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.

Friday, February 28, 2003

Advice | "How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning?" -- Jonathan Swift

Advice | "Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console themselves for being no longer in a position to give bad examples." -- La Rochefoucauld

Advice | "I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it." -- Mary Wortley Montagu

Advice | "If you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, then you don't need advice" -- Okmulgee (Oklahoma) Rotary Club Bulletin

Advice | "A bad cold wouldn't be so annoying if it weren't for the advice of our friends." -- Kin Hubbard

Advice | "I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes." -- Gene Fowler

Advice | "To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it." -- John Churton Collins

Advice | "Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadfully uneasy to take." -- Josh Billings

Advertising | "You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements." -- Norman Douglas

Advertising | "Advertising is nothing more than the arts of persuasion practiced in mass media." -- Arthur E. Meyerhoff

Advertising | "Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark; you know what you're doing, but nobody else does." -- Stewart H. Britt

Adversity | "What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?" -- H.G. Wells

Adversity | "There is no education like adversity." -- Disraeli

Adversity | "Adversity introduces a man to himself." -- Anonymous

Actions | "All our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light." -- Francis Bacon

Action | "You will recall what Senator Dirksen said about the rocking chair -- it gives you a sense of motion without any sense of danger." -- John F. Kennedy

Action | "Actions may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." -- Disraeli

Acting | "I don't act -- I react." -- John Wayne

Acting | "The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing." -- Sir Ralph Richardson

"We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing." -- Epicurus

Thursday, February 27, 2003

"To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it." -- Wendell Berry

Accidents | "The way some people drive you'd think they were late for their accident." -- Eddie Cantor

Accomplishment | "Be ashamed to die until you have achieved some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann

Accent | "I once knew a fellow who spoke a dialect with an accent." -- Irvin Cobb

Absence | "The same wind snuffs candles yet kindles fires; so, where absence kills a little love, it fans a great one." -- La Rochefoucauld

Ability | "We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done." -- Longfellow

Ability | "Skill to do comes of doing" -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ability | "The university brings out all abilities including incapability." -- Chekov

"All children shall be well taken care of in this neighborhood and beyond — in times of war and in times of peace." -- Fred Rogers, to youngsters during the Persian Gulf War

"It's not the honors and not the titles and not the power that is of ultimate importance. It's what resides inside." -- Fred Rogers, at a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

"The world is not what I think, but what I live through." -- Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

"Learn to use ten minutes intelligently. It will pay you huge dividends." -- Cryptogram puzzle answer

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." -- John Stuart Mill

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

"Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having an opinion." -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Monday, February 24, 2003

"The love we give away is the only love we keep." -- Elbert Hubbard

"I'm a sucker for a good hot dog." -- Garry Shafovaloff, via fallennotforsaken.com

"...to strive to master what will be contradicted the next day, to fear and hope intensely on shaky evidence, is surely an ill use of the mind." -- C.S. Lewis, via fallennotforsaken.com

"The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention." -- Duguet, via fallennotforsaken.com

"Why survive when you can live?" -- Unknown, , via fallennotforsaken.com

"The Law of Win/Win says, 'Let's not do it your way or my way; let's do it the best way.'" -- Greg Anderson

"An agreement is more valuable than money." -- Russian Proverb

"If one has to submit, it is wasteful not to do so with the best grace possible." -- Winston Churchill

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." -- Albert Camus, via fallennotforsaken.com

Sunday, February 23, 2003

"So I can't live either without you or with you." -- Ovid

Vic's favorite quotes - PlumbingStore.com

"To think is to differ." -- Clarence Darrow

Saturday, February 22, 2003

"There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls." -- Adlai Stevenson

Friday, February 21, 2003

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices." -- Ed Murrow

"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." -- Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary for defense for George H.W. Bush

"Do you know it only took Germany three days to conquer France in World War II? And that's because it was raining." -- John Xereas, manager of the DC Improv

"Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day -- the description was: 'Never shot. Dropped once.'" -- U.S. Representative Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

"Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris? It's not known, it's never been tried." -- U.S. Representative Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

"I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans out of France!" -- Jay Leno

"The only way the French are going in is if we tell them we found truffles in Iraq." -- Dennis Miller

"France wants more evidence [of Iraqi violations]. The last time France wanted more evidence, it rolled right through France with a German flag." -- David Letterman

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." -- Richard Feynman

"Come to the edge, " he said.
They said, "We are afraid."
"Come to the edge," he said.
They came.
He pushed them...
And they flew.

-- Guillaume Apollinaire, via email from Carla

Thursday, February 20, 2003

"A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it." -- Bob Hope

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

"Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together." -- Cryptogram answer

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

"I know that when I say this,
I may be stepping on pins and needles;
But I don't like all these people
slagging her for breaking up the Beatles."

- Bare Naked Ladies, "You Might Be My Yoko Ono", via spacemonk

"I find the great thing in this world is, not where we stand, as in what direction we are moving." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, American Physician and Writer, from a poster seen that the Dayton Job Center

"Always treat language like a dangerous toy." -- Anselm Hollo, from a poetry magazine

"We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up." -- Jesse Jackson

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

"We all appear as dunces when feigning an interest in things we care nothing about." -- C.S. Lewis, via Darryl Dash

"Tolerance is not acceptance, and indifference is not assimilation." -- Carey McWilliams

Monday, February 17, 2003

Mark Twain on War and Imperialism

"Why, the whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins, and pitfalls for the capture of men by women. Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors." -- G.B. Shaw, epistle to Arthur Bingham Walkley, via I Need A Stiff Drink

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay at home?" -- Elizabeth Bishop

Sunday, February 16, 2003

"Real obstacles don't take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze." -- Barbara Sher

"The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value." -- Stephen R. Covey

"Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved." -- W. Somerset Maugham, via Disorganization

"The Mind is an Enchanting Thing is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a katydid-wing." -- Marianne Moore

Friday, February 14, 2003

"Life is like riding a bike. To keep your balance you must keep moving." -- Albert Einstein

"Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities." -- Cryptogram puzzle answer

"And it does no harm to repeat, as often as you can, 'Without me the literary industry would not exist; the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub-agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the department of literature, the professors, the theses, the book of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages -- all this vast and proliferating ediface is because of this small, patronized, put down, and underpaid person.'" -- Doris Lessings

"Talent is a secret you share with God and those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear." -- Dottie Walters

"My thoughts are so terrible, they make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish." -- Anne Lamott, via Liquid Courage

"When people agree with me, I always feel that I must be wrong." -- Oscar Wilde, via Liquid Courage

"Ladies and gentlemen, I use lithium for salad dressing." -- Steven Wright, via Liquid Courage

"Love is an exploding cigar that we willingly smoke." -- Lynda Barry, via Liquid Courage

"What would bug a guy from the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?" -- Ellen DeGeneres, via Liquid Courage

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." -- William Hazlitt, via Liquid Courage

"You know you're an alcoholic if you think 'Drink Canada Dry' is a challenge and not a slogan." -- Unknown, via Liquid Courage

"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." -- Peter O'Toole, via Liquid Courage

"My one regret in life is that I am not someone else." -- Woody Allen

"The worst and best are both inclined
To snap like vixens at the truth.
But, O, beware the middle mind
That purrs and never shows a tooth!"

-- Elinore Wylie

"Rigor of beauty is the quest. But how will you find beauty when it is locked in the mind past all remonstrance?" -- William Carlos Williams

Thursday, February 13, 2003

"You don't get peace by getting along with an enemy who wishes your extinction, and we are close to facing that very threat today with Al-Qaeda. The only way to end this is with preemption and pro-action - aggressively go after the people who have caused this to happen and kill them." -- Rush Limbaugh

"The best way to protect ourselves would be to duct tape Tom Daschle's mouth." -- Rush Limbaugh

"The real problem that Clarence Thomas and Miguel Estrada pose for liberal Democrats? Both men illustrate to other blacks and Hispanics that you can, in this country, achieve the highest levels of your ambition if you just work for it." -- Rush Limbaugh

"A generous heart repairs a slanderous tongue." -- Homer, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"Never throw mud. You may miss your mark, but you must have dirty hands." -- Joseph Parker, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"I am disgraced, impeached, and baffled here;
Pierced to the soul with slander's venomed spear,
The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood
Which breathed this poison."

-- William Shakespeare, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"Soft-buzzing Slander; silly moths that eat An honest name." -- James Thomson, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it." -- Seneca, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than anyone can lie me out of it." -- Lyman Beecher, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"The objection of the scandalmonger is not that he tells of racy doings, but that he pretends to be indignant about them." -- H. L. Mencken, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true." -- Kathryn Hepburn, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"Folk whose own behavior is most ridiculous are always to the fore in slandering others." -- Moliere, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense." -- Samuel Johnson, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"A slander is like a hornet; if you can't kill it dead the first time, better not strike at it." -- Josh Billings, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"God made the world round so that we would never be able to see too far down the road." -- Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blitzen), via email from Carla

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

"May you live all the days of your life." -- Johnathan Swift

"It takes courage to live -- courage and strength and hope and humor." -- Jerome Fleischman

"A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life." -- Charles Darwin

"Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind." -- W. H. Auden

"General notions are generally wrong." -- Mary Wortley Montagu

"Example is always more efficacious than precept." -- Samuel Johnson

"Simplicity and straightforwardness are... in the power of all of us." -- Henry Alford

"Every living creature that comes in to the world has something alloted him to perform; therefore he should not stand an idle spectator of what others are doing." -- Sarah Kirby Trimmer

"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant." -- Amos B. Alcott

"Motto, National Training School for girls, Washington, D.C.: We specialize in the wholly impossible." -- Nannie Helen Burroughs

"Life is too short to be little." -- Benjamin Disraeli

"Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law." -- Katherine Lee Bates

"Only the disciplined are free." -- James C. Penney

"Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause." -- Voltaire

Happy Birthday, Abraham Lincoln!

"What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." -- Abraham Lincoln

"The greatest glory of a freeborn people is to transmit that freedom to their children." -- William Harvard

"We should quietly hear both sides." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult." -- Philip Dormer Stanhope

"There is no liberty in wrongdoing. It chains and letters its victim as surely as effect follows cause." -- Joseph Cook

"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go." -- Martha Washington

"The worth of a book is what you can carry away from it." -- James Bryce

"What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue?" -- Edmund Burke

"Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him." -- Romain Gary

"The end of all knowledge should be virtuous action." -- Phillip Sydney

"No man chooses evil because it is evil, he only mistakes it for happiness." -- Mary Wollstonecraft

"Success is the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one's ideal." -- Anna Pavlova

"There is no darkness but ignorance." -- William Shakespeare

"Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier." -- Charles F. Kettering

"Whatever you do will be insignificant. However, it is vitally important that you do it." -- Gandhi, from the SCIENCE HOBBYIST: Traffic Waves FAQ

"Sincerity resembles a spice. Too much repels you and too little leaves you wanting." -- Cryptogram answer

"Let us go singing as far as we go; the road will be less tedious." -- Virgil

"Let our children grow tall, and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so." -- Margaret Thatcher

"Sooner or later, people who want to see are going to open up their hearts and their eyes, and they're going to notice that a lot of incredible things can happen when people are given chances." -- Julieanne Krone

"TV evangelists say they don't favor any particular denomination, but I think we've all seen their eyes light up at tens or twenties." -- Dennis Miller, via Bene Diction Blogs On!

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." -- Oscar Wilde

More quotes: Blogged by C

"One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow."

-- Wallace Stevens

"There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot." -- Cryptogram puzzle answer

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

"The dawn speeds a man on his journey, and speeds him too in his work." -- Hesiod

"Ignorance is dangerous, but knowledge without responsibility is more dangerous." -- Bruce B. Clarck

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I praise loudly. I blame softly." -- Catherine II of Russia

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"Time is at once the most valuable, and the most perishable of all our possessions." -- John Randolph

"People want economy and they will pay any price to get it." -- Lee Iacocca

"The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed." -- Baron de Montesquieu

"I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent." -- Publius Syrus

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is yourself." -- Aldous Huxley

"I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich." -- Gertrude Stein

"It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers." -- James Thurber

"I am never afraid of what I know." -- Anna Sewell

"People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise." -- Mary Wortley Montagu

"I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"They who serve only stand and wait." -- John Milton

"Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity." -- Samuel Johnson

"Opportunities are seldom labeled." -- John A. Shedd

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." -- Francis Bacon

"An ethical person out to do more than he's required to do and less than he's allowed to do." -- Michael Josephson

"Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace." -- Elbert Hubbard

Monday, February 10, 2003

"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." -- Franklin P. Jones

"We are each other's harvest.. we are each other's magnitude and bond." -- Gwendolyn Brooks

"Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven." -- Yiddish Proverb

"Advice from friends is like the weather. Some of it is good; some of it is bad." -- Arnold Lobel

"We are tethered to our kind, and may as well join hands in the struggle." -- Agnes Repplier

Home Defined

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."

-- Robert Frost

"Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships." -- Jodie Foster

"The first duty of love is to listen." -- Paul Tillich

"They gave each other a smile with a future in it." -- "Dream a Little Dream"

"The story of a love is not important -- what is important is that one is capable of love." -- Helen Hayes

"We find comfort among those who agree with us -- growth among those who don't." -- Frank A. Clark

"I think we dream so we don't have to be apart for so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time." -- Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them... the first time." -- Maya Angelou

"Human heads are opaque and there's no way to see inside except through those tiny little windows, the eyes." -- Yevgeny Zamyatin

"Love can be its own reward." -- Arnold Lobel

"Asserting yourself while respecting others is a very good way to wind respect yourself." -- Janice LaRouche

"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be."

-- Robert Browning

"Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be." -- Jane Austen

"The horse that runs fast early fades first." -- Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

"The job market has shrunk; your ego needs to as well." -- Stephen Viscusi, author of On the Job: How to Make It in the Real World of Work

"When a train pulls into a great city I am reminded of the closing moments of an overture." -- Graham Greene

"A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." -- G. W. F. Hegel

"Coffee should be as black as hell, as strong as death, and as sweet as love." -- Turkish Proverb, from an email from Carla

Sunday, February 09, 2003

"When you halt in the desert make an arrow from pebbles, so, if suddenly woken up, you'll grasp which way to go." -- Joseph Brodsky

"There can be no defense like elaborate courtesy." -- E.V. Lucas

"True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words." -- Mary Wortley Montagu

"There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain." -- Titus Maccius Plautus

"Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible." -- Charles H. Spurgeon

"Everybody knows if you are too careful, you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something." -- Gertrude Stein

"The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed." -- Sebastian-Roch Nicolas Chamfort

"The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it." -- Laurence Sterne

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all yur life, but in a new way." -- Doris Lessing

Saturday, February 08, 2003

"All wish to know, but none want to pay the fee." -- Decimus Juvenal

"It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives." -- Samuel Johnson

"We should not let grass grow on the path of friendship." -- Marie Therese Rodet Geoffrin

"We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgement." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"We are always getting ready to live, but never living." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd" -- William Blake

More important than knowledge

"Imagination is always more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." -- Albert Einstein

another version of this quotation that substitutes creativity for imagination here

"I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better." -- Samuel Butler

"Common sense is not so common." -- Voltaire

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea." -- Alain

"The unexpressed, then, is always of greater value than the expressed." -- Zona Gale

"I look upon every day to be lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance." -- Samuel Johnson

"Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money." -- Arthur Miller

"Sad soul, take comfort, nor forget
That sunrise never failed us yet."

-- Celia Thaxter

"One may be my very good friend, and yet not of my own opinion." -- Margaret Cavendish

"The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible." -- Thomas Hardy

"Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?" -- Frank Moore Colby

"Thee meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights." -- J. Paul Getty

"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -- Anne Frank

"Hope is a risk that must be run." -- Georges Bernanos

"Down in their hearts, wise men know this truth: the only way to help yourself is to help others." -- Elbert Hubbard

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident." -- Charles Lamb

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important." -- Arthur Conan Doyle

"Be gentle to all, and stern with yourself." -- Teresa of Avila

"Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." -- William James

"This is happinesss: to be dissolved into something completely great." -- Willa Cather

"It is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey." -- Wilfred Thesiger

Friday, February 07, 2003

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." -- Aldous Huxley

"All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents." -- John F. Kennedy

"The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors." -- Henry Becque

"It is not the possessions but the desires of mankind who require to be equalized." -- Aristotle

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a tool from his friends." -- Baltasar Gracian

"The discontent of the people is more dangerous to a monarch than all the might of his enemies on the battlefield." -- Isabella d'Este

"You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends." -- Joseph Conrad

"Ye can lead a man up to the university, but ye can't make him think." -- Finley Peter Dunne

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty." -- John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

"My father taught me that a bill is like a crying baby and has to be attended to at once." -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"I have learned that to get a job done and have fun in it is about all you can get out of life." -- Jessie Tarbox Beals

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." -- Oscar Wilde

"The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind." -- Jacques Barzun

"Character is much easier kept than recovered." -- Thomas Paine

"The pleasure of criticizing robs us of the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things." -- Jean de La Bruyere

"To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well." -- Bridget of Sweden

"When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity." -- John F. Kennedy

"The confidence which we have in ourselves engenders the greatest part of that which we have in others." -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people." -- David Sarnoff

"People who know little are usually great talkers, while people who know much say little." -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." -- Andre Gide

"Habits change character." -- Ovid

"But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death." -- Genesis 38:7 (NIV), from a chapter in a speech communication book about eliminating speech fillers (e.g., "Er", "Ah", "Um", etc.)

"Speech finely framed delighteth the ear." -- 2 Maccabees 15:39

"He spoke in Hell's and Heaven's name,
Yet all he uttered seemed the same."

-- Anonymous

"Mind your speech a little
Lest you should mar your fortunes."

-- William Shakespeare

"The Devil hath not, in all his quiver's choice,
An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice."

-- Lord Byron

"You can tell me that I got no class, look around you'll see who's laughing last." - Rush, Best That I Can, via Come On, Get Lively

"Head up, also chin;
Chest out, stomach in."

-- An old Quaker adage

"The word were better wordless, if the ear perceive it not. Speak out, that all may hear!" -- Anonymous

"Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which." -- Algernon Charles Swinburne

"... And when you stick on conversation's burrs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful 'urs'."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"I believe that people before they graduate or even matriculate,
They should learn to speak up, to speak out, to articulate.
It befuddles my sense of acoustic
To be mumbled at through a potato, be it from Idaho or Aroostook.

This word swallowing, these muffled mates and slovenly slurrings
Can lead to calamitous misunderstandings and errings...
It's easy to be manly and still make your meaning plain, whether in accents of Mt. Ida, Cathay, or Boston, or Des Moines or of the deepest South
... Just take that towel out of your mouth."

-- Ogden Nash

"People are happy and good who have found their vocation: what vocations there are will depend upon the society within which they are practiced." -- W.H. Auden

"Caged birds accept each other but flight is what they long for." -- Tennessee Williams

"Ah, would some power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves, as ithers see us."

-- Robert Burns

"Speech is a mirror of the soul;
As a man speaks, so is he."

-- Publius Syrus

"Let thy speech be better than silence;
Or be silent."

-- Dionysius

Thursday, February 06, 2003

The Quotations Page - Your Source for Famous Quotes

"The crew of the space shuttle Columbia did not make it back to Earth, but we can all pray that they made it home." -- President George W. Bush

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." -- Henry Ford, via Intellectual Poison

"It is not by spectacular achievements that man can be transformed, but by will." -- Henrik Ibsen

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

A hearty welcome to all of you from A New Entry in the Zine Zone - blogs4God.com!

"Let me glimpse the face of truth. Tell me what the face of truth looks like." -- Jack London

"When I face the desolate impossiblity of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate." -- John Steinbeck

"There is nothing to writing; all you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." -- Red Smith

"A moment's success pays for the failure of the years." -- Robert Browning

"And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more." -- Erica Jong

"A book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us." -- Franz Kafka

"So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

-- William Shakespear, from Sonnet XVIII

"When you write from the heart, you not only light the dark path of your readers, you light your own way as well." -- Marjorie Holmes

"Life is God's novel; let God write it." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer

"We rise to great heights by a winding staircase." -- Francis Bacon

"There are two ways to live your life -- one as though nothing is a miracle, the other as if everything is." -- Albert Einstein, from the markerboard at the doctor's office

"All mammals have hair. Whales are mammals. Therefore, whales have hair. SHAVE THE WHALES!!!!!" -- Dogbert, via an email from Carla

Somehow You Found It, Part Deux cross-posted at Journey Inside My Mind

Checking the referrer logs for QuotesBlog, I'm not surprised that a number of the referring pages were web searches. What did intrigue me is what people were searching for. Consider the following:

  • google search: duke of wellingtion on ben franklin
  • yahoo search: quotation compass love
  • daypop search: aaron brown
  • google search 100th Birthday Quotes
  • google search: quotes from sandra day o'connor
  • aol search: quotation and "failure is not an option"
  • google search: Hubert Humphrey quotation society
  • google search: quotation ghandi
  • yahoo search: time flies like an arrow quotation
  • google search: quotes from Father Flanagan
  • msn search: i need a quote
  • google search: quotes belittle ambitions
  • google search: Hannah Senesh Quotation
  • google search: quotes about kurt vonnegut
  • google search: beryl pfizer
  • google search: chuck barris quotes
  • google search: quotation on overcoming obstacles in love
  • google search: margaret mead poem sensitivity
  • google search: Coco Chanel quotation
  • yahoo search: the quote ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances
  • yahoo search: prom quotation
  • google search: proverbs on teamwork and jack welch
  • yahoo search: quotes about rejection
  • google search: quotes growing
  • google search: quote and "a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult"
  • google search: listener quotes
  • google search: ghandi saying
  • google search: Jack paar quotation
  • google search: woolf friendship quotation
  • google search: father flanagan quotes
  • msn search: blog quotes
  • msn search: quotation lion
  • google search: "see further" stand shoulders quotation
  • msn search: quotation on ignoring your feelings
  • msn search: quotation on ignoring your feelings
  • google search: mark twain quotes vice
  • yahoo search: love ingredient quotation
  • google search:"I do not know what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
  • msn search: encouraging quotations to success
  • google search: ghandi quotation
  • msn search: quotation about u
  • aol search: sayings of ghandi
  • google search: dag hammarskjold quotation
  • google, ca search: dove and trust
  • google search: Ruckelshaus The family is the building block for whatever
  • google search: clever wine sayings
  • yahoo search: toni morrison and quotes
Somehow you all got there, and perhaps you found what you were looking for. Others decided to link back. For this I thank you.

"We have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it." -- George Farquhar

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

"They believed in what they were doing." -- A NASA spokesperson, from Dave's Barry's Blog

"My car looks like I should be in a parade, but took a wrong turn somewhere." -- Bobcat Goldthwait

"I am not for animal rights. If they can't protest for themselves, I'm not going to do it for them." -- Renee Hicks

"I'm a tremendously arrogant young man ... I believe in my band to ridiculous extents. There's a little side of every singer that believes what he's doing is the best thing ever." -- Chris Martin, lead singer of the British band Coldplay

"If there were no children on this earth, if someone announced all kids were dead, I would jump off the balcony immediately." -- Michael Jackson, father of three, in an interview with a British documentary maker.

''I find it alarming that all the campaigning for the Oscars is getting like a political campaign. It really is distasteful.'' -- Meryl Streep

"The idea of strictly minding our own business is moldy rubbish. Who could be so selfish?" -- Myrtie Lillian Barker

"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself." -- Saint Francis de Sales

"Harmony exists in difference no less than in likeness, if only the same keynote governs both parts." -- Margaret Fuller

"I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world." -- Thomas A. Edison

"The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation -- or a relationship." -- Deborah Tannen

"Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down." -- Wilson Mizner

"It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own." -- Jessamyn West

"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." -- Anne Sexton

"Each creature of the world
Is as a book, a picture,
And a mirror to us."

-- Alan of Lille

"Things only have the value that we give them." -- Molière

Monday, February 03, 2003

"There is only one-way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man." -- Alan Paton, via Bene Diction

"Improvisation is the touchstone of wit." -- Molière

"To hate and to fear is to be psychologically ill. It is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time." -- H.A. Overstreet

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

"The more deeply you understand people, the more you will appreciate them, the more reverent you will feel about them. To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground." -- Stephen R. Covey