A man's got to be himself. Can't break the mold. I tried it once and
it didn't work. (Shane in the movie)
Be good
and industrious and serve God continually. (Joseph Haydn)
Soul,
clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress
(Yeats)
Action is
worry's worst enemy.
Ambition
is putting a ladder against the skies.
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
One
pair of listening ears can drink a thousand tongues dry.
Difficulties
are things that show what people are like.
Prescription
for happiness: Something to do; someone to love; something to look forward to.
(Elvis Presley)
Subtlety
teaches best.
A whole
lot of ideas isn't a plan. (Donald Westlake)
When it
comes to personal success in life,
the wisdom of gracious acceptance is a step backward in the right direction.
(from the movie "The Tea House of the August Moon")
Sometimes
it's better to be on the right side of wrong than the wrong side of right.
Anything
that ever goes wrong in our lives happens when we fail to see ourselves as
parts of that whole--when we can't recognize ourselves for what we truly are:
individual beings who belong. All you have to do in life is to find and
to understand yourself. Even those people who spend their entire lives helping
others--that is their way of knowing themselves. (Maria Joao Pires)
No artist is pleased; there is no satisfaction whatever at
any time. There is only a strange,
divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us
more alive than the others. (Martha Graham)
Nature
Boy
There was a boy
A very enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
And then
one day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"
(Eden Ahbez)
A fine
life is a thought conceived in youth and realized in maturity. (Alfred de
Vigny)
The rules aren’t written down, you fool, they’re lived. (From
the Tom Selleck movie, Monte Walsh)
When we
leave this world, we leave all we have taken but carry with us all we have
given.
Most
men can lead, but they don't hunger and thirst to do so. Probably they
are better adjusted emotionally to life's lot than most of us. They are
content to gather flowers in the one garden they call their own. To toil
at a simple task for which they are fitted, to love a little and to be loved,
to feel warmth in their home--these things are enough for them. (SLA
Marshall)
When what
we are is what we want to be, that's happiness. (Malcolm Forbes)
Appreciation makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
(Voltaire)
Your mind
is a bad neighborhood. Don't go there alone. (D. D. Lewis)
The book
of life is brief and once a page is read
All but love is dead. (Don McLean)
I
couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it. (Jonathan Winters)
Dignity
does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
I’ve made peace with myself somewhere between my ambitions
and my limitations. (from the movie, Teahouse of the August Moon.)
The
impression of simplicity is the final achievement. (Frederic Chopin)
Two in
distress makes sorrow less.
The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past. (William Faulkner)
Can a
lifetime represent a single motive? (T. S. Eliot)
The husband may be the head of the family, but the wife is
the neck. She can turn the man’s head in
any direction. Don’t let your past
dictate your future, but let your past be part of what you become. (Nia
Vardelos, My Big Fat Greek Wedding)
I gave you life so you could live it.
When men
cry, they usually cry about things they should have shed tears over in the
past. (Thomas Henderson)
My Life's
been grand
I've been a hand at livin' it up all the way
I've had good times and bad times and hard times and done time
But life's been a blessing every day
My life's been grand
You know I'd write home and tell 'em
But they wouldn't believe me
My good luck's been good
And if it ended today, hell
I've been all the way
My life's been grand. (Merle Haggard)
We
just don't recognize the most significant aspects of our lives while they're
happening.
(From the movie, Field of Dreams)
So many
things can hinder one. Think you are up in a hot air balloon with
sandbags. As you get older, keep throwing those sandbags overboard.
The more sandbags you throw, the higher you soar, the higher the balloon goes.
(Lorin Maazel)
Getting
it right the first time is not nearly as important as getting it right the second
time.
Great
men never feel great and small men never feel small.
The best chaperon a girl can have is to be in love with another guy.
(Mark Twain)
"Have
you ever failed?" "Only in life." (From the movie, The Ghosts
in the Darkness.)
The essence
of learning is remembering what one knew even before awareness.
(Socrates)
There was
a time when I was
In a hurry as you are
I was like you
The was a day when I just
Had to tell my point of view
I was like you
Now I don't mean to make you frown
No, I just want you to slow down
Have you
never been mellow
Have you never tried
To find the comfort from inside you
Have you never been happy
Just to hear a song
Have you never let someone else be strong
(John Farrar)
One does not
learn to love, but one learns to understand that which one loves. (Camille
Mauclair)
Trifles
make perfection and perfection is no trifle. (Michelangelo)
He who has not carried your burden doesn't know how much it weighs.
I am
comfortable with everyone. My main credo is to “understand the other
person.” If I don’t like something in a person, I try to understand why
they are like that, and as soon as I understand these reasons, I can’t be angry
anymore. (Lazar Berman)
Wide
experience makes for deep tolerance.
Well
I'm not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don't last
Well it's just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There's something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight
(Al Stewart and Peter White)
A clean
conscience is a good pillow.
It’s
easier to pull down than to build up.
Can't
figure out the problem? Put it aside for a brainy day.
There
is something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize
ability. (Elbert Hubbard)
Total
abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. (Augustine of Hippo)
Don’t be
afraid to love the boy. (From the movie,
The Yearling, with Gregory Peck)
If you
don’t do what you are, you quit being. (From the Tom Select movie, Monte Walsh)
The most
important events are often the results of accidents. (Polybius)
To
leave footprints on the sands of time, wear work shoes. (Author unknown)
Said will be a little ahead, but done should follow at his heel. (C.
H. Spurgeon)
Every history worth
its salt is telling us who we are (we who do not know who we are). (John D. Caputo)
That man
is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained
the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his
niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it,
whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never
lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who looked for
the best in others and gave the best he had. (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Thou
shalt ever joy at eventide if you spend the day fruitfully. (Thomas á
Kempis)
If you’re going
through hell, keep going. Don’t
stop. (Winston Churchill)
The
way to do is to be. (Lao Tzu)
Action
speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. (Author unknown)
Lord
grant that the FIRE of my heart may melt the lead in my feet. (Author
unknown)
Racing has to come before everything else in your life. I’d reached a point where helping my sons and
daughters means more to me today than driving into turn one. (Al Unser, Jr.)
Action is
the antidote for despair. (Joan Baez)
It’s unbelievable! No, even better—it’s perfect.” (From the
movie, Fields of Dreams)
People
get the government that looks like them.
We can observe ourselves by seeing who we elect. (Paul Griffiths)
If you’re going to be successful in life, you either have to
be smart or pleasant. I tried being
smart for awhile but found that being pleasant is much more effective. (from
the Jimmy Stewart movie, Harvey)
The
best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. (J. M. Power)
We cannot
direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. (Proverb)
He had climbed to the top of the tree and there was nothing
there. I don’t think he ever knew what
he wanted, but in his last years he knew he would never get it. (Constantine Gratsos on Aristotle Onassis.)
Stop worrying about whether or not you’re effective.
Worry about what is possible for you to do, which is always greater
than you imagine.
(Archbishop Oscar Romero)
Things
won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing. (William Shakespeare)
The
shortest way to do many things is to do one thing at once. (Samuel
Smiles)
If
you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one. (Mother Teresa)
He does
much who loves much. (Thomas á Kempis)
Tell me and I’ll forget;
show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand. (Chinese proverb)
How vain
it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live! (Henry
David Thoreau)
I’m a sinking ship, scuttled by my own men! (from the movie, Teahouse of the August Moon.)
Sometimes
you gotta create what you want to be a part of. (Geri Weitzman)
Where
science stops, God begins. (From the movie The
Notebook)
Ideas
won’t keep; something must be done about them. (Alfred North Whitehead)
Do not
let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. (John Wooden)
There is
nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at
all. (Peter Drucker)
I believe a
great deal of happiness can be found in every circumstance. It isn't only a
matter of being married or unmarried. It's more a matter of being complete or
incomplete as a human being, of exploring and employing the best that's in us,
of adapting and remaining forever flexible, and of resisting being categorized,
labeled, pigeon-holed, or price-tagged. You can live a fairly full life in an
imperfect world if you have the courage to be 'you' and seek out and face all
the facts--the facts of a life which is never all you dreamed it would be, but
which, nevertheless, is your own life in which you can function well and be
important to yourself and others. (Kate Smith)
Happy is
he who knows how to break things off before being broken by them. (Franz
Liszt)
Our grand
business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly
at hand. (Thomas Carlyle)
Love
cannot be practiced right unless we first exercise it the moment God gives the
opportunity. (John Wesley)
Leave
nothing to chance, and then leave everything to God. (Author unknown)
To give
our Lord a perfect hospitality, Mary and Martha must combine. (Teresa of
Avila)
Do not
follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and
leave a trail. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Adventure
is not outside a man, it is within. (David Grayson)
Prosperity
doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.
(Francis Bacon)
We must
face today as children of tomorrow.
We must meet the uncertainties of this world with the certainty
of the world to come. (A.W. Tozer)
Youth is
a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret. (Benjamin Disraeli)
Forty
is the old age of youth; fifth the youth of old age. (Victor Hugo)
Men are
not punished for their sins, but by them. (Elbert Hubbard)
The world
stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going. (Author
unknown)
Be
careful what you set your heart upon—for it will surely be yours. (James
Baldwin)
Try
not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
(Albert Einstein)
I
am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can
do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do. (Helen
Keller)
How wonderful that we
have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
It is very difficult
to make an accurate prediction, especially about the future.
An expert is a person
who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
(Niels Bohr)
Lord
grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish. (Michelangelo)
This
is
Amusement to an observing mind is study. (Benjamin Disraeli)
The
real character of a man is found out by his amusements. (Joshua Reynolds)
Worry
is the interest you pay on borrowed trouble.
You don’t
get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can only decide
how you’re going to live. Now. (Joan Baez)
The
deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated and the
desire to be important. (Dale Carnegie)
It is
useless for us to reason a man out of a thing he has never been reasoned
into. (Jonathan Swift)
Argument
is the worst sort of conversation. (Jonathan Swift)
Start
with what you can do; don’t stop because of what you can’t do. (Author
unknown)
Attitudes
are contagious. Are yours worth catching? (Author unknown)
Don’t
count the days, make the days count. (Author unknown)
It’s
a beautiful world to see,
Or it’s dismal in every zone,
The thing it must be in its gloom or its gleam
Depends on yourself alone.
(Author unknown)
If you
look for the good, you will find it; if you look for the bad, you will also
find it.
Never
look at what you have lost…look at what you have left. (Author unknown)
Today I
can cry because roses have thorns or I can celebrate that thorns have
roses. (Author unknown)
Attitude
is the mind’s paintbrush, it can color any situation. (Author unknown)
Don’t
worry about what you want, concentrate on what you already have. (Author
unknown)
All
I am is what I’m going after. (Al Pacino in Heat)
There are two kinds of men who never amount to very
much: Those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do
nothing else.
(Cyrus H. K. Curtis)
Weakness
of attitude becomes weakness of character. (Albert Einstein)
Keep
your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. (Helen Keller)
I
discovered I always have choices and sometimes it’s only a choice of
attitude. (Judith M. Knowlton)
The new cosmology
portrays a cosmos that defied our figuring and confounds every expectation of
how things ought to work. The
implications of this emerging theory, of course, are even harder to predict
than the theory is to understand.
(Leonard Sweet, Bryan D. McLaren, Jerry Haselmayer)
If you try to fail
and succeed, what have you done? (George Carlin)
I thought my
fireplace cold, and stirred up the ashes; my fingers got burnt. (Antonio Machado)
Not everything that
counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. (Albert Einstein)
You may live
in an imperfect world but the frontiers are not closed and the doors are not
all shut. (Maxwell Maltz)
Attitudes
are more important than facts. (Karl Menninger)
Live life
slowly so it lasts longer. (Sandor)
Truth
exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart. (Friedrich Schiller)
Beautiful
is that which we see, more beautiful that which we know, but by far the most
beautiful that which we do not comprehend.
(Nicolaus Steno.)
Whatever
you are, be a good one. (Abraham
Lincoln)
If
you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. (Henry Ford)
As
I get older I seem to believe less and less and yet to believe what I do
believe more and more. (David Jenkins)
Make
sure the thing you’re living for is worth dying for. (Charles Mayes)
One
of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s
work is terribly important. (Bertrand
Russell)
Crowding
a life does not always enrich it.
(Author unknown)
Be
the change you want to see in the world.
(Mahatma Gandhi)
Change
is inevitable. Change for the better is
a full-time job. (Adlai Stevenson)
Everyone
thinks of changing the world, but no one things of changing himself. (Leo Tolstoy)
A
person’s character and their garden both reflect the amount of weeding that was
done in the growing season. (Author
unknown)
Character
cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be
strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. (Helen Keller)
Never
seek warm fire under cold ice. (Samuel
Rutherford)
The
dew of compassion is a tear. (Lord
Byron)
Is
this heaven? (Shoeless Joe Jackson on the baseball field in the movie, Fields of Dreams)
It
is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. (Krishnamurti)
Be
the master of your will and the slave of your conscience. (Hasidic saying)
Next
to faith this is the highest art—to be content with the calling in which God
has placed you. I have not learned it
yet. (Martin Luther)
The
only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel
ourselves at home here on earth.
(Malcolm Muggeridge)
Great
wealth and contentment seldom live together.
(Bob Phillips)
Conscience
is the perfect interpreter of life. (Karl
Barth)
WISDOM FROM ROME
Pauci dinoscere possunt
vera bona atque illis multum diversa; nocitura toga, nocitura petuntur militia.
Juvenal, Satirae
Few people can distinguish
between true good things and their opposites; in city or war camp, we seek what
will be our ruin.
Neque
cuiguam mortalium iniuriae suae parvae videntur.
Sallust,
Bellum Catilinae, Caesar’s Speech.
Nobody
underestimates his own troubles.
Non oris
causa modo hominess aequom fuit sibi habere speculum, sed qui perspicere
possent cor sapientiae.
Plautus,
Epidicus
A
man needs a good mirror to scrutinize his heart as well as his face.
Brevis
ipsa vita est sed
Syrus,
Maxims
Life
is short, but troubles make it longer.
Fortuna
vitrea est; tum cum splendet frangitur.
Syrus,
Maxims
Fortune
is glass; just when it gleams brightest it shatters.
Cui plus licet quam par est plus vult quam licet.
Syrus
(quoted in Macrobius, Saturnalia
A
fellow who gets more than he deserves wants more than he gets.
Fama malum quo non aliud velocius ullum.
Virgil,
Aeneid
Nothing
moves faster than gossip.
Late
ignis lucere, ut nihil urat, non potest.
Syrus,
Maxims
A
fire can’t throw a great light without burning something.
Esse quam videri bonus malebat.
Sallust,
Bellum Catilinae
He
preferred being a good man to looking like one.
Taciturnitas
stulto homini pro sapientia est.
Syrus,
Maxims
The
silence of a stupid man looks like wisdom.
Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis.
Horace, Ars Poetica,3
Whatever
you want to teach, be brief.
Probitas laudatur et alget.
Juvenal, Satirae
Honesty
is praised while it starves.
Quis
custodiet ipsos custodes?
Juvenal,
Satirae
Who
will watch the watchmen?
Cito enim
arescit lacrima, praesertim in alienis
Cicero,
De Partitione Oratoria
Tears
for somebody else’s troubles dry quickly.
Homines
libenter id quod volunt credunt.
Caesar,
De Bello Gallico
Men
easily believe what they want to.
Satis
putant vitio carere; etiam virtutibus carent.
Quintilian,
Institutio Oratoria
They
boasted that they had no faults; they also had no virtues.
Nil magis amat cupiditas, quam guod non licet.
Syrus,
Maxims
Lust
wants whatever it can’t have.
Omne
ignotum pro magnifico est.
Tacitus,
De Vita et Moribus Iulii Agricolae
Anything we haven’t seen
before is marvellous.
Da mihi
castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.
Make
me chaste and pure, but not yet.
Pecunia
non satiat avaritiam, sed inritat.
Syrus,
Maxims
Money
doesn’t satisfy greed; it stimulates it.
Summum ius summa iniuria.
Cicero, De Officiis
The
more law, the less justice.
Maximum in eo vitium est, qui non melioribus
vult placere, sed pluribus.
Seneca
the Younger (attributed), Proverbs
His
greatest fault was his desire not to please the best people, but to please the
most people.
Leges
bonae ex
Macrobius,
Saturnalia
Good
laws are produced by bad morals.
Liber,
caris eris Romae, donec te deserat aetas; aut tineas pasces taciturnus inertes,
aut pueros elementa docens manes.
Horace,
Epistulae
Book,
if you’re lucky you’ll be loved in Rome; if you’re unlucky, you’ll be chewed by
bookworms and forgotten, if you’re very unlucky, you might become a textbook.
MARCEL PROUST:
Let
us be grateful to people who make us happy.
They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Only
through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another’s view of the
universe.
The
only thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on
others.
The
real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having
new eyes.
Desire
makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.
WASHINGTON
IRVING
You
must never think to become popular among wits by shining. They go into society to shine themselves, not
to admire the brilliance of others. No character
succeeds so well among wits as that of a good listener.
Authors
are particularly candid in admitting the faults of their friends.
Great
geniuses are not gregarious; they do not go in flocks, but fly singly in
general society. They prefer mingling
like common men with the multitude and are apt to carry nothing of the author
about them but the reputation. It is
only the inferior orders that herd together, acquire strength and importance by
their confederacies, and bear all the distinctive characteristics of their
species.
Wit
and coin are always doubted with a threadbare coat.
I
like to make new acquaintances, considering every man a volume of human
nature.
The
only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.
The
republic of letters is the most factious and discordant of all republics,
ancient or modern.
He
had seen the world and mingled with society, yet retained the strong
eccentricities of a man who had lived much alone.
He
had evidently been a little chilled and buffeted by fortune, without being
soured thereby; as some fruits become mellower and more generous in their
flavor from having been bruised and frostbitten.
Too
many philosophers have been profited by the “sweet uses” of adversity without
imbibing its bitterness; they perceived the truth of the saying that “all is
vanity” and yet are able to do so without vexation of spirit.
Of
all the birds, I should like to be a lark.
He revels in the brightest time of the day in the happiest season of the
year, among fresh meadows and opening flowers; and when he has sated himself
with the sweetness of earth, he wings his flight up to heaven as if he would
drink in the melody of the morning stars.
I
have no great story, just a mere tissue of errors and follies.
I was
born to very little property, but to great expectations—which is, perhaps, one
of the most unlucky fortunes a man can be born to.
He
sat with his family in a large pew gorgeously lined, humbling himself devoutly
on velvet cushions, and reading lessons of meekness and lowliness of spirit out
of splendid gold and morocco prayer books.
Great
geniuses never studied but were always idle.
From
long habits of taciturnity, the hinges of his jaws seemed to have grown
absolutely rusty.
That
was indeed a novelty to me—like a peep into another planet.
One
does not require a special recommendation to get admitted into bad company.
Jealousies,
intrigues, and mad ambition were to be found even among vagabonds.
Even
those who had attained the highest honors were not more happy than the rest.
I was
at that age when a man knows least and is most vain of his knowledge, and when
he is extremely tenacious in defending his opinion upon subjects about which he
knows nothing.
Thus
ended my first peep into the world.
My
father was a hard man to argue with, for he never knew when he was refuted.
My
mode of life has unfortunately been such as to render me unfit for almost any
useful purpose.