsky

    

8. How glorious it is -- and also how painful -- to be an exception.
      Alfred de Musset

    

- N -

1. If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work
      Ogden Nash

    

2. No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.
      Friederich Nietzsche

    

3. There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
      Friederich Nietzsche

    

4. The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers.
      Earl Nightingale

    

5. Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.
      Louis Nizer
6. We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
      Friedrich Novalis

    

- P -

1. What we obtain too cheap we esteem too little; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
      Thomas Paine

    

2. It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
      Blaise Pascal

    

3. In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.
      Louis Pasteur

    

4. Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in the world.
      Cesare Pavese

    

5. The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
      Edward Phelps

    

6. The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.
      Pindar

    

7. Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.
      Pindar

    

8. A catherdral, a wave of storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.
      Marcel Proust

    

9. Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.
      Marcel Proust

    

10. The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.
        Howard Pyle

     

- Q -

1. However gradual the course of history, there must always be the day, even an hour and minute, when some significant action is performed for the first or last time.
       Peter Quennell

    

- R -

1. It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
      Agnes Repplier

    

2. Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand.
      Cardinal de Retz

    

3. Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.
      Jean Paul Richter

    

4. We are never so happy or unhappy as we imagine.
      Francois duc la Rochefoucauld

    

5. Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.
      Francois duc la Rochefoucauld

    

6. Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers
      Leo Rosten

    

7. Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
      Leo Rosten

    

8. Satire is focused bitterness.
      Leo Rosten

    

9. A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.
      Leo Rosten

    

10. Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.
       Leo Rosten

     

11. In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.
       Leo Rosten

     

12. The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
       Theodore Rubin

     

- S -

1. Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
      George Santayana

    

2. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
      George Santayana

    

3. Fanatacism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
      George Santayana

    

4. Maturity consists in no longer being taken in by oneself.
      Kajetan von Schlaggenberg

    

5. Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
      Arthur Schopenhauer

    

6. Life is but a moment, death also is but another.
      Dr Robert Schuller

    

7. The tendency of an event to occur varies inversely with one's preparation for it.
      David Searles

    

8. All art is but immitation of nature.
      Seneca

    

9. We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
      George Bernard Shaw

    

10. Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
       George Bernard Shaw

     

11. A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
       William Shedd

     

12. Men of ill judgement oft ignore the good
    That lies within their hands, till they have lost it.
       Sophocles

     

13. To him who is in fear everything rustles.
       Sophocles

     

14. The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
       Robert Louis Stevenson

     

15. Fortune is like glass--the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.
       Publius Syrus

     

16. Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
       Publius Syrus

     

- T -

1. The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
      Rabindranath Tagore

    

2. Beauty, more than bitterness
   Makes the heart break.
      Sara Teasdale

    

3. I am a part of all that I have seen.
      Alfred Lord Tennyson

    

4. There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.
      Terence

    

5. Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
      Henry David Thoreau

    

6. Time is but the stream I go a-fishin in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
      Henry David Thoreau

    

7. 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

    

8. Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.
      Harry Truman

    

- V -

1. Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
      Paul Valery

    

2. In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken.
      Margaret of Valois

    

- W -

1. One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good fortune.
      Lew Wallace

    

2. And from the discontent of one man
   The world's best progress springs.
      Ella Wheeler Wilcox

    

3. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell the truth.
      Oscar Wilde

    

4. There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
      Oscar Wilde

    

- Z -

1. There is more stupidity around than hydrogen, and it has a longer shelf life.
      Frank Zappa