Growing wiser on the wisdom (or stupidity) of others
Released under a Creative Commons license Daniel Johnson, Jr.. Some Rights Reserved.
Everything written here is my personal opinion and not that of any employer or client, past or present.

Monday, September 30, 2002

"If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence." -- Samuel Butler

"The next time you are called to suffer, pay attention. It may be the closest you'll ever get to God." -- Max Lucado

"Children are the most reasonable people I know. Their days are spent trying to make sense of the world, searching for meaning, figuring things out." -- Raffi, children's entertainer, from his autobiography

"Oh, that I had wings like a dove: For then I would fly away, and be at rest." -- Psalm 55:6

"I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." -- Abraham Lincoln

"Listen to those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who have found it." -- Andre Gide (from Russ Kick's website)

"A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it...by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader." -- Charles Olson

Procrastination | "A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice." -- Edgar Watson Howe, American editor and novelist from the early twentieth century.

Writing | "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." -- Willa Cather

"What is more dull than a discreet diary? One might as well have a discreet soul!" -- Henry Channon 1897-1958

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

"You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want." -- Margaret Young

"I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is telling the difference between right and almost right." -- Charles Spurgeon

"The need to find meaning... is as real as the need for trust and for love, for relations with other human beings." -- Margaret Mead

"Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others." -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"O that the spirit could remain tinged but untarnished by its strain!" -- Robert Lowell

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?" -- Stephen Levine

"If to do were as easy to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces." -- William Shakespeare

Saturday, September 28, 2002

"No new paradigm has ever sprung from the cynicism of arrested imagination. It's true: you won't find a five year-old cynic anywhere." -- Raffi, children's entertainer, from his autobiography

"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" -- Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, III, i

"Will and wisdom are both mighty leaders. Our times worship will." -- Clarence Shepard Day

"Thus he who has raised himself above the alms-basket, and not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work to find and follow truth." -- John Locke

"Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears." -- Barbara Johnson

"I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building." -- Charles Schulz

Procrastination | "Perhaps the most difficult part of the career planning process for career changers is identifying a target career. Often, adults fell ashamed to admit that they are confused about their career options. They wonder how someone at age 30, 40, or older could still be unsure about what to pursue in terms of a career." -- Dr. David Helfand, Career Change

"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair." -- H.L. Mencken (from Russ Kick's website)

"Our little time of suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome home to Heaven." -- Samuel Rutherford

Friday, September 27, 2002

"Self-contempt never inspires lasting change." -- Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Hunter

"I have a feeling I'm falling on rare occasions but most of the time I have my feet on the ground I can't help it if the ground itself is falling." -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us,
Footprints in the sand of time."

-- Henry W. Longfellow

"Only the heart knows how to find what is precious." -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for." -- Louis L'Amour

"The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd." -- George Bernard Shaw

"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -- Anonymous

"Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure." -- George Eliot

"Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." -- Anonymous

"Innovation, everyday entrepreneurship, and creativity are the aims of collaboration." -- Peter Keen

Don DeLillo comparing Europe and America

"I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version." -- Don DeLillo

Writing | "Who is original? Everything that we are doing, everything that we think, exists already, and we are only intermediaries, that's all, who make use of what is in the air." -- Henry Miller

"Y'know, when we're not fighting, we get along just fine." -- The Rockford Files

Thursday, September 26, 2002

"Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change." -- Confucius

"A key to controlling interruptions is being a responsible interrupter." -- Connie Kelly

"Keep falling on your face -- when the fall doesn't hurt anymore you're there." -- Hattie Hill-Storks

Faisal Jawdat's Collection of Quotes

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
-- Samuel Adams

"The chain of memory is resurrection." -- Charles Olson

Procrastination | "The single most powerful investment we can ever make in life is investment in ourselves, in the only instrument we have with which to deal with life and to contribute." -- Stephen R. Covey

Fresh Perspective

"When you start using senses you've neglected, your reward is to see the world with completely fresh eyes." -- Barbara Sher

Related Keywords:

Barbara Sher perception reward renewal senses world perspective

"People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness." -- John Wanamaker

Writing | "What is character but the determination of incident?
What is incident but the illustration of character?"
-- Henry James

"The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have." -- Anna Quindlen

"No cause has he to say his doom is harsh,
Who's made the master of his destiny."

-- Friedrich von Schiller

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove." -- Samuel Johnson

"God, grant me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept the things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference." -- The Serenity Prayer

"By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." -- Oscar Wilde

"History, although sometimes made up of the few acts of the great, is more often shaped by the many acts of the small." -- Mark Yost

"I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin." -- Fred Allen

"It was a mixed marriage. I'm human, he was Klingon." -- Carol Liefer

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day,
Nothing gold can stay.

-- Robert Frost

"You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world." -- Sheila Graham

"Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"May you look back on the past with as much pleasure as you look forward to the future." -- Paul Dickson

"The mind thinks, not with data, but with ideas whose creation and elaboration cannot be reduced to a set of predictable values." -- Theodore Roszak

"To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction." -- Theodore Zeldin

"The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it: but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it." -- Madame de Stael

"No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal." -- Marilyn Ferguson

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror." -- Oscar Wilde

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed." -- Peter F. Drucker

"I don't know how it happens. My car just drives itself to Neiman-Marcus." -- Victoria Principal

"Have I reached the person to whom I am speaking?" -- Lily Tomlin as "Ernestine"

"The gospel is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." -- Garrison Keillor

"I yield to no one in my admiration for the office as a social centre, but it's no place actually to get any work done." -- Katherine Whitehorn

"I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves." -- Oscar Wilde

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Happiness is the sublime moment when you get out of your corsets at night." -- Joyce Grenfell

"I have problems flown in fresh daily wherever I am." -- Richard Lewis

Sunday, September 22, 2002

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time in reading it." -- Anonymous

"Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's levels of aspiration and expectation." -- Jack Nicklaus

"I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in fate that falls on them unless they act." -- G. K. Chesterton

"There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough." -- Mother Teresa

"The first thing is to exaggerate my injuries. Put it on thick, Watson. Lucky if I live the week out -- concussion -- delirium -- what you like! You can't overdo it." -- Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client"

"The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so that would turn over by themselves." -- W. C. Fields

"There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over." -- John Meckiman

Saturday, September 21, 2002

"The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man." -- William, Lord Beveridge

"The writer can choose what he writes about, but he cannot choose what he is able to make live." -- Flannery O'Connor

"The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity." -- Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, founder of Covey Leadership Center

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Success is on the far side of failure." -- T. J. Watson, founder of IBM

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

"Patience is more powerful than force." -- Plutarch, Greek Author (46-125 AD)

"It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction." -- Pablo Picasso

"Sometimes you have to put your foot down to get a leg up." -- Dave Weinbaum

"There's no taking trout with dry breeches." -- Miguel de Cervantes

"I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me." -- Fred Allen

"I like talking to a brick wall, it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me." -- Oscar Wilde

"My whole life is in a constant state of disarray, and the one thing that doesn't change is the workout... If you're feeling depressed about something, you get on the Lifecycle and you forget it." -- Madonna

"Trust in Allah, but tie your camel." -- Arabian proverb

Thursday, September 19, 2002

"Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!)
The dungeon of thyself."

-- John Milton

"Sometime in your life you will go on a journey. It will be the longest journey you have ever taken. It is the journey to find yourself." -- Katherine Sharp

"He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive." -- Joseph Heller

"The relationships we have with the world are largely determined by the relationships we have with ourselves." -- Greg Anderson

"Systems governed by only one set of rules are more vulnerable than those with variety." -- Geoff Mulgan

"It's ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you handle it." -- Anonymous

"One of the best ways to win any game is to write the rules." -- Michael S. Malone

RazorMouth | Cutting-Edge Christianity - Jots and Tittles

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

"Everything is always impossible before it works. That is what entrepreneurs are all about -- doing what people have told them is impossible." -- Hunt Greene

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the worl is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and Determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race." -- Calvin Coolidge

"The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents have the hardihood to say they are not." -- Susan B. Anthony - 1873

Hardihood (n.) audacity, boldness, endurance, courage

Become the Change

"We must become the change we want to see in the world." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Sometimes the LORD calms the storm; sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child." -- Anonymous

"Men fear silence like they fear solitude because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness." -- Andre Maurois

"Planning is as natural to the process of success as its absence is to the process of failure." -- Robin Sieger

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time." -- James Thurber

"There is only one journey -- going inside yourself." -- Rainer Maria Rilke

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat." -- Lily Tomlin

"I suppose one of the reasons why I grew up feeling the need to cause laughter was perpetual fear of being its unwitting object." -- Clive James

"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." -- H. L. Mencken

"Our aspirations are our possibilities." -- Samuel Johnson

"Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed." -- UNESCO Constitution, 1945

Happy Birthday to You!

"If you'd never been born, well what would you be?
You might be a fish! Or a toad in a tree!
You might be a door knob! Or three baked potatoes!
You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes!
Or worse than all that... why, you might be a
WASN'T!
A Wasn't has no fun at all. No, he doesn't.
A Wasn't just isn't. He just isn't present.
But you... you ARE YOU! And now, isn't that pleasant!"

-- Dr. Seuss, from Happy Birthday To You!

"What do you mean we don't communicate? Just yesterday I faxed you a reply to the recorded message you left on the answering machine." -- Anonymous

"A friend knows how to allow for mere quantity in your talk, and only replies to quality." -- Anonymous

"Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world." -- Bette Davis

"Some people have built-in filters that screen out the boos and amplify the hurrahs. These are the people that never know when they're in trouble." -- Roger Von Oech

"The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry." -- John Jensen

"I play a musical instrument some, but only for my own amazement." -- Fred Allen

"The advantage of being ADD is you never stay focused on one thing long enough to get depressed." -- Don Taylor, ADDult

"I don't believe; I know." -- Carl Jung

"Better to live on a corner of the roof
than share a house with a quarrelsome wife."
-- Proverbs 21:9

"A foolish son is his father's ruin,
and a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping."
-- Proverbs 19:13

Monday, September 16, 2002

"Emotional maturity is the ability to express one's own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others." -- Hrand Saxenian

"Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things... I am tempted to think... there are no little things." -- Bruce Barton

"Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now... Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process." -- Phillips Brooks

"Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds." -- Dag Hammarskjold

"It is noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses." -- Dag Hammarskjold, former Secretary-General of the United Nations

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of." -- Blaise Pascal

"I take as my guide the hope of a saint:
in crucial things, unity --
in important things, diversity --
in all things, generosity."

-- President George H. W. Bush, Inaugural Address

"That which is most personal is most general." -- Carl Rogers

"Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee." -- F. Lee Bailey

"How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?" -- Henry David Thoreau

"It would be very interesting to preserve photographically not the stages, but the metamorphoses of a picture. Possibly one might then discover the path followed by the brain in materializing a dream." -- Pablo Picasso

"While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." -- Eugene Debs

"I used to sell furniture for a living. The trouble was, it was my own." -- Les Dawson

"Conviction is the conscience of intellect." -- Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort

"It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny." -- Eric Hoffer

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by." -- Annie Dillard

"By perseverance the snail reached the ark." -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"Do what you love, and the money will follow." -- Marsha Sinetar

"Every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new ideas... Possibilities do not add up. They multiply." -- Paul M. Romer

"I have a list, and I'm not afraid to use it." -- Jennifer St. Clair, Author

Sunday, September 15, 2002

Definition of a Cynic

"A cynic is just a man who found out when he was ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset." -- J. G. Cozzens

"He who threatens is afraid." -- French proverb

"We are the hero of our own story." -- Mary McCarthy

"My eyes open unto you
My heart.
My heart encamps
My soul.
Will you be he, who reads
My eyes?
Will you be he, who opens
My heart?
Will you be he, who captures
My soul?"


-- Christina Ifill

"Trying again and again is better than stopping halfway." -- African Proverb

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong." -- Leo Roskin

"If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change." -- Michael Jackson, from "Man in the Mirror"

"They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Luck is not chance
It's Toil
Fortune's expensive smile
Is earned."

-- Emily Dickinson

"I hate housework. You make the beds, wash the dishes, etc. And six months later you have to start the whole thing over again." -- Joan Rivers

"The mind is like a TV set -- when it goes blank, it's a good idea to turn off the sound." -- Anonymous

"I am not afraid... I was born to do this." -- Joan of Arc

Saturday, September 14, 2002

Eleanor Roosevelt on Inferiority

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared what lies within us." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written constitution." -- Thomas Jefferson

"We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life." -- Edwin Markham

"I have so much to do today, I'll need to spend another hour on my knees." -- Martin Luther

"The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul." -- David O. McKay

You Really Can Choose

"Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil -- the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be." -- William George Jordan

"The man who gives up accomplishes nothing and is only a hinderance. He who does not give up can move mountains." -- Ernest Hello

"The day people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them." -- Colin Powell

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart." -- e. e. cummings

Thursday, September 12, 2002

Announcement from Status.Blogger.Com: Blog*Spot Web Server Maintenance

From midnight to 3 AM Eastern time on Friday, 13 September 2002, the Blog*Spot file server, which contains this and other weblogs with "blogspot.com" in the URL, will be down for maintenance. So, from that time - midnight to 3 AM EDT - QuotesBlog will be unavailable.

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

"Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve." -- President George W. Bush, in a televised address from the Oval Office at 9 PM Eastern Daylight Time on September 11, 2001

"The birth of a new idea comes best when everything is going well and will be painful. Don't attempt to tamper with the process and don't deny the pain." -- Andy Law

From the movie Braveheart, emphasis added:

William Wallace: What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?

Soldier: Against that? No, we will run, and we will live.

William Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die. Run, you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, wouldn't you be willing to trade all that from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom?

"Grieving must be done in its own time. To deny the human reality that pain hurts only delays the process." -- John-Roger

"He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things." -- George, Lord Halifax

Monday, September 09, 2002

"Thinking is the desire to gain reality by means of ideas." -- JosT Ortegay Gasset

"Attitude is everything. It motivates action, which increases productivity and improves morale, which perpetuates a positive attitude." -- Rober Urich

“It is always wrong to use force, unless it is more wrong not to.” -- Reverend Major General Ian Durie

"Individuals, families, teams, and organizations shape their own future by creating a mental vision and purpose for any project, large or small. They don't just live day to day with no clear purpose in mind. They identify and commit themselves to the principles, relationships, and purposes that matter most to them." -- Stephen R. Covey

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after our own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." -- William Jennings Bryan

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." -- Anatole France

"I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul." -- William Ernest Henley

"The principles you live by create the world you live in; if you change the principles you live by, you will change your world." -- Blaine Lee

"The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the most important part of happiness." -- Harry Harrison

"Live on the abnormal and unheard of... sing the anguish of ultimate grief and discover the calvaries of the earth, arrive at the tragic by way of what is mysterious." -- Santiago Rusiol

Sunday, September 08, 2002

"To work -- to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do." -- Katherine Mansfield

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

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are." -- Gore Vidal

"I think I committed the ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder] faux pas of the century. My husband's sister died and her husband called with the bad news. Two days later, I remembered the message I had forgotten to write down, and I had to figure out a way to tell my husband that, by the way, his sister had died a couple of days ago." -- M. J. Johnson

"We judge ourselves by our motives and others by their actions." -- Dwight Morrow

"What, after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean." -- Christopher Fry

Saturday, September 07, 2002

"To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." -- Carl Sagan

"The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose." -- E. M. Gray

"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." -- Henry David Thoreau

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." -- Albert Einstein

"The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before." -- G. K. Chesterton

"A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle." -- Kahlil Gibran

"When we do not know a person--and also when we do--we have to judge his size by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the achievements of others in his special line of business--there is no other way." -- Mark Twain, Christian Science

"Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow." -- Don Herold

"The world doesn't want to hear about the labor pains, they just want to see the baby." -- Marcia and David Kaplan

"The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps." -- William Lloyd-George

Friday, September 06, 2002

"The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of the the people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change thier enviornment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature." -- Ezra Taft Benson

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." -- Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis

"What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It's good to shut up sometimes." -- Marcel Marceau (famous mime)

"Fact: 3/4 of the people in this world make up 75% of the population."

"If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 23 March 1990

"There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice." -- Mark Twain

"While it's important to win, it's imperative to compete." -- Dave Weinbaum

"No day in which you learn something is a complete loss." -- David Eddings

"Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing." -- George Sheehan

Thursday, September 05, 2002

RuminateThis eQuotes

Yet another good collection of quotations.

"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods." -- Thomas Paine

"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all." -- Sam Ewing

"What I do is called 'fishing.' If it was easy, we would refer to it as 'catching,' and there would be a lot more people doing it." -- Linda Greenlaw

"Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth." -- N. Eldon Tanner

"This is the true joy in life -- that being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. That being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not deote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." -- George Bernard Shaw

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

Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) to Kaffee (Tom Cruise) in "A Few Good Men:"


Col. Jessup: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled.
Col. Jessup: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Col. Jessup: You can't handle the truth!

"I was walking down the halls here at CBS and I ran into Doctor Phil. You all know Doctor Phil. Here’s the deal: He’s, like, getting married to Oprah and now he’s going to have his own show right here on CBS. So I see him and I ask him, 'Hello, how are you doing, Doctor Phil?' And he says to me, 'Dave, don’t ask unless you’re prepared to hear the tough answers.'" -- David Letterman

"Much of our American progress has been the product of the individual who had an idea; pursued it; fashioned it; tanaciously clung to it against all odds; and then produced it, sold it, and profited from it." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

"There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care a straw who gets the credit for it." -- C. E. Montague

"Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether." -- Thomas Carlyle

"Don't antagonize. Organize." -- Florynce Kennedy

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

"If they liked you, they didn't applaud -- they just let you live." -- Bob Hope

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing." -- Ernest Hemingway

"Success means controlling your own time. Time is the most important currency, but once you spend it, man, it's gone." -- Rod Steiger

"Action is the antidote to despair." -- Joan Baez

"Work is love made visible." -- Kahlil Gibran

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." -- Mark Twain

"One of the most important aspects to consider is the relationship of self-esteem to productive work." -- Nathaniel L. Branden

"The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to the office." -- Robert Frost

Medicine helps somewhat

"Meds can move mountains in the mind; but, shovel in hand, I still have to show up for work every day." -- Joe O'Connor

"I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow." -- Woodrow Wilson

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

"When spiderwebs unite, they can tie up a lion." -- Ethiopian proverb

"Remember that kick in the backside is a step forward." -- Anonymous

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." -- Albert Einstein

"I assure everyone who thinks this is 'fun' [taking stimulant medication], that I will gladly give them all of my Ritalin if they will take my ADD symptoms too." -- Milton Lucius

Monday, September 02, 2002

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for." -- Grace Hopper

"The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed." -- Thomas Traherne

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." -- Theodore Roosevelt

"The only thing more overrated than natural childbirth is the joy of owning your own business." -- Anonymous

"Most of us are umpires at heart: we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else." -- Leo Aikman

Found by NextBlog: Drew Hamlin has his own set of personal quotes. Unfortunately, he's probably one of few that understands them.

"Punctuality is something that, if you have it, there's often no one arund to share it with you." -- Anonymous

"I've found a great way to start the day -- I go straight back to bed!" -- Anonymous

"Always make sure your fly is zipped before you go on." -- Al Lampkin

"A man always has two reasons for what he does: a good one and the real one." -- John Pierpont Morgan

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick

"Faith must be tested, because it can be turned into a personal possession only through conflict." -- Oswald Chambers (thanks, Olive!)

"Every so often I lose weight, and, to my utter horror and indignation, I find in the quiet of the night somebody has put it back on." -- Lord Goodmand

"Psychiatry -- the care of the id by the odd." -- Anonymous

"There are some things it's good to have a healthy fear of -- drinking poisons, leaping off tall buildings, sex with gorillas." -- John-Roger

"He who conquers his anger has conquered an enemy." -- German proverb

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." -- Anonymous

"It doesn't matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." -- Confucius

"I think I can -- I think I can -- I think I can -- I think I can -- I think I can --" -- The Little Engine That Could

"Habits are the daugthers of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous." -- Jeremy Taylor

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well." -- Joe Ancis

"Change in all things is sweet." -- Aristotle

"Stress -- that confusion created when the mind must override the body's basic desire to choke the living crap out of some idiot who desperately needs it." -- T-shirt slogan

"I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits." -- Dustin Hoffman

"Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married her, I should have known perfect bliss." -- Charles Dickens

"Dreams are the most powerful motivators of all." -- Nick Thornely

"There is something wrong with a man if he does not want to break the Ten Commandments." -- G. K. Chesterton

Sunday, September 01, 2002

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation." -- Jean Kerr

"Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good. I know better. The things I worry about don't happen." -- Anonymous

"My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year;
Therefore, my merchandise makes me not sad."
-- Antonio, from William Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice," Act 1, Scene 1

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." -- Flannery O'Connor

"Whenever possible, our goal should be to 'march to a different drummer, but stay on the same parade ground.'" -- Anonymous

"Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on." -- Samuel Butler

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." -- James Thurber

"A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness." -- Elbert Hubbard

"It isn't a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else." -- Anthony Weston