Mark Twain Quotations

"Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom wakens. The sleeper must awaken." -- Frank Herbert

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." -- James 1:17

"Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships." -- Michael Jordan

"Our memories are card indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control." -- Cyril Connolly

"I don't remember anybody's name. Why do you think the 'dahling' thing started?" -- Zsa Zsa Gabor

"I can't play guitar and sing at the same time. My brain can't handle it. I can't even play rhythm guitar and sing. It's hard enough for me to stay in tune just singing." -- Frank Zappa

"Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something much better: that we can become oak trees." -- E. F. Schumacher

"I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination." -- Jimmy Dean

"You cannot be fuelled by bitterness. It can eat you up but it cannot drive you." -- Benazir Bhutto

"If you hate your job, either change your job or change your attitude about the job. One or the other." -- John-Roger

"He who is afraid of asking is afraid of learning." -- Danish proverb

"Listening to D'Artagnan's plain matter-of-fact account, the Duke looked at the Gascon from time to time in wonder as if he could not understand how so much prudence, courage and devotion could belong to a man who looked barely 20." -- Alexandre Dumas, "The Three Musketeers"

"These three desolate men knew nothing of how certain of deliverance and supply they were, how near it was to them, and how effectually and really they were in a condition of safety at the same time that they thought themselves lost and their case desperate." -- Daniel Defoe, "Robinson Crusoe"

"Things do not change: we change." -- Henry David Thoreau

"All things change... but God remains." -- Augusta Arnold Ward

"There is nothing permanent except change." -- Heraclitus

"Never invest in any idea that you can't illustrate with a crayon." -- Peter Lynch

"I try to order my belongings, but they never listen to me." -- Don Lambert

"It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious." -- Kim Hubbard

"Change before you have to." -- Jack Welch

"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses." -- C. G. Jung

"We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are." -- Tobias Wolff

"Peace is much more precious than a piece of land." -- Anwar al-Sadat

Happy 8/28!

a clear path (Photo credit: waferboard)

also posted at Journey Inside My Mind

Today's date reminds me of one of my all-time favorite verses in the Bible, Romans 8:28 --

• NIV: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
• NASB: And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
• KJV: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
• WE: We know that God works out everything for the good of those who love him. They are the people who are part of his plan.
• AMP: We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.
• VOICE: We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan.

"In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubborness is stupid." -- Simone de Beauvoir

"It wasn't that no one asked me to the prom, it was that no one would tell me where it was." -- Rita Rudner

"A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run." -- Ouida

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all the circumstances." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The hardest habit of all to break
Is the terrible habit of happiness."
-- Theodisia Garrison

"Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, whith me as its chief obstacle." -- Jack Paar

"The volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases." -- Jerry Brown

"Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was." -- R. L. Evans

"The basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being." -- Romans 1:20f, The Message

"Myth and fairy stories both answer the eternal questions: What is the world really like? How am I to live in it? How can I truly be myself?" -- Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment

"All of life's riddles are answered in the movies." -- Steve Martin in The Grand Canyon

"I love computers, but I wish that my entire computerized record-keeping and appointment setup at my HMO, and in general, would flag my accounts with WARNING! ADD: THIS PERSON NEEDS EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS AND EXTRA REMINDERS." -- Julia Smith-Ruetz

"But my answer's not the right one
Though I did my very best,
For overnight, they changed the rules
I studied for the test."
-- Peter S. Latham

"You cannot make a crab walk straight." -- Aristophanes

"If you have the determination to keep everlastingly at it, you will attain success as well as a nervous breakdown." -- Herbert V. Prochrow, Sr.

"You cannot be fuelled by bitterness. It can eat you up but it cannot drive you." -- Benazir Bhutto

"All our acts have sacramental possibilities." -- Freya Stark

"One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them." -- G. C. Lichtenberg

"I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second." -- Noel Coward

"Often the best thing about not saying anything is that it can't be repeated." -- Suzan L. Wiener

"OK. Now that we've exhausted all possibilities, let's begin." -- Anonymous

"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life." -- T. H. Huxley

"Eternity is very long, especially toward the end." -- Woody Allen (Thanks, John!)

"A smile is the curved line that sets things straight." -- Anonymous

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome." -- Dr. Samuel Johnson

"Did you hear what the white rat said to the other white rat?... I've got that psychologist so well trained that every time I ring the bell he brings me something to eat." -- David Mercer

"What is my loftiest ambition? I've always wanted to throw an egg into an electric fan." -- Oliver Herford

"We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic." -- Cullen Hightower

"There are days when it talkes all you've got just to keep up with the losers." -- Robert Orban

"Wherever you go, there you are." -- Anonymous

"Follow the rules of holes: If you are in one, stop digging." -- Dennis Healy

"YOu must realize that honorary degrees are given generally to people whose SAT scores were too low to get them into schools the regular way. As a matter of fact, it was my SAT scores that led me into my present vocation in life -- comedy." -- Neil Simon

"For every person wishing to teach, there are thirty no wanting to be taught." -- Anonymous

"Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain." -- Martin Mull

"Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory." -- Tennessee Williams

"There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse." -- Quentin Crisp

"There is nothing busier than an idle rumor." -- Herbert V. Prochnow

"Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame." -- Virginia Woolf

"For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe." -- Larry Eisenberg

"In the old days you waited patiently two hours for a stagecoach, but now you gripe if you miss the first section of a revolving door." -- Anonymous

"Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought." -- Albert Szent-Gyorgi

"People who feel good about themselves produce good results." -- Ken Blanchard

"Love to faults is always blind,
Always is to joy inclined,
Lawless, winged, and unconfined,
And breaks all chains from every mind."
-- William Blake

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." -- Francis Bacon

"If one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him, and if one man fails, the whole world fails to that extent." -- Mahatma Ghandi

"I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

"I used to think it was the people who were weird who were weird, but then I figured out that it was the people who thought they were weird, who were weird." -- Paul McCartney

"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of Le Petit Prince

"Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions." -- Steven Leacock

"Learn to praise the idiosyncrasies, the eccentricities, the quirks and singularities of others. It will help you to praise your own." -- John-Roger

"He prayeth best who loeveth best
All things both great and small.
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"I haven't failed. I've found 10,000 ways that don't work." -- Thomas Edison

"There cannot be a crisis next week -- my schedule is already full." -- Henry Kissinger

"I have a microwave fireplace. You can lay down in front of the fire all night in eight minutes." -- Stephen Wright

"The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert Humphrey

"Ill habits gather by unseen degrees --
As brooks make rivers, rivers to seas."
-- John Dryden

"Most people don't mind criticism as long as it's about someone else." -- Suzan L. Wiener

"Holding on the anger only gives you tense muscles." -- Joan Lunden

"He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Though language forms the preacher,
'Tis 'good works' make the man."
-- Eliza Cook

"Always do right -- this will gratify some and astonish the rest." -- Mark Twain

"I don't use any method. I'm from the let's pretend school of acting." -- Harrison Ford

"Not to dream boldly may turn out to be simply irresponsible." -- George Leonard

"A lot of people told me I was never going to be anybody. But here I am." -- Rodney A. Grant

"You can be greater than anything that can happen to you." -- Norman Vincent Peale

"Anyone can be herioc from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time." --Luigi Pirandello

"If time imposes on us its evolution, place also imposes upon us its reality." -- Gamal Abdel Nasser

"Don't get annoyed if your neighbor plays his hi-fi at two o'clock in the morning. Call him at four and tell him how much you enjoyed it." -- Anonymous

"Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." -- Anonymous

"A sharp tongue sometimes cuts its own throat." -- Jim Scancarelli

"Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it." -- Colin Powell

"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government." -- Thomas Paine

"If a society consisting of men and women is content to apply progress and education to one half of itself, such a society is weakened by half." -- Kemal Ataturk

"Combine a couple of ordinary words which are rarely used together and you're going to attract a lot of attention." -- Rachel Cunliffe, blogs4God Journals moderator

"With willing hands and open minds, the future will be greater than the most fantastic story you can write." -- Charles Kettering

"Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must." -- Charles Kettering

"It doesn't matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again." -- Charles Kettering

"We must look forward to the future as that is where most of us will be spending the rest of our lives." -- Charles Kettering

"Incurable diseases are only those the doctors do not know how to cure." -- Charles Kettering

"A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man's head." -- Charles Kettering

"It is not what we know that is important, it is what we do not know." -- Charles Kettering

"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress." -- Charles Kettering

"There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand." -- Charles Kettering

"A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere with progressive things." -- Charles F. Kettering

"The apprehension that one is someone else is all that one needs to believe that the world has changed from top to bottom." -- Orhan Pamuk

Communication Guilt

"Email gives you the ability to feel guilty about not communicating with people you would have never felt guilty about before." -- Evan Williams

"Embrace uncertainty." -- Evan Williams

"A person often falls very ill in order to become someone else and then returns to health much disappointed." -- Elias Canetti

"All literature wavers between nature and paradise and loves to mistake one for the other." -- Elias Canetti

"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers." -- Oscar Wilde

"What will become of the Creator if I become normal?" -- Anais Nin

"We live only part of the life we are given." -- Michael Murphy

"We are the hurdles we leap to be ourselves." -- Michael McClure

"The universe is made up of stories, not atoms." -- Muriel Ruckeyser

"The stars are always in their 'right' places." -- Alan Watts

"The meaning of life is that it stops." -- Franz Kafka

"The believer is happy, the doubter wise." -- Greek proverb

"Speak according to the madness that has seduced you." -- Andre Breton

"Some days, I just smile and go home." -- Grace Slick

"Show me a sane man, and I will cure him for you." -- Carl Jung

"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." -- Oscar Wilde

"Politics is the entertainment branch of industry." -- Frank Zappa

"Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." -- Kurt Vonnegut

"Paranoids are the only ones who see things anymore." -- Anatole Broyard

"Our heads are round so our thoughts can fly in any direction." -- Picabia

"Only the shallow know themselves." -- Oscar Wilde

"Only a person of great faith can afford to be a skeptic." -- Nietzsche

"Often it is fatal to live too long." -- Racine

"Nothing is more real than nothing." -- Beckett

"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Jane Wagner

"No good deed goes unpunished" -- Mark Twain

"Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body." -- James Joyce ( Ulysses )

"Modesty died when false modesty was born." -- Mark Twain

"May you live in interesting times!" -- Chinese curse

"Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to." -- Mark Twain

"Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it." -- Oscar Wilde

"Language is a virus." -- William Burroughs

"Just say know." -- Timothy Leary

"It's not how old you are, but how you are old." -- Marie Dressler

"It's a long walk back to Eden. Get over yourself." -- Jan Junod

"Is there life before death?" -- Belfast graffitum

"If you're not angry, then you're just stupid, you don't care." -- Ani diFranco

"If existence had a final purpose, it would have reached it." -- Nietzsche

"I would believe only in a god who could dance." -- Nietzsche

"I think I think; therefore I think I am." -- Ambrose Bierce

"I don't paint things, only the difference between things." -- Matisse

"I don't paint things, only the difference between things." -- Matisse

"I am not sincere, even when I say I am not." -- Jules Renard

"First get your facts, then distort them at your leisure." -- Mark Twain

"Exuberance is holy." -- Blake

"Everything not strictly forbidden is now mandatory." -- Schwa

"Even mud gives the illusion of depth" -- Marshall McLuhan

"Don't fall asleep in your enemy's dream." -- John Edgar Wideman

"At any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself...I laugh." -- Nietzsche

"Art is making the strange familiar and the familiar strange." -- Klee

"And what's the work? To ease the pain of living. All else, drunken dumbshow." -- Allen Ginsburg

"Almost two thousand years, and no new god!" -- Nietzsche

"All we have are words." -- Wittgenstein

"All great truths begin as blasphemies." -- George Bernard Shaw

"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth." -- Neils Bohr

"My father says almost the whole world is asleep... only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement." -- Patricia Grayamore, Joe Versus the Volcano

"In the long run, cutting your friends some slack will greatly reduce your own stress. You'll feel good about yourself, knowing you allow people to be fully human, even though they are far from perfect. You'll also be loved, cherished, and appreciated for being willing to love your friends just they way they are." -- "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Women," by Kristine Carlson

"Keep in touch with at least one high school friend. Remember, our high school friends are the ones who knew us during our experimental Flock of Seagulls hair days (and hung out with us despite it!). Besides, they're some of the most steadfast and loyal friends you'll ever have. Don't let distance or busy work schedules get in the way." -- "The Go-Girl Guide: Surviving Your 20s With Savvy, Soul, and Style," by Julia Bourland

"Animals are such agreeable friends -- they ask no questions, they pass no criticism." -- "Scenes of Clerical Life," by George Eliot

"Though love be deeper, friendship is more wide." -- Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, quoted in "The Quotable Woman," by Elaine T. Partnow

"I have no respect for reality as soon as it is acknowledged as such. I am interested in what I can do with unacknowledged reality." -- Elias Canetti

"Beware of all enterprises requiring new clothes." -- Henry David Thoreau

"If you haven't attained clear true vision, this causes you to lapse into extremes, so that you lose contact with reality." -- Zen Master Yuanwu

"Everyone is more or less mad on one point." -- Kipling

"Live a balanced life -- learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some." -- Robert Fulghum

"A gentleman is never unintentionally rude." -- Oscar Wilde

"At every moment, our bodies are continually responding to the messages from our minds. So what messages is your mind giving your body?" -- Margo Adair

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man attempts to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw

"I am the world crier, and this is my dangerous career... I am the one to call your bluff, and this is my climate." -- Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972), courtesy of Follow Me Here

"Do NOT fail to find the fun. Do not!" -- Evan Williams, President and CEO of Pyra Labs

"I was born in 1939. The other big event of that year was the outbreak of the Second World War, but for the moment that did not affect me." -- Clive James

"Only the mediocre are always at their best." -- Jean Giraudoux

"I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either." -- Jack Benny

"I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle." -- Jane Austen

"I'm in a phone booth at the corner of Walk and Don't Walk." -- Anonymous

"Modesty is the art of encouraging people to find out for themselves how wonderful you are." -- Anonymous

"I flounced down the stairs, confident that I looked drop-dead gorgeous in my new outfit and that the party I had arranged to entertain my husband's business associates was going swimmingly. And then I noticed the looks of horror on the faces of the guests. Somehow, I had managed to tuck my dress neatly into my panty hose on a trip to the bathroom." -- Andrea Little, ADDult

"Consistency is a paste jewel that only cheap men cherish." -- William Allen White

"Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust." -- Don Herald

"If it isn't the sheriff it's the finance company. I've got more attachments on me than a vacuum cleaner." -- John Barrymore

"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?" -- Fanny Brice

"Young people do not perceive at once that the giver of wounds is the enemy and the quted tattle merely the arrow." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Use your mentality; wake up to reality." -- Cole Porter, from the song "I've Got You Under My Skin"

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." -- Henry David Thoreau

"There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living." -- David Starr Jordan

"Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker." -- George Eliot

"Through language forms the preacher, 'Tis 'good works' that make the man." -- Eliza Cook

"Always do right -- this will gratify some and astonish the rest." -- Mark Twain

"Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time." -- Luigi Pirandello

"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills." -- Minna Antrim

"'Tis a rule of manners to avoid exaggeration." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When the intesity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself." -- Bertrand Russell

"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is this good in real evils -- they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary." -- Colton (1780-1832), English Sportsman and Writer

"What the fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning." -- Spanish Proverb

"To learn moderation is the essence of sound sense and real wisdom." -- Jacques Benique Bossuet (1627-1704), French Prelate and Orator

"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." -- Inscription on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

"We are almost always guilty of the hate we encounter." -- Vauvenargues (1715-1747), French Moralist

"Shame greatly hurts or greatly helps mankind." -- Homer (c. B.C. 700), Greek Epic Poet

"For Art is Nature made by man
To Man the interpreter of God." -- Owen Meredith (1831-1891), English Politician & Poet

"Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue." -- Juvenal (40-125 A.D.), Roman Satirical Poet

"Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American Poet and Essayist

"Let no man fear to die, we love to sleep all,
And death is but the sounder sleep." -- Francis Beaumont (1584-1616), English Dramatist

"Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave." -- William Bernbach

"So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith." -- Galatians 6:10 NASB

"Whenever I meet someone, I try to imagine him wearing an invisible sign that says: make me feel important." -- Mary Kay Ash

"If you want your employees to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others." -- Haim Ginott

"God may be invisible, but He's in touch. You may not be able to see Him, but He is in control... That includes all of life -- past, present, and future." -- Charles Swindoll

"God has not promised us an easy journey, but He has promised us a safe journey." -- William C. Miller

"Nothing was ever done without much enduring." -- Catherine of Siena

"What you praise you increase." -- Catherine Ponder