Lisa's Quotation Page R1C1

These are a whole bunch of my favorite quotes, not in any particular order... Have fun browsing!



The Future

It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), �The Discovery of the Future,� lecture, 24 Jan. 1902, at the Royal Institute, London (published in Nature, no. 65, 1902).

Success The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874�1965), British author. The Summing Up, ch. 48 (1938).

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein (1879�1955), German-born U.S. scientist. Quoted in: Observer (London, 15 Jan. 1950).

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal�that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.
Henry David Thoreau (1817�62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden, �Higher Laws� (1854).

Work

Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute.
John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908), U.S. economist. Made to Last, ch. 4 (1964).

I suspect that American workers have come to lack a work ethic. They do not live by the sweat of their brow.
Kiichi Miyazawa (b. 1919), Japanese politician, prime minister. Daily Telegraph (London, 5 Feb. 1992).

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in�that we do it to God, to Christ, and that�s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
Mother Teresa (b. 1910), Albanian-born Roman Catholic missionary. A Gift for God, �Imitation of Christ� (1975).

Money

Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.
John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908), U.S. economist. The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 6 (1977).

The want of money is the root of all evil.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English author. Samuel Butler�s Notebooks (1951). The aphorism, which has also been credited to Mark Twain, reappeared in Butler�s novel, Erewhon, ch. 20 (1872).

A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.
Bible, Hebrew . Ecclesiastes 10:19.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Woody Allen (b. 1935), U.S. filmmaker. Without Feathers, The Early Essays (1976).

Dreams

Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
John Updike (b. 1932), Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, ch. 3 (1989).

Wealth

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.
Oscar Wilde (1854�1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author. Sir Robert Chiltern, in An Ideal Husband, act 2.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803�82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. The Conduct of Life,

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908), U.S. economist. The Affluent Society, ch. 1, sct. 1 (1958).

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858�1919), U.S. Republican (later Progressive) politician, president. Speech, 23 Aug. 1902, Providence, R.I

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
Jean Cocteau (1889�1963), French author, filmmaker. Les Enfants Terribles (tr. by Rosamond Lehmann, 1929).

Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshiped.
Calvin Coolidge (1872�1933), U.S. Republican politician, president . Speech, 11 June 1928, Boston.

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.
Mother Teresa (b. 1910), Albanian-born Roman Catholic missionary. A Gift for God, �Riches� (1975).

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community�the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.
Andrew Carnegie (1835�1919), U.S. industrialist, philanthropist. �The Gospel of Wealth,� in North American Review (June 1889). Quoted in: Burton J. Hendrick, Life of Andrew Carnegie, vol. 1, ch. 17 (1932).

The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power�s sake . . . but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one�s own rules.
Joan Didion (b. 1934), U.S. essayist. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, �7000 Romaine, Los Angeles� (1968; first published 1967).

The Consumer Society

Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. . . . He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. The Conduct of Life, �Wealth� (1860).

Happiness

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856�1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. Morell, in Candida, act 1.

Shyness

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, Do I dare? and, Do I dare?
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair . . .
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), Anglo-American poet, critic. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Worth

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.
Adam Smith (1723�90), Scottish economist. The Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 5 (1776).

Housework

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860�1935), U.S. feminist, writer. Women and Economics, ch. 1 (1898).

Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials�to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only one woman�s hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.
Margaret Mead (1901�78), U.S. anthropologist. Male and Female, ch. 16 (1949).

Self-intereIt is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.
Adam Smith (1723�90), Scottish economist. The Wealth of Nations, vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 2 (1776).

Possibility

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
Oliver Wendell, Sr. Holmes (1809�94)(1813�55), Danish philosopher. Either/Or, vol. 1, �Diapsalmata� (1843; tr. 1987).

I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.
Max Lerner (b. 1902), U.S. author, columnist. Entry in Who�s Who in America (1992).

Competition

The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost�for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it . . . : It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), U.S. industrialist, philanthropist. �The Gospel of Wealth,� in North American Review (Cedar Falls, June 1889). Quoted in: Burton J. Hendrick, Life of Andrew Carnegie, vol. 1, ch. 17, 1932).

Power

The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either a saint or a mediocrity.
Simone Weil (1909�43), French philosopher, mystic. �Cold War Policy in 1939� (written 1939; published in Selected Essays, ed. by Richard Rees, 1962).

The Twentieth Century

The 1960sThe thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn�t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.
John Lennon (1940�80), British rock musician. Interview, 8 Dec. 1980, for KFRC RKO Radio, given the day of Lennon�s death.

Poverty and the Poor

To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
William Cobbett (1762�1835), English journalist, reformer. �To Parson Malthus,� in Political Register (London, 8 May 1819; repr. in The Opinions of William Cobbett, ch. 9, ed. by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole, 1944).

Losing

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.
Victoria (1819�1901), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Letter, Dec. 1899, to statesman A. J. Balfour, during the �Black Week� of the Boer War.

Fiction

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn�t.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 15, �Pudd�nhead Wilson�s New Calendar� (1897).

Technology

However far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.
Lewis Mumford (1895�1990), U.S. social philosopher. Technics and Civilization, ch. 8, sct. 13 (1934).

The Universe

Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
J. B. S. Haldane (1892�1964), British scientist. Possible Worlds, title essay (1927).

Common Sense

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
Henri-fr�d�ric Amiel (1821-81), Swiss philosopher, poet. Journal Intime (1882; tr. by Mrs. Humphry Ward, 1892), entry for 12 Nov. 1852.

The End of the World

It isn�t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice�there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.
Frank Zappa (b. 1940), U.S. rock musician. The Real Frank Zappa Book, ch. 9 (1989; written with Peter Occhiogrosso).

Day

that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), English novelist, poet. Tess of the D�Urbervilles, ch. 13 (1891).

Parents

The pressures of being a parent are equal to any pressure on earth. To be a conscious parent, and really look to that little being�s mental and physical health, is a responsibility which most of us, including me, avoid most of the time because it�s too hard.
John Lennon (1940�80), British rock musician. Playboy (Chicago, Sept. 1980). Lennon added, �To put it loosely, the reason why kids are crazy is because nobody can face the responsibility of bringing them up.�

Sons

He didn�t come out of my belly, but my God, I�ve made his bones, because I�ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I�m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.
John Lennon (1940�80), British rock musician. Interview in Playboy (Chicago, Sept. 1980), said of his son, Sean Taro Ono Lennon.

Music Composition

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It�s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won�t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you�re allowed to sleep. It�s always in the middle of the bloody night, or when you�re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them.
John Lennon (1940�80), British rock musician. Playboy (Chicago, Sept. 1980).

Wisdom

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803�82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. Society and Solitude, �Clubs� (1870).

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.
G. C. Lichtenberg (1742�99), German physicist, philosopher. Aphorisms, �Notebook E,� aph. 49 (written 1765�99; tr. by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990).

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban (b. 1915), Israeli politician. Speech, 16 Dec. 1970, London.
Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite concious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.
Socrates (469�399 B.C.), Greek philosopher. Quoted in: Plato, Apology, sct. 19, of �a gentleman with a reputation for wisdom.

The road to wisdom?�Well, it�s plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
Piet Hein (b. 1905), Dutch inventor, poet. Grooks, �The Road to Wisdom� (1966

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. . . . God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.
Pierre Charron (1541�1603), French philosopher. Of Wisdom, bk. 1, Preface (1601), first words.

Leadership

The real leader has no need to lead�he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller (1891�1980), U.S. author. The Wisdom of the Heart, title essay (1947).

Growth

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
Henry Miller (1891�1980), U.S. author. The Wisdom of the Heart, �The Absolute Collective� (1947).

Absurdity

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher. "On the Wisdom of Life: Aphorisms." Quoted in: Selected Essays (1851; tr. by T. Bailey Saunders).

Experience

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it � and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again � and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 11, �Pudd�nhead Wilson�s New Calendar� (1897).

Mystics and Mysticism

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms�this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.
Albert Einstein (1879�1955), German-born U.S. theoretical physicist. Quoted in: Philipp Frank, Einstein: His Life and Times, ch. 12, sct. 5 (1947).

Manners

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
Thomas Jefferson (1743�1826), U.S. president. Letter, 24 Nov. 1808, to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

the President

No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.
Thomas Jefferson (1743�1826), U.S. president. Letter, 27 Dec. 1796. Jefferson was shortly to begin a four-year term as vice-president followed by eight years as president.

Politics

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.
Fawn M. Brodie (1915�81), U.S. biographer. Thomas Jefferson, ch. 1 (1974).

Agnostics

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 10 Aug. 1787.

Temptation

There are several good protections against temptations but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain (1835�1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 36, �Pudd�nhead Wilson�s New Calendar� (1897). The epigram also appeared as an entry in 1898 in Twain, Notebook, ch. 31 (ed. by Albert Bigelow Paine, 1935).

Conservatives

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world�and never will.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), U.S. author. �Consistency,� paper, read in Hartford, Connecticut, 1884 (published in 1923; repr. in Complete Essays, ed. Charles Neider, 1963). The first words of the statement were inscribed beneath Twain�s bust in the Hall of Fame, New York University.

The Creation

Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn�t something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly�a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over & observe effects.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), U.S. author. Letter, 25 Jan. 1900, to W. D. Howells (published in The Twain-Howells Letters, vol. 2, ed. by Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson, 1960).

Originality

The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
Mark Twain (1835�1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 32, �Pudd�nhead Wilson�s New Calendar� (1897).

Illusion

Don�t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain (1835�1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 59, �Pudd�nhead Wilson�s New Calendar� (1897).

Materialism

Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.
Mark Twain (1835�1910), U.S. author. Old Man, in What Is Man?, sct. 6 (1906; repr. in Complete Essays, ed. by Charles Neider, 1963).

Good Deeds

Always do right�this will gratify some and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain (1835�1910), U.S. author. Message, 16 Feb. 1901, to the Young People�s Society, New York City. President Harry S Truman had this remark framed behind his desk in the Oval Office.

Motives

From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one�to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.
Mark Twain (1835�1910), U.S. author. Old Man, in What Is Man? sct. 2 (1906; repr. in Complete Essays, ed. by Charles Neider, 1963).

Loss

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child�s loss of a doll and a king�s loss of a crown are events of the same size.
Mark Twain (1835�1910), U.S. author. �Which Was the Dream?� unfinished story (written 1897; published in Which Was the Dream and Other Symbolic Writings, ed. by John S. Tuckey, 1967).

The Devil

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who has for untold centuries maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order.
Mark Twain (1835-1910), U.S. author. �Concerning the Jews,� in Harper�s (New York, Sept. 1899; repr. in Complete Essays, ed. by Charles Neider, 1963).

War

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief . . . for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.