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.

Sunday, November 30, 2003

"The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing." -- Ronnie Barker

Saturday, November 29, 2003

"You don't want no pie in the sky when you die. You want something here on the ground while you're still around." -- Muhammad Ali

Friday, November 28, 2003

"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it." -- Henry David Thoreau

Thursday, November 27, 2003

"Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan."

-- Alexander Pope

Planning | "Each morning is the open door to a new world -- new vistas, new aims, new tryings." -- Leigh Mitchell Hodges

"The more the state 'plans,' the more difficult planning becomes for the individual." -- Friedrich August von Hayek

"My idea of long range planning is lunch." -- Frank Ogden

Planning | "We must not waste life in devising means. It is better to plan less and do more." -- William Emery Channing

"We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure." -- John Dryden

Planning | "To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to happen." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

"The vital, successful people I have met all had one common characteristic. They had a plan." -- Marilyn Van Derbur

"Neither talent without instruction, nor instruction without talent can produce the perfect craftsman." -- Vitruvius

Planning | "It's like building a nest. First she thinks about it, then she begins to gather the materials, then she begins to put it together." -- Flannery O'Connor

"There is nothing to it. You only have to hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself." -- Johann Sebastian Bach

"This is my family. I found it all on my own. It's little and broken, but still good." -- Stitch, found on The Truth Laid Bear

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

"He brings a very keen director's and actor's eye to slices of life in Baghdad." -- Phil Bronstein, San Francisco Chronicle editor, on plans to publish accounts of life in Baghdad that Sean Penn will to write during his upcoming return visit to the Iraqi capital, via Yahoo! News - Notable Quotes

"If anybody doesn't think ... that the true motivation of these charges and allegations is anything but money and the seeking of money then they are living in their own Neverland." -- Mark Geragos, celebrity attorney, on the allegations of child molestation lodged against his client, Michael Jackson, via Yahoo! News - Notable Quotes

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them." -- Rainer Maria Rilke

Monday, November 24, 2003

"If you want to enjoy success, fantasize about it. If you want a special love, fantasize about that, too. When it comes along you will be more comfortable. It won't be a new experience." -- Dr. Madeline Hirschfeld

Planning | "When you're afraid, keep your mind on what you have to do. And if you have been thoroughly prepared, you will not be afraid." -- Dale Carnegie

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The best way to show our gratitude . . . is to accept everything with joy." -- Mother Teresa

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." -- Marcel Proust

"To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go." -- Victor Hugo

"If you haven’t got all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don’t have that you don’t want." -- Anonymous

"Cultivate your garden... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony." -- Will Durant

"A first failure may prepare the way for later success." -- Arnold Lobel

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

"the great essentials of life are something to do, something to love, something to hope for." -- Thomas Chalmers

"Having compassion means you are able to see the darkness of the blind or hear the emptiness of the deaf." -- Nathaniel P. Ambler

"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself." -- Henry Ward Beecher

"He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times." -- Johann von Schiller

Sunday, November 23, 2003

"Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?" -- Natalie Clifford Barney

Friday, November 21, 2003

"There can be no progress if people have no faith in tomorrow." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance." -- Abraham Lincoln

"The buried talent is the sunken rock on which most lives strike and founder." -- Frederick W. Faber

"Plunge boldy into the thick of life!" -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"All the miles of a hard road are worth a moment of true happiness." -- Arnold Lobel

"Dwell not upon thy weariness; thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire." -- Arab Proverb

"Let your aim be the good of all." -- Bhagavad Gita

"The thing is to find a truth for me, to find the idea for which I can live or die." -- Sören Kierkegaard

"True richness is made day by day, with great effort." -- Francesco Alberoni

"Dream the impossible dream." -- Joe Darion

"I find that there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good to the world." -- John Keats

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." -- Helen Keller

"How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

-- William Shakespeare

"He turns not back who is bound to a star." -- Leonardo da Vinci

"When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone and be counted." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -- Vincent van Gogh

"My mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general, if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." -- Pablo Picasso

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome." -- Booker T. Washington

"To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage. The coward despairs." -- Euripides

"If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much." -- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

"Never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed." -- Sydney Smith

"Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." -- Special Olympics Motto

"Be not afraid of growing slowly,
be afraid only of standing still."

-- Chinese Proverb

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

"The Lord in his wisdom made the fly,
And then forgot to tell us why."
-- Ogden Nash, via blogs4God Apologia Cornucopia

Monday, November 17, 2003

"Creation comes before distribution -- or there will be nothing to distribute." -- Ayn Rand

"You’ve got to think about ‘big things’ while you’re doing small things so that all the small things go in the right direction." -- Alvin Toffler

"Focus on what you are moving toward rather than what you are leaving behind." -- Alan Cohen

Friday, November 14, 2003

"When life's problems seem overwhelming, look around and see what other people are coping with. You may consider yourself fortunate." -- Ann Landers

"Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons." -- Ruth Ann Schabacker

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle." -- James Keller

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own." -- Benjamin Disraeli

"The only gift is giving to the poor; All else is exchange." -- Thiruvalluvar

"What you get is a living. What you give is a life." -- Lillian Gish

Monday, November 10, 2003

"May the roof above this pub never fall in, and may we friends gathered below never fall out." -- George Killian (?), found on a George Killian's Toasts plaque at Limbo's Bar and Grill, Dayton, Ohio USA

"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics." -- Aldo Leopold

"Some people leave and don't say goodbye; others say goodbye and don't leave." -- Anonymous, found on the markerboard at the therapist's office

Saturday, November 08, 2003

"Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread." -- Pablo Neruda

Thursday, November 06, 2003

"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad." -- Morpheus, from The Matrix, written by the Wachowski brothers (found on U.S.S. Clueless)

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

"First thing I took him home and dangled him over the balcony." -- David Letterman, late-night host at CBS, talking about new son Harry, with a reference to Michael Jackson's infamous baby-dangling stunt, via Reuters Notable Quotes

"We were musicians first and we dabbled in drugs and then we become drug addicts dabbling in music. We would feed our heads with drugs instead of with experience, (but) there's only three things you can get out of the drug scenario: jail, death or insanity." -- Steven Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith, describing the band's wilder days in Hollywood Reporter, via Reuters Notable Quotes

"The richness of life lies in the memories we have forgotten." -- Cesare Pavese

BARTENDER Magazine - Fun Sayings

"Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear." -- Umberto Eco

Monday, November 03, 2003

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities -- brilliantly diguised as insoluble problems." -- John William Gardner

"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her." -- David Brinkley

"To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature: to make beautiful things more." -- Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Creativeness often consists of merely turning up what is already there." -- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." -- Will Rogers

"I don't know that there are any shortcuts to doing a good job." -- Sandra Day O'Connor

"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training." -- Anna Freud

"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work the more of it I seem to have." -- Coleman Cox

"Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having." -- Mahatma Gandhi

"There's no place where success comes before work, except in the dictionary." -- Donald M. Kimball

"Large streams from little mountains flow, tall oaks from little acorns grow." -- David Everett

"When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable; sleep." -- Ursula K. LeGuin

"The work praises the man." -- Irish Proverb

"Work is something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater." -- Maya Angelou

"There are three types of baseball players -- those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happened." -- Tommy Lasorda

"I think, what has this day brought me, and what have I given it?" -- Henry Moore

"As for boredom... I notice that it leaves me as soon as I am doing something that has got to be done." -- John Jay Chapman

His Labor is a Chant --
His Idleness - a Tune --
Oh, for a Bee's experience
Of Clovers, and of Noon!

-- Emily Dickinson

"There is no genius in life like the genius of energy and activity." -- Donald G. Mitchell

"As one goes through life one learns that if you don't paddle your own canoe, you don't move." -- Katharine Hepburn

"Here hath been dawning another blue day: think, wilt thou let is slip useless away?" -- Thomas Carlyle

"Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth." -- Margaret Thatcher

"So partial are men as to expect brick where they afford no straw." -- Mary Astell

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

"A well-spent day brings happy sleep." -- Leonardo da Vinci

"Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak." -- William Shakespeare

"The shortest answer is doing." -- English Proverb

"The difference between the most dissimilar characters... seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education." -- Adam Smith

"Those who have the habit of revelation lose the habit of thought." -- Robin Skelton

"Marriage should always combat the monster that devours everything: habit." -- Honoré de Balzac

"Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and has stimulated the hope of instant results." -- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

"How many legs does a dog have if you count his tail as a leg? Four. You can call a tail a leg if you want to, but that doesn't make it a leg." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), via Dog News

"Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear." -- Dave Barry (1947 - ), via Dog News

"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." -- P. J. O'Rourke (1947 - ), via Dog News

"You got to have soul. But if you do not have soul, halibut will do." -- Lew Zeland, the boomerang fish muppet, via email from Carla

"Love does not consist of gazing at one another, but in looking outward in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, via email from Carla

"Love demands all and has a right to it." -- Blaise Pascal, via email from Carla

"Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel." -- Horace Walpole, via email from Carla

"To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage. The coward despairs." -- Euripides

"We must travel in the direction of our fear." -- John Berryman

"We possess such immense resources of power that pessimism is a laughable absurdity." -- Colin Wilson

"You, beloved, who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at longing." -- Rainer Maria Rilke, via email from Carla

"We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another." -- Luciano de Crescenzo, via email from Carla

"It is with true love as it is with ghosts;
everyone talks about it, but few have seen it."

-- La Rochefoucauld, via email from Carla

"Love is a pearl of purest hue,
But stormy waves are round it;
And dearly may a woman rue,
The hour that she found it. "

-- Letitia Landon, via email from Carla

Robert Schuller on Believing in Yourself

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" -- Dr. Robert Schuller

"Men always want to be a woman's first love -- Women like to be a man's last romance." -- Oscar Wilde, via email from Carla

"Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down." -- Kobi Yamada

"Love is the essence of God." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, via email from Carla

"Love is what you've been through with somebody." -- James Thurber, via email from Carla

"Love is a serious mental disease." -- Plato, via email from Carla

"The hottest love has the coldest end." -- Socrates, via email from Carla

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence." -- H.L. Mencken, via email from Carla

"I love mankind, it's people I can't stand." -- Linus from 'Peanuts', via email from Carla

"LOVE - A temporary insanity curable by marriage." -- Ambrose Bierce, via email from Carla

"What the world really needs is more love and less paper work." -- Pearl Bailey, via email from Carla

"Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves." -- Henri Frederic Amiel, via email from Carla

"Do not preach the God of history, but show him as he lives today through you." -- Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948)

"None of us can estimate what we do when we do it from instinct." -- Luigi Pirandello

Saturday, November 01, 2003

"Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal but which the reader recognizes as his own." -- Salvatore Quasimodo