Note: This is a rough draft of a booklet that I will publish later this year (2005).
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INTRODUCTION
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This book’s title was inspired by the fact that
they were selected by a misanthrope, and it is assumed that other misanthropes
might enjoy them as much as I have. The quotations are not meant to be
offensive, but since they are candid comments on human nature you must expect
them to have “sting.”
I think it’s boring to read a collection of
quotations arranged by categories. Bartlett’s
Quotations overcomes this by arranging the quotes
by date, which I like. My collection has no order, since it has been randomized
by a method that takes no account of the subject, the author, or the date. The
entries have been randomized for those properties by ordering them alphabetically
using the first word of the entry. That way you’ll probably never see two
quotes about the same subject next to each other. I like the surprise of not
knowing what the next entry will be about, and this randomizing procedure
accomplishes that.
There are two parts to the book. The main part
is a collection of quotes from the public domain, or Classic Quotes. The second
and shorter part is a collection of my quotes.
I apologize for including mine under the same book cover, but it was fun
pretending that they had merit.
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"...a discovery so simple that only a
genius could have thought of it." Attributed to
Einstein, commenting on Jean Piaget's childhood developmental psychology
insights.
"...an actor who has played his part in one
scene, and who takes his place among the audience til
it is time for him to go upon the stage again, and quietly looks on at whatever
may happen ..." Schopenhauer, The
World As Will and Idea, 1844, p 47 of The
Philosophy of Schopenhauer, edited by Irwin Edman,
1928
"...footprints on the sands of time."
Henry W. Longfellow, A Psalm to Life, 1839
"[Who shall] not to feel the torturing need
to know and see for oneself what is there beyond the mysterious blue wall of
the horizon, not to find the arrangements of life monotonous and depressing, to
look at the white road leading off into the unknown distance without feeling
the imperious necessity of giving in to it and following it obediently across
mountains and valleys. The cowardly belief that a man must stay in one
place is reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of
burden stupified by servitude and yet always willing
to accept the slipping on of the harness. There are limits to every domain
and laws to govern every organized power. The wanderer (the seeker) owns the
whole vast earth that ends only at the non-existent horizon, and, his empire is
an intangible one, for his domination and enjoyment of it are things of the
spirit." Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers
"A bad neighbor is a misfortune, as much as
a good one is a great blessing." Hesiod, The Theogony, Bk I, 346, 700 BC
"A fool uttereth all his mind." Bible,
Proverbs
"A good death does honor to a whole
life." Petrarch, ca 1350 AD
"A hen is only an egg's way of making
another egg." Samuel Butler, Life
and Habit, 1877
"A journey of a thousand miles must begin
with a single step." Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu,
before 531 BC
"A man can believe a considerable deal of
rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful
manner." Norman Douglas
"A man can surely do what he wills to do,
but he cannot determine what he wills." Arthur Schopenhauer
"A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays, and
confident tomorrows." William Wordsworth, The Excursion, 1814
"A man is no prophet in his own country."
Anonymous
A man left the old world to come to
"A man must have his faults." Gaius Petronius, ca 50 AD
"A man must make his opportunity, as oft as
find it." Francis Bacon, The Advancement of
Learning, 1605
"A man should be mourned at his birth, not
at his death." Charles de Secondat, Letters Persanes,
1721
"A man's character is his fate." Heralitus, before 480 BC.
"A man's homeland is wherever he
prospers." Aristophanes, Plutus, 388 BC
"A man's manners are a mirror in which he
shows his portrait." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose, 1803
"A mighty pain to love it is, and ‘tis a
pain that pain to miss; but of all pains, the greatest pain, it is to love, but
love in vain." Abraham Cowley, Anacreon, 1656
"A millionaire who commissioned
masterpieces to burn would find (few takers)... Every sort of artist
demands human response." H. G. Wells, Country
of the Blind and Other Short Stories, Intro, 1913
"A mind not to be
changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself can
make a heav'n of hell, a hell in heav'n."
John Milton,
"A prudent (grateful) man will think more
important what fate has conceded to him than what it has denied." Francis
Bacon
"A shipwrecked sailor on this coast bids
you set sail; Full many a gallant ship, ere we were
lost, weathered the gale." Greek anthology
"A sure way to arouse love is to love very
little yourself." Francois de la Rochefoucauld
"A useless life is an early death."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1787
"A wise man will make more opportunities
than he finds." Francis Bacon
"A wit with dunces,
and a dunce with wits." Alexander
Pope, The Dunciad, 1727
"A woman drove me to drink and I never even
had the courtesy to thank her." W.
C. Fields
"A woman without a man is like a fish
without a bicycle." Gloria Steinem
"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and
increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fire."
Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld,
Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral
Maxims, 1678
"Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part;
do thou but thine."
John Milton,
"Adversity introduces a man to
himself." Anonymous
"Ah, make the most of what we yet may
spend; Before we too into the Dust descend."
Edward FitzGerald, translator, Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat, 1859
"Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we
endure the operation of life." George Bernard Shaw
"Alcohol is the cause and solution to all
life's problems." Dan Castellaneta, as Homer
Simpson
"All books are divisible into two classes:
the books of the hour, and the books of all time." John Ruslin, Of Kings'
Treasuries, 1865
"All great truths begin as
blasphemies." George Bernard Shaw
"All this buttoning
and unbuttoning." 18th Century suicide note, Anonymous
"Although we are mere sojourners on the
surface of the planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a
moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the
unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before
the creation of our race, and is not even withheld from penetrating into the
dark secrets of the ocean, or the interior of the solid globe; free, like the
spirit which the poet described as animating the universe." Sir Charles Lyell, Principle of
Geology, 1830
"Am I a god? I see so clearly!"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust,
1808
"Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that
it cannot use it finds despicable." Joubert
"Among theologians, heretics are those who
are not backed with a sufficient array of battalions to render them
orthodox." Voltaire, Philosophical
Dictionary, 1764
"An expert is a man who doesn't make the
slightest error on the road to the Grand Illusion." Marshall McLuhan
"An irony, that
young people move fast, as if their time is short, while old people move
slowly, as if they have forever." 1601
"An optimist thinks that this is the best
possible world. A pessimist fears that this is true." Anonymous
"An undertow of pessimism seemed to be
dragging the finest, and once the most fervent, souls into a maelstrom of
cynicism and despair. Everything had been tried, the most superhuman
efforts had been made; but every effort had failed. There was hardly
anything left to do, except perhaps, if one could, to eat and drink and be
merry while it was day. For the night would come, after which there would
be nothing." Will Durant,
describing the temper of the Twenties, Transition:
A Mental Autobiography,
"Anacharsis
laughed at him [Solon] for imagining [that] the dishonesty and covetousness of
his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders'
webs, and would catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but be broken by the
mighty and rich." Anacharsis, 600 BC
"And as the smart ship grew; In stature, grace, and hue; In shadowy silent distance grew
the Iceberg too." Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the
Twain (Lines on the Loss of the Titanic), 1912
"And this, too, shall pass away."
Quoted by Abraham Lincoln, attributed to wise men counseling Chinese
monarch, 1859
"And, dying, bless the hand that gave the
blow." John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1680
"Are you Robert Redford?" "Only when I'm
alone." Pollack/Redford exchange on a street
"Aristotle could have avoided the mistake
of thinking that women had fewer teeth than men by the simple device of asking
Mrs. Aristotle to open her mouth." Bertrand Russel
"Aristotle was famous for knowing
everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and
is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain
people." Will Cuffy
"As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so
life well used brings happy death." Leonardo de Vinci, ca 1510 AD
"As long as I count the votes, what are you
going to do about it?" Tammany Hall boss William Marcy Tweed
"As to the common people,
... one has to be hard with them and see that they do their work and
that under the threat of the sword and the law they comply with the observance
of piety, just as you chain up wild beasts. All our experience with
history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed
when it relies on itself. Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it
never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not --
struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates
from God. Reason should be destroyed in all Christians. Reason is the
Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore;
she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and
leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom
... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be
drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the
filthiest place in the house, to the closets." Martin Luther,
"At thirty, a man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; At fifty chides his infamous delay;
Pushes his purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimty
of thought Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same." Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 1742
"Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!"
John Milton,
"Be good and you
will be lonesome." Mark Twain, Following
the Equator, Pudd'nhead
"Be not the first by whom the new are
tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old
aside." Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you
shoot at tax collectors and miss." Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"Beggar that I am,
I am even poor in thanks." William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1601
"Beggars mounted run their horse to
death." William Shakespeare, King
Henry the Sixth, 1591
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a
drunken Christian." Herman Melville, Moby
Dick
"Beware the fury of a patient man."
John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1680
"Blessed is the man who expects nothing,
for he shall never be disappointed" Alexander
Pope, Letter to Fortescue,
1725
"Boys flying kites pull in their white
winged birds, but you can’t do that when you are flying words; Thought
unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead; but God himself can’t kill them when
they are said." 19th Century, William Carleton (restatement of quote by
Horace, 20 BC, “Once a word…)
"But in deed, a friend is never known till a man have need." John Heywood, ca 1560 AD
"But man, proud man, drest
in a little authority, most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,
his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high
heaven, as make the angels weep." William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604
"But such is the irresistable
nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of
appearing." Thomas Paine
"Cease to ask what the morrow will bring
forth, and set down as gain each day that Fortune grants. …Seize the day, put
no trust in the morrow." Horace, Odes,
ca 20 BC
"Children have real understanding only of
that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something
too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves." Jean Piaget
"Civilization is a parasite on the man with
a hoe." Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: The
Reformation,
"Common sense is not so common."
Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique,
1764
"Complete communication between two people
(is) impossible." Georges Simenon, as quoted by
Anthony Storr, in Solitude,
p 120, where original reference is given Writers
at Work, Malcolm Cowley
"Death is better, a milder fate than
tyranny [of the genes?]" Aeschylus, Agamemnon,
before 456 BC
"Democracy is the theory that the common
people know what they want - and deserve to get it good and hard!" H. L.
Mencken
"Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such
a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?"
Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies,
1543
"Do not be coarse in your
conversations. Do not cast lustful glances, or make eyes at another man's
wife. Restrain yourself from getting angry or using offensive
language. If you cannot, go back to your own house." Sign on wall of
residence, named The House of the Moralist, in
"Dogma occupies the idle reason, but action
in the end pursues its own course independently of them, generally not
according to abstract rules ..." Schopenhauer, The World As Will and Idea, 1844, p 41 of The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, edited by Irwin Edman, 1928
"During a space flight, the psyche of each
astronaut is reshaped. Having seen the sun, the stars, and our planet, you
become more full of life, softer. You begin to
look at all living things with greater trepidation and you begin to be more
kind and patient with the people around you. At any rate, that is what
happened to me." Boris Volynov, Soviet Cosmonaut
"Each day is a little life: every waking
and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to
rest and sleep a little death." Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Counsels and Maxims,
1851
"Each progressive spirit is opposed by a
thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past." Maurice Masterlinck
"Earnestness is too often a cloak for
intellectual and spiritual insufficiency." Robertson Davies, "On the
Dangerous Edge," in
"Educated men are as much superior to
uneducated men as the living are to the dead." Aristotle, ca 330 BC
"Enough, if something from our hands have
power to live, and act, and serve the future hour." William Wordsworth, The River Duddon,
1820
"Error is a hardy plant: it flourishes in
every soil." Martin Tupper, Proverbial
Philosophy, 1842
"Ethics is ... the art of recommending to
others the sacrifices for cooperation with oneself." Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, p. 108,
"Eugenic belief extends the function of
philanthropy to future generations." Francis Galton,
Essays in Eugenics: Eugenics as a Factor
in Religion, 1905
"Every nation has the government it
deserves." Joseph de Maistre, Letter to X, 1811
"Every reform, however necessary, will by
weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographica Literaria,
1817
"Every time a child says 'I don't believe
in fairies' there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead." J. M.
Barrie, Peter Pan
"Every woman should marry - and no
man." Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair, 1870
"Everyone complains of his memory, and no
one complains of his judgement." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections;
or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"Everything Earthly is remembered as if it were very long ago and were no longer there, and it is not
known when we will be (there) again." Aleksandr Aleksandrov, Soviet Cosmonaut
"Everything that emancipates the spirit
without giving us control over ourselves is harmful." Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, Proverbs in Prose, 1803
"Excessive laziness is a slow death."
H. Bloom, The Lucifer Principle, 1997
"Families with babies and families without
babies are sorry for each other." E. W. Howe
"Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our
friends." Jacques Delille, Malheur et Pitie,
Canto I, 1803
"Few love to hear the sins they love to
act." William Shakespeare, Pericles, 1609
"Few men make themselves masters of things
they write or speak [about]." John Selden, Table Talk, 1689
"Few things are harder to put up with than
the annoyance of a good example." Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Pudd'nhead
"For every inch that is not fool is
rogue." John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1680
"For just
experience tells, in every soil; that those (who) think must govern those (who)
toil."
Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller,
1764
"For my own part, I would as soon be
descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy in order
to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon who descending from the
mountains and carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of
astonished dogs - as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers
up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives
like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest
superstitions." Charles Darwin, 1871
"For now I see peace to corrupt no less
than war to waste." John Milton,
"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him
shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they
will ask the more." Holy Bible,
Luke 12:48
"For you in my respect are
all the world: Then how can it be said I am alone, When all the world is here
to look on me?" William Shakespeare, A
Mid-Summer Night's Dream, 1596
"Fortune does not change men; it unmasks
them." Mme. Necker
"Free will is an egotistic delusion." Will
Durant, Transition: A Mental
Autobiography,
"Freedom is the recognition of
necessity." Spinoza, ref
"Freedom unlimited is chaos complete."
Will & Ariel Durant, The Story of
Civilization: The Age of Napoleon,
"Generally speaking, it is quite right if
great things - things of much sense for men of rare sense - are expressed but
briefly and (hence) darkly, so that barren minds will declare it to be
nonsense, rather than translate it into a nonsense that they can
comprehend. For mean, vulgar minds have an ugly facility for seeing in the
profoundest and most pregnant utterances only their own everyday opinion."
Jean Paul, as quoted by Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 1894 (M. Cowan, trans.,
Chicago: gateway, p. 69)
"Genius must be born, and never can be
taught." John Dryden, Epistle to
Congreve, 1693
"Give me chastity and continence, but not
just now."
"Given for one instant an intelligence
which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the
respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this
intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would
embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the
universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and
the future, as the past, would be present too its eyes." Pierre Simon de Laplace, Oeuvres,
vol. VII, Theorie Analytique
dse Probabilities, 1812-1820
"God made integers, all else is the work of
man." Leopold Kronecker, Jahresberichter der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung, late 19th Century
"Greatness knows itself." William
Shakespeare, King Henry the Fourth, 1597
“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when
pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you sit down quietly, may alight
upon you.” Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Has anything arisen to show ... that where
the life and breeding of every individual of a species is about equally secure,
a degenerative process must not inevitably supervene?
...Natural Selection grips us more grimly than it ever did, because the doubts
thrown upon the inheritance of acquired characteristics have deprived us of our
trust in education as a means of redemption for decadent families. In our
hearts we wish that the case were not so, we all hate Death and his handiwork;
but the business of science is not to keep up the courage of men, but to tell
the truth." H. G. Wells, “Bio-Optimism,” Nature,
"Have no friends not
equal to yourself."
Confucius, before 479 BC
"He disdains all things above his
reach..." Sir Thomas Overbury, An Affectate Traveller, 1614
"He hath no leisure who
useth it not." George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum,
1651
"He knows the universe, and himself he does
not know." Jean de La Fontaine, Fables,
1668
"He that is down,
needs fear no fall." John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, 1678
"He that is not handsome at twenty, nor
strong at thirty, nor rich at forty, nor wise at fifty, will never be handsome,
strong, rich or wise." George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1651
"He that is robbed, not wanting what is stol'n, let him not know't and
he's not robb'd at all." William Shakespeare, Othello, 1605
"He that lends,
gives." George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1651
"He that will not apply new remedies must
expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator." Francis Bacon, Essays, 1625
"He who has done his best for his own time
has lived for all times." Johann Christoph
Friedrich von Schiller, Wallenstein's Camp, 1798
"He who is in love with himself has at
least this advantage - that he won't encounter many rivals in his love."
Lichtenberg
"He who knows does not speak; he who speaks
does not know." Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu,
before 531 BC
"He who praises everybody, praises
nobody." James Boswell, Life of
Johnson, 1791
"He who says there is no such thing as an
honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave." George Berkeley, Maxims Concerning Patriotism, 1744
"He who speaks the truth should keep one
foot in the stirrup." Turkish (?) proverb
"He will through life be master of himself
and a happy man who from day to day can have said: ‘I have lived: tomorrow the
Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine.'"
Horace, Odes, ca 20 BC
"Health and intellect are the two blessings
of life." Menander, ca 300 BC
Higgamus Hoggamus,
Woman is Monogamous; Hoggamus Higgamus,
Man is Polygamous."
"His conduct still
right, with his argument wrong." Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1770
"History, down to the present day, is a
melancholy record of the horrors which can attend religion; human sacrifice, and
in particular the slaughter of children, cannibalism, sensual orgies, abject
superstition, hatred as between races, the maintenance of degrading customs,
hysteria, bigotry, can all be laid at its charge. Religion is the last
refuge of human savagery." Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making, Macmillan, 1926
"Home is where the computer is..."
Felix The Cat
"Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it
is very good company by the way."
"Hope, utter charlatan though she be, at
least lures us to life's end along a pretty path." Francois de la Rochefoucaul
"How absurd it would be that an
organization nineteen hundred years old, caring for three hundred million
souls, should accept new-fangled philosophies on the recommendation of a few
men temporarily enthusiastic about a temporary hypothesis? How many
"truths"" had the Church seen come and go, how many sciences,
during its life, had been born and passed away; what guarantee was there that
the favorite guesses of modern thought would not seem to a later age as
ridiculous as the star-reading of the astrologers, the head-reading of the
phrenologists, and the gold-making of the alchemists? Science, like most
history, was a fable agreed upon - for a while. No, these matters of
theory were not the important things. What counted was the tremendous
effort to humanize and socialize the race; to curb the greed of the strong and
comfort the sorrow of the weak; to frighten evil-doers with the fear of hell,
and hold out to the unhappy or bereaved the solacing hope of paradise; to
preach to all men incessantly the virtues of gentleness and kindness, and fill
their dull lives with the poetry of the sacraments and the Mass. This was
the mission of the Church..." Will Durant (describing his restless
thinking before leaving the church), 1927, Transition:
A Mental Autobiography,
"How dreadful knowledge of the truth can
be, when there's no help in truth!" Sophocles,
"How happy he who crowns in shades like these, a youth of labor with an age of ease."
Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1770
"How many evils have flowed from religion!" Lucretius, ca. 60
B
"Humankind cannot stand too much
reality!" T. S. Elliot, ABC News
"I am always grieved when a man of real
talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven." Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, 1798
"I can accept the fact that I have been
placed on earth to help others, but what on earth are the others here
for?" Cartoon caption, 198x
"I count religion but a childish toy, and
hold that there is no sin but ignorance."
Christopher Marlowe, 1589
"I desire to live in peace and to continue
the life I have begun under the motto to
live well you must live unseen." Rene Descartes, letter dated April
1634
"I do not believe in the God of theology
who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created the laws that take care
of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable
laws." Albert Einstein, 1955
"I do perceive here a divided duty." William
Shakespeare, Othello, 1605
"I have another duty... My
duty to myself." Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, 1879
"I have been married three times, and not
one of them was a failure."
Margaret Mead (response to explain why all her marriages were failures),
as relayed by Helen Fisch
"I have fears that I may cease to be; Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain." John
Keats, When I Have Fears, 1848
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a
very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted
it." Voltaire, letter to M. Damiliville,
"I have often regretted my speech, never my
silence." Pubilius Syrus,
ca 20 BC
"I have so much to do that I'm going to
bed." Savoyard proverb
"I have taken more good from alcohol than
alcohol has taken from me." Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I
will be sober and you will still be ugly." Sir Winston Churchill
(1874-1965)
"I must complain the cards are
ill-shuffled, till I have a good hand." Jonathan Swift
"I never knew a man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a
Christian." Alexander Pope, Thoughts
on Various Subjects, 1727
"I plan on living forever. So far, so good." Anonymous
"I praise the Frenchman, his remark was
shrewd - How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a
friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper - solitude is sweet." William
Cowper, Retirement, 1782
"I stood among them, but not of them; in a
shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts." Lord Byron, 1812
"I would have written a shorter letter, but
I didn't have time." Mark Twain
"I would rather believe that God did not
exist than believe that He was indifferent." George Sand, Impressions et Souvenirs, 1896
"I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't
believed it!" Anonymous (an old geologist saying). Also,
""What you get is what you see, or more specifically what you look
for." Robert R. Britt (web article)
"If a man be gracious and courteous to
strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no
island cut off from their lands, but a continent that joins to them."
Francis Bacon, Goodness, and Goodness of
Nature, 1625
"If a man is a fool, what he calls reality
will be foolish." Robertson Davies, "On the Dangerous Edge," in
"If competence collides with custom, custom
will win." Anonymous
"If everyone threw their troubles in a big
heap, and later went to withdraw their fair allotment, each would prefer to
retrieve their original burden." Anonymous
"If I can't picture it, I can't understand
it." Einstein, quoted by John A. Wheeler
“If I had to baptise a
Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the
"If I love you, what business is it of
yours?" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm
Meister's Apprenticeship, 1830
"If intellectual sleight of hand was
sometimes necessary, then so be it." Robert Service, 2000, Lenin: A Biography,
"If it has teeth, sooner or later it will
bite." Anonymous
"If once a man indulges himself in murder,
very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next
to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and
procrastination." Thomas De Quincy, Murder
Considered as One of the Fine Arts, 1827
"If utterance is denied, the thought lies
like a burden on the man. Always the seer is a sayer."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, divinity school address, 1838
"If we don't keep striving to light little
candles in the darkness, nothing but the demons of ignorance will
flourish." Tom McDonough, 2001.04.03
"If we resist our passions, it is oftener
because they are weak than because they are strong." Francois de la Rochefoucauld
"If we should bring clearly to a man's
sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed,
he would be seized with horror." Arthur Schopenhauer
"If you fail to earn your place in the
lifeboat, you may be thrown overboard." Plutarch, Morals: Of the
Training of Children. ca. 50 BC
"If you had it to do over, would you fall
in love with yourself?" Attributed to Oscar Levant, spoken to George
Gershwin
"If you're strong, appear weak; if you're
weak, appear strong." Sun Tsu, The Art of War
"Ill deeds are doubled with an evil
word." William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors,
1594
"In a very real sense human beings are
machines constructed by the nucleic acids to arrange for the efficient
replication of more nucleic acids... We are, in a way, temporary ambulatory
repositories for our nucleic acids." Carl Sagan, The Cosmic Connection, Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1973
"In an old house, the thing that works is
the owner." Anonymous
"In just two days, tomorrow will be
yesterday." Anonymous
"In my Future of an Illusion, I was
concerned... what the ordinary man understands by his religion, that system of
doctrines and pledges that... assures him that a solicitious
Providence is watching over him and will make up to him in a future existence
for any shortcomings in his life. The ordinary man cannot imagine this
"In peace, children inter their parents;
war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their
children." Herodotus, before 425 B
"In politics, a straight line is the longest
distance betweeen two points." Anonymous
"In the interest of simplicity, clarity,
and... intellectual courage in the face of ideological hostility, evolutionary
psychology is best regarded as identical to human sociobiology." E. O.
Wilson, Consilience, 1998, pg. 150
"Intellect is invisible to the man who has
none." Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851
"It appears to me impossible to believe
that man has undergone anything but an infinitesimal alteration in his
intrinsic nature since the age of the unpolished stone... A decent citizen
is always controlling and disciplining the impulses... it is indisputable
that civilized man is in some manner different... But that difference...
is in no degree inherited... With true articulate speech came the possibilities
of more complex co-operations... Came writing, and therewith a tremendous
acceleration in the expansion of that body of knowledge and ideals which is the
reality of the civilized state. ...in civilized man we have (1) an
inherited factor, the natural man, who is the product of natural selection, the
culminating ape, and a type of animal more obstinately unchangeable than any
other living creature; and (2) an acquired factor, the artificial man, the
highly plastic creature of tradition, suggestion, and reasoned thought. ...in a
rude and undisciplined way indeed, ...humanity is even
now consciously steering itself against the currents and winds of the universe
in which it finds itself. In the future, it is at least conceivable, that
men with a trained reason and a sounder science, both of matter and psychology,
may conduct this operation far more intelligently, unanimously, and
effectively, and work towards, and at last attain and preserve, a social
organization so cunningly balanced against exterior necessities on the one
hand, and the artificial factor in the individual on the other, that the life
of every human being... may be generally happy. To me, at least,
this is no dream, but a possibility to be lost or won by men, as they may have
or may not have the greatness of heart to consciously shape their moral
conceptions and their lives to such an end." H. G. Wells, "Human Evolution, An Artificial Process," Fortnightly Review, Oct, 1896
"It can't be wrong, when it feels so
right." Words in song: “You Light Up My Life”
"It does no harm to the mystery to know a
little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of
the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What
men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an
immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?" Richard Feynman, Lectures in Physics: Introduction to Physics, Vol. 1, Addison
Wesley, 1963
"It has been a thousand times observed, and
I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in
view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition." Oliver
Goldsmith, The Vicar of
"It has oft been said, that it is not
death, but dying which is terrible." Henry Fielding, Amelia, 1751
"It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore,
and to see the ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of
a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no pleasure
is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth... and to see
the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below." Francis
Bacon, Essays, Of Truth, 1625
"It is a waste of energy to be angry with a
man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't
go." Bertrand Russell
"It is better to be envied than
pitied." Herodotus, before 425 BC
"It is difficult to withold
admiration from the traditional figure of the English sportsman, lithe, strong,
and tranquil. He may be stupid but he is not harrased. He
may be inarticulate but he has perfect poise... He is clean-limbed and
sweet-blooded, a modern image of a Greek in the sunlight of animal health and
adjustment amid the mists and diseases of modern thought. ...only simple people
can lead simple lives. For others simplicity is itself a complex fraud
that fools and hurts those who attempt it… The child in his mother's womb could
not be more completely satisfied than the mystic lost - and saved - in the
absolute… Most neo-mystics are not approaching the love of God so much as
relapsing into the vast and vague confusions of infancy." Irwin Edman, The Contemporary and
His Soul,
"It is easier to discover a deficiency in
individuals... than to see their real import and value." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of History, 1832
"It is hard to gather wealth here, because
as soon as you acquire some rice, for example, your neighbors want it. It
is dangerous to save anything, because everything must immediately be
shared. The [African] social system works to level everybody down to the
same standard: It is a system that works against ambition." Jim
Ashman, former Peace Corps volunteer, living in
"It is indeed desireable
to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors." Plutarch, Morals: Of the Training of Children. ca.
100 AD
"It is not the man who has too little, but
the man who craves more, who is poor." Seneca, ca 50 AD
"It is worse still to be ignorant of your
ignorance."
"It matters not how a man dies, but how he
lives." Samuel Johnson, Boswell's
Life of Johnson, 1763
"It takes a wise man to recognize a wise
man." Xenophanes, before 475 BC
"It was seen that want and suffering did
not directly and of necessity spring from not having, but from desiring to have
and not having; ... indeed, not only what is absolutely unavoidable or
unattainable, but also what is merely relatively so, leaves us quite
undisturbed; therefore the ills that have once become joined to our
individuality, or the good things that must of necessity always be denied us,
are treated with indifference, in accordance with the peculiarity of human
nature that every wish soon dies and can no more beget pain if it is not
nourished by hope." Schopenhauer, The
World As Will and Idea, 1844, p. 49 of The
Philosophy of Schopenhauer, edited by Irwin Edman,
1928
“It was thought impious at one time to attach
lightning conductors to churches, as showing a want of trust in the tutelary
care of the Deity to whom they were dedicated. Francis Galton, Essays in Eugenics: Probability: The Foundation of
Eugenics, 1907
"It was very good of God to let Carlyle and
Mrs. Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two
people miserable instead of four." Samuel Butler, Letters to Miss E. M. A. Savage, 1884
"It's a fact that 75% of of our genetic make-up is the same as a pumpkin. Although
we like to think we are special, our genes bring us down to Earth." Monise Durrani,
BBC Science,
"Kindness is in our power, but fondness is
not." Dr. Johnson
"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch
small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through." Swift, A Critical Essay Upon
the Faculties of the Mind, 1707 (Swift’s version of Anacharsis,
600 BC)
"Laws grind the poor, and the rich men rule
the law." Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, 1764
"Learning hath gained most by those books
by which the printers have lost." Thomas Fuller, The
"Learning will be cast into the mire, and
trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude." Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in
"Let blockheads read what blockheads
wrote." Philip Stanhope, Letters to
His Son, 1750
"Let us go singing as far as we go: the
road will be less tedious." Virgil, Eclogues,
ca 30 BC
"Life always gets harder toward the summit
- the cold increases, responsibility increases." Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 1883
"Like as the waves make towards the pebbled
shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end." William
Shakespeare, Sonnets, before 1598
"Like our shadows, our wishes lengthen as
our sun declines." Edward Young, Night
Thoughts, 1742
"Little by little, civilization crumbled
into savagery, the torturing vision of better things was lost, man's
consciousness was narrowed and coarsened into brute-consciousness,..." Olaf Stapledon, Last and
First Men, 1931 (p. 207 of Dover edition)
"Little fly, thy summer's play, my
thoughtless hand, has brushed away. Am not I, a fly like thee? Or art
not thou, a man like me? For I dance, and drink and sing, till some blind
hand, shall brush my wing." William Blake, Songs of Experience, 1794
"Little things affect little minds." Benjamin
Disraeli, Sybil, or, The
Two Nations, 1845
"Living well is the best revenge." George
Herbert, Jacula Prudentum,
1651
"Looking outward to the blackness of space,
sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty - but no welcome. Below was a welcoming
planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of
the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and
comedy. That's where the good stuff is." Loren
"Love is a form of mental illness not yet
recognized in the standard diagnostic manuals." Anonymous.
"Man and the animals are merely a passage
and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving
life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption." Leonardo de
Vinci, ca 1510 AD
"Man does not live long enough to profit
from his faults." La Bruyer
"Man is a rational animal who always loses
his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist, 1890
"Man is the hunter, woman is his
game." Alfred Loyd Tennyson, The Princess, 1847
"Man, like a light in the night, is kindled
and put out." Heralitus, before 480 BC
"Mankind censures injustice fearing that they
may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it."
Plato, The Republic, ca 400 BC
"Mankind is composed of two sorts of men -
those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy." Jose Marti,
Letter to a Cuban Farmer, 1893
"Mankind is divided into two great classes:
hosts and guests." Max Beerbohm, Hosts and Guests, 20th Century
"Many... have too rashly charged the troops
of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth." Sir Thomas
Browne, Religio Medici, 1643
"Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but
all are overwhelmed in eternal night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a
sacred poet." Horace, Odes, ca
20 BC
"Many would be cowards if they had the
courage." Thomas Fuller
"May all that have life be delivered from suffering." Ancient Hindu invocation (which Arthur
Schopenhauer considered the noblest of prayers)
"Maybe religion is just a method by which
the weak and the poor try to persuade the strong to be gentle and the rich to
be generous, with a sizeable cut going to the persuaders. To make it
work, supernatural powers and survival after death must be postulated.
Otherwise there is no reason for anyone to listen to such appeals: the powerful
are beyond punishment here and now. The scam apparently works, as all
human tribes have some kind of religion. Great cultures have been
accompanied by impressive religions. Atheistic societies have left no
trace in history." Andrejs Baldins,
Nature, 1994 Feb 24
"Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything
which reaches beyond their own understanding." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims,
1678
"Men are not hanged for stealing horses,
but that horses may not be stolen." George Savile,
Reflections, 175
"Men can love only what is weaker than
themselves, and women only what is stronger." Will Durant, Transition: A Mental Autobiography,
"Men do not care how nobly they live, but
only how long, although it is within reach of every man to live nobly, but
within no man's power to live long." Seneca, ca 50 AD
"Men fear death as children fear to go in
the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is
the other." Francis Bacon, Essays,
1625
"Men prize the thing ungain'd
more than it is." William Shakespeare, The
"Men think themselves
free because they are conscious of their volitions and desires, but are
ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and desire." Spinoza, Ethics (Must
have inspred Schopenauer to
write ""Surely I can do what I will to do; but what determines what I
will to do?")
"Men willingly believe what they
wish." Julius Caesar, ca 50 BC
"Mispending a
man's time is a kind of self-homicide." George Savile,
Political, Moral and Miscellaneous
Reflections, 1750
"Most people judge men only by their
success or their good fortune." Francois Duc de
La Rochefoucauld, Reflections;
or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"Most problems are caused by
solutions." Eic Sevaried
"Much learning does not teach
understanding." Heralitus, before 480 BC
"My spirit is too weak - mortality; Weighs
heavily on me like unwilling sleep; And each imagined
pinnacle and steep; Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die; Like a sick Eagle
looking at the sky." John Keats, On
Seeing the
"My time has not yet come either; some are
born posthumously." Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 1883
"Mysteries are not necessarily
miracles." Goethe
"Nature herself gives us courage... Death is
not to be feared. It is a friend... Depart then without fear out of this world
even as you came into it... Yield your torch to others as in a race... I often
feel that death is not the enemy of life, but its friend, for it is the
knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so precious... the day we
are privileged to spend in the great park of life is not the same for all human
beings, but there is enough beauty and joy and gaiety in the hours if we will
but treasure them. Then for each one of us the moment comes when the great
nurse, death, takes man, the child, by the hand and quietly says, 'It is time
to go home. Night is coming. It is your bedtime, child of
earth.'" Excerpts from Peace of Mind,
Joshua Loth Liebman, Simon
and Shuster, 1946 (as appeared in a “Personal Perspective” by Susan Giesberg, Los Angeles
Times,
"Nature, Mr. Alnutt,
is something we were put on this earth to rise above." Spoken by Katherine
Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in movie The
African Qween
"Neither a borrower, nor lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend..." William
Shakespeare, Hamlet,
1601
"No guest is so welcome in a friend's house
that he will not become a nuisance after three days." Titus Maccius Plautus, ca 200 BC
"No man is happy who does not think himself
so." Pubilius Syrus,
ca 20 BC
"No man is wise enough by himself." Titus
Maccius Plautus, ca 200 BC
"No one can draw more out of things, books
included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which
experience has given him no access." Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, 1883
"No one would talk much in society, if he
knew how often he misunderstands others." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities, 1808
"No pleasure is comparable to the standing
upon the vantage-ground of truth." Francis Bacon, Essays, 1625
"Not a hundredth part of the thoughts in my
head have ever been, or ever will, be spoken or written - as long as I keep my
senses." Jane Carlyle, Journal, 1858
"Not every truth is the better for showing
its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to
heed." Pindar, Nemean Odes, before 438 BC
"Not everything that is more difficult is
more meritorious." St. Thomas Acquinas
"Not in the clamor of the crowded street; Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng; But in ourselves,
are triumph and defeat." Henry W. Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus, 1875
"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of
princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme." William Shakespeare, Sonnets
"Not to be born surpasses thought and
speech. The second best is to have seen the light, and then to go back
quickly whence we came." Sophocles, before 406 BC
"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that
cunning men pass for wise." Francis Bacon, Essays, 1625
"Nothing great was ever achieved without
enthusiasm." Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays:
First Series, Friendship, 1838
"Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in
action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs
in Prose, 1803
"Nothing is so firmly believed as that of
which we know least." Montaigne
"Nothing is there to come, and nothing
past, but an eternal now does always last." Abraham Cowley, Davideis, 1656
"O miserable minds of men! O blind
hearts! In what darkness of life, in what great dangers ye spend this
little span of years! ... Life is one long struggle in the dark." Lucretius, On the
Nature of Things, ca 60 BC
"Observe due measure, for right timing is
in all things the most important factor." Hesiod,
The Theogony, BkI, 694, 700 BC
"Of course we must be open-minded, but not
so open-minded that our brains drop out."
"Oh God! That bread should
be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!" Thomas
Hood, The Song of the Shirt, 1843
"Oh! Many a shaft at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word,
at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!" Sir Walter
Scott, The Lord of the Isles, 1815
"Oh, how fortunate
we are, we men of knowledge, provided only that we know how to keep silent long
enough!"
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of
Morals, Section 3, 1887
"Oh, to be seventy
again!"
Oliver Wendell Holmes, attributed (at age of 90, upon seeing a beautiful young
woman), 1931
"Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, the
power of beauty, I remember yet." John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern, 1700
"Once a word has been allowed to escape, it
cannot be recalled." Horace, Epistles,
ca 20 BC
"One day, near the end of his career, and
to show his contempt in the most public way, Cobb ostentatiously held the bat
in Ruth's manner, hit three home runs in a single game, and then went right
back to his older, favored style forever after." S. J. Gould, Natural History,
"One man is more concerned with the
impression he makes on the rest of the world, another with the impression the
rest of mankind makes on him." Schopenhauer
"One never goes so far as when one doesn't
know where one is going." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letter to Karl
Friedrich Zelter, 1812
"One of the greatest pains to human nature
is the pain of a new idea." Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics, 1869
"One problem with standing on the shoulders
of giants is that you don't have much choice about what direction you're
walking in." Sally McBrearty, interview in Science, 1995 Nov 17
"One role of the intellectual is to warn society
of its faults." Gregg Easterbrook,
"Opinion is ultimately determined by the
feelings, and not by the intellect." Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, 1851
"Organisms die but their genes pass on -
often mutated and redistributed, it is true, but genes nevertheless; and it is
difficult, therefore, to escape the conclusion that the design of the organism
is merely to provide for gene multiplication and survival..." Carl Sagan, "Radiation and the Origin of
the Gene," Evolution, January,
1957
"Organization is designed to stop things
from happening." Anonymous
"Others go to bed with their mistresses; I
with my ideas." Jose Marti, Letter, 1890
"Our sires' age was worse than our
grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn
we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt." Horace, Odes, ca 20 BC
"Our wretched species is so made that those
who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing
a new road." Francois Voltaire
"Passions tyrannize over mankind; but
ambition keeps the others in check." La Bruyere
"Patience is the best remedy for every
trouble." Titus Maccius Plautus,
ca 200 BC
"People give ear to an upstart astrologer
[Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the
firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must
devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very
best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy." Martin
Luther (in one of his Table Talks, in 1539), Works, 22, c. 1543
"People will not look forward to posterity
who never look backward to their ancestors."
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in
"Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world
looking on." La Rochefoucauld
"Pliant toward his superiors, authoritarian
toward those he deemed his inferiors." Bourdier
(describing Georges Cuvier), Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1971
"Rarely do great beauty and great virtue
dwell together." Petrarch, ca 1350 AD
"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and
destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding,
and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word
of God. To be a Christian, you must pluck out the eye of reason. Whoever
wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason. Die verfluchte Huhre, Vernunft. (The damned whore, Reason).
Martin Luther, Works, Volume 22, c.
1543
"Religion has always been the wound, not
the bandage." Dennis Potte
"Religion is the source of all imaginable
follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanataicism
and civil discord. It is the enemy of mankind" Voltaire
"Research never makes medical treatment cheaper,
only ever more expensive, which no doubt partly explains the British government's
antipathy towards it." Nature,
348: 468 (December 1990)
"Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because
they sometimes take a rest." Dumas
"Science is the great antidote to the
poison of superstition. An ailing world would do well to reach for the
right bottle in the medicine cabinet." Adam Smith
"She speaks, yet she says nothing." William
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1596
"Show me a people who haven't plundered,
raped and pillaged its neighbors, and I'll show you a people who haven't been
strong enough in recent times to do so with impunity." Anonymous
"Sire, I have no need of that
hypothesis." (in response to Napoleon Bonaparte's
remark upon receiving a copy of
"Slight not what's near through aiming at
what's far." Euripides, Rhesus,
435 B
"Small matters win great commendation."
Francis Bacon, Essays, 1625
"Small things make base men proud." William
Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth,
1591
"So free we seem, so fettered fast we
are." Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto, 1855
"So it is that the gods do not give all men
gifts of grace - neither good looks nor
intelligence nor eloquence." Homer, The Iliad, 700 BC
"Social constructivists are not merely
wrong - they are philistines and vandals scribbling graffiti on the
"Some judge of authors' names, not works,
and then; Nor praise nor blame the writings, but
the men." Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism,
1711
"Some people are more fortunately born than
others." Robertson Davies, "On the Dangerous Edge," in
"Some praise at morning what they blame at
night, But always think the last opinion right."
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue
fall." William Shakespeare, Measure
for Measure, 1604 (cf. “No good deed goes unpunished; no bad deed goes
unrewarded.”)
"Soothsayers make a better living than truthsayers." Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms,
1798
"Such labored nothings, in so strange a
style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile." Alexander
Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
"Such truth as opposeth
no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men
welcome." Thomas Hobbes, Leviathon, 1651
"Suppose you knew fully the position and
the properties of every particle of
matter... in the universe at any particular moment of time: ...Well,
that knowledge would involve the knowledge of the condition of things at the previous
moment, and at the moment before that, and so on. If you knew and
perceived the present perfectly, you would perceive therein the whole of the
past. ... Similarly, if you grasped the whole of the present, ...you would see clearly all the future. To an
omniscent observer... he would see, as it were, a
Rigid Universe filling space and time - a Universe in which things were always
the same. He would see one sole unchanging series of cause and
effect... If ‘past' meant anything, it would mean looking in a certain
direction; while ‘future' meant looking the opposite way. From the
absolute point of view the universe is a perfectly rigid unalterable apparatus,
entirely predestinate, entirely complete and finished... time is merely a
dimension, quite analogous to the three
dimensions of space." H. G. Wells, The Time Machine,
1894
"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you
foolish." Euripides, 407 B
"Tempt not a desperate man." William
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1596
"That favorite subject, Myself"
James Boswell, Letter to
"That which comes later, the motivation, is
experienced first... The ideas ingendered by a
certain condition have been misunderstood as the cause of that
condition..." Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight
of the Idols, 1889
"The beginning is the most important part
of the work." Plato, The Republic, ca 400 BC
"The bell strikes one. We take no note
of time but from its loss." Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 1742
"The business of the animal seems to be,
not to live its own life, but but to reproduce its
own kind, and the term of life at its disposal is adjusted accurately to the
special difficulties of this purpose." H. G. Wells, "The Duration of Life,"
Saturday Review,
"The childhood shows the man, as morning
shows the day." John Milton,
"The Chinese have a story based on three or
four thousand years of civilization. Two Chinese coolies were arguing
heatedly in the midst of a crowd. A stranger expressed surprise that no
blows were being struck. His Chinese friend replied, 'The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.'"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The desire of the moth for the star; Of the night for the morrow; The devotion to something afar;
From the sphere of our sorrow." Percy Shelley, One Word is Too Often Profaned, 182
"The discovery that tendencies to altruism
are shaped by benefits to genes is one of the most disturbing in the history of
science. When I first grasped it, I slept badly for many nights, trying
to find some alternative that did not so roughly challenge my sense of good and
evil."
"The earth is degenerating these days.
Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind parents. Every man wants
to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is approaching
fast." Assyrian tablet, 2800 BC
"The effort to understand the universe is
one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of
farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." Steven Weinberg
"The empty vessel makes the greatest sound."
William Shakespeare, King Henry the Fifth, 1599
"The first divine was the first rogue who
met the first fool." Voltaire
"The friend of all humanity is not to my
taste." Moliere
"The general theory of evolution... assumes
that in nature there is a great, unital, continuous
and everlasting process of development, and that all natural phenomena without
exception, from the motion of the celestial bodies and the fall of the rolling
stone, up to the growth of the plant, and the consciousness of man, are subject
to the same great law of causation - that they are ultimately to be reduced to
atomic mechanics." Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, Freie Wissenschaft und Freie Lehre, 1878 (an
expression of the “reductionist” philosophy)
"The gods, likening themselves to all kinds
of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the
wrongdoing and the rightousness of men." Homer, Odyssey, Bk
XVII, 485, 700 BC
"The good displeases us when we have not
yet grown up to it." Nietzsche
"The gratitude of most men is merely a
secret desire to receive greater benefits." Francois Duc
de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"The heart has its reasons, which reason
cannot comprehend." Anonymous
"The hen is an egg's way of producing
another egg." Samuel Butler
"The highest object at which the natural
sciences are constrained to aim, but which they will never reach, is the
determination of the forces which are present in nature, and of the state of
matter at any given moment - in one word, the reduction of all the phenomena of
nature to mechanics." Gustav Robert Kirchkoff, Uber das Ziel der Naturwissenschaften,
1865 (an expression of the “reductionist” philosophy)
"The illusion that
times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all
ages."
Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, 1866
"The individual has always had to struggle
to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely
often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the
privilege of owning yourself." Nietzsche
"The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,
may in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try."
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure,
1604
"The lady doth protest too much,
methinks." William Shakespeare, Hamlet,
1601
"The Leaves of Life keep falling one by
one." Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat, Edward FitzGerald,
translator, 1859
"The life that has schemed and struggled
and committed itself, that life that has played and lost, comes at last to the
pitiless judgement of time, and is slowly and
remorselessly annihilated. This is the saddest chapter in biological
science - the tragedy of (species) extinction. ...the
pterodactyls, the first of vertebrated animals to
spread a wing to the wind, and follow the hunted insects to their last refuge
of the air. How triumphantly and gloriously these winged lizards,
these original dragons, must have floated through their new empire of the
atmosphere! If their narrow brains could have entertained the thought,
they would have congratulated themselves upon having gained a great and
inalienable heritage for themselves and their children forever. And now we
cleave a rock and find their bones, and speculate doubtfully what their outer
shape may have been." H. G. Wells, "On Extinction," Chamber's Journal, Sep, 1893
"The life which is unexamined is not worth
living." Plato, Dialogues, Apology,
ca 400 BC
"The man who lets himself
be bored is even more contemptible than the bore." Samuel Butler, The Fair Haven, 1873
"The man who runs may fight again." Menander, ca 300 BC
"The man who strikes first admits that his
ideas have given out." Chinese prover
"The man who thinks should not ally himself
with a wife who cannot share his thoughts." Jean Jaques
Rousseau, Emile, 1757
"The men who can manage men manage the men
who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all." Will
Durant, The Story of Civilization: The Age of
Louis XIV,
"The mind is always the dupe of the
heart." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld,
Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral
Maxims, 1678
"The miserable have no other medicine, but
only hope." William Shakespeare, Measure
for Measure, 1604
"The more comprehensible the universe
becomes the more pointless it seems." Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology
"The most absurd and reckless aspirations
have sometimes led to extraordinary success." Vauvenargues
"The most common of all follies is to
believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of
mankind." H.L. Menken
"The most melancholy of human reflections,
perhaps, is that on the whole it is a question whether the benevolence of
mankind does most good or harm." Walter Bagehot,
Physics and Politics, 1867
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having
writ; Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit; Shall lure
it back to cancel half a line; Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of
it." Edward Fitzgerald, translator,
Omar Khayyam, The
Rubaiyat, 1859
"The only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke, attributed
"The opinion of the strongest is always the
best." Jean de La Fontaine, Fables,
1668
"The pleasure of love is in loving. We
are happier in the passion we feel than in that which we arouse." Francois
Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims,
1678
"The present life of men on Earth, O King,
as compared with the whole length of time which is unknowable to us, seems to
me to be like this: as if, when you are sitting at dinner with your chiefs
and ministers in wintertime, ...one of the sparrows from outside flew
very quickly through the hall; as if it came in one door and soon went through
another. In that actual time it is indoors it is not touched by the
winter's storm; but yet the tiny period of calm is over in a moment, and having
come out of the winter it soon returns to the winter and slips out of your
sight. Man's life apepars to be more or less
like this; and of what may follow it, or what preceded it, we are absolutely
ignorant." The Venerable Bede, Eccliastical History of the English People, 731 AD
"The real art of conversation is not only
to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong
thing at the tempting moment."
Anonymous
"The religions of humanity, too, must be
classified as mass-delusions... Needless to say, no one who shares a
delusion recognizes it as such." Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, p 36, 1930
"The ring always believes that the finger
lives for it." Chazal
"The sick are the greatest danger for the
healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from
the weakest." Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy
of Morals, 1887
"The significance of a man is not in what
he attains, but rather in what he longs to attain." Kahlil
Gibran
"The sociobiological view of love has
always depressed me; I'm saddened to think that the world's great lovers...
were inspired not by passion but by the need to catapult their DNA into the
future. ...David Gubernick explains... (that)
Love and Intimacy evolved because at some point in the history of humankind
those of our ancestors who felt such emotions prospered reproductively."
Judith Stone, Discover, May
1991
"The spirit grows, strength is restored by
wounding." Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight
of the Idols, 1889
"The strongest drive in any creature
...is the desire to preserve one's genetic essence for eternity." Judith
Stone, Discover, May, 1991
"The strongest man in the world is he who
stands most alone." Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, 1882
"The systematic thought of ancient writers
is now nearly worthless; but their detached insights are priceless."
Alfred North Whitehead
"The tempo at which
things move at present, the force and energy with which everything is
done, cause anguish to the man of archaic mould, and this anguish is the
measure of the difference between his pulse-beats and the pulse-beats of the
time." Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses,
"The true forefathers of the
reader... Why were they living... in inhospitable rivers and spending half
their lives half-baked in river mud? ...They had failed
in the struggle, they were less active and powerful than their rivals of
the sea... They preferred dirt, discomfort, and survival... Some
conservative descendants of these mud-fish live today in African and Australian
rivers... Others of their children, however, have risen in the world...
Emigrants from the rivers swarmed over the yet uncrowded
land. ...From these sprang divergently the birds and mammals, and, finally, the
last of the mud-fish family, man... He it is who goes down to the sea in
ships, and, with wide-sweeping nets and hooks cunningly baited,
beguiles the children of those who drove his ancestors out of the
water. The whirligig of time brings round its revenges." H. G. Wells,
"Zoological Regression," Gentleman's
Magazine, Sep, 1894
"The truths of religion are never so well
understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning." Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
"The universe we observe has precisely the
properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no
evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." Richard
Dawkins
"The various modes of worship, which
prevailed in the Toman world, were all considered by
the people, as equally true; by the philosophers, as equally false; and by the
magistrate, as equally useful." Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the
"The vast marvel is to be alive for man,
woman, flower and beast and bird, the supreme time is to be most vividly, most
perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and dead may know, they cannot know the
beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh... the magnificent here and now
is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time." (approximate quote)
D. H. Lawrence
"The whole thing is so patently infantile,
so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly
it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to
rise above this view of life." Freud, Civilization
and its Discontents, 1930, pg. 23, commenting on religion
"The wise learn many things from their
enemies." Aristophanes, Birds,
414 BC
"The world is a comedy for those who think,
but a tragedy for those who feel." Horace Walpole
"The world wants to be deceived."
Sebastian Brant, 1494 AD
"The worst part of war is that so many
people enjoy it." Ellen Glasgow, I
Believe: A Series of Intimate Credos,
"Theology, or something that goes under
that name, is still kept alive by the faithful, but only by artificial
respiration." Carl L. Becker, The
Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, New haven:
"There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." William Shakespeare, Hamlet,
1601
"There are successful marriages, but no
blissful ones." Francois de la Rochefoucauld
"There are three classes of intellects: one
which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend;
and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others;
the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is
useless." Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532 AD
"There is a knowledge which is desirable,
though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient
remuneration of years of labor." John Newman, The Idea of a University, 1873
"There is great skill in knowing how to
conceal one's skill." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections;
or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"There is is only
one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way." Christopher Morely, 1922
"There is no solution, because there is no
problem." French philosopher
"There is no wealth but life." John
Ruskin, Unto This Last, 1862
"There is nothing more difficult to take in
hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take
the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532 AD
"There is on earth among all dangers no
more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason... Reason
must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed." Martin Luther, quoted by Walter
Kaufmann, The Faith of a Heretic,
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963, p. 75
"There is so much good in the worst of us,
And so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly
becomes any of us, To talk about the rest of us." 19th Century, Anonymous
"There is something else, too which is a
part of growing up - to see that life is really, after all, a game. When
we play a game, as it should be played, we strain every muscle to win; but all
the while we care less for winning than for the game. And we play the
better for it. When barbarians play against a Patagonian team, they forget
that it is a game, and go mad for victory. And then how we despise
them! If they find themselves losing, they turn savage; if winning,
blatant. Either way, the game is murdered, and they cannot see that they
are slaughtering a lovely thing. How they pester and curse the umpire. too! I have done that myself, of course, before now;
not in games but in life. I have actually cursed the umpire of life... I
want to tell you how I came to learn my lesson. I have a queer love for clambering
about the high mountains; and once when I was up among the snow-fields... I was
caught in a blizzard. ...After many hours of floundering, I fell into a
snow-drift. I tried to rise, but fell again and again, till my head was
buried. The thought of death enraged me, for there was still so much that
I wanted to do. I struggled frantically, vainly. Then suddenly - how
can I put it - I saw the game that I was losing, and it was good. Good, no
less to lose than to win. For it was the game, now, not victory, that
mattered. Hitherto I had been blindfold, and a slave to victory; suddenly
I was free, and with sight. For now I saw myself, and all of us, through
the eyes of the umpire. It was as though a play-actor were to see the
whole play, with his own part in it, through the authors
eyes, from the auditorium. Here was I, acting the part of a rather fine
man who had come to grief through his own carelessness before his work was
done. For me, a character in the play, the situation was hideous; yet for
me, the spectator, it had become excellent, within a wider excellence. I
saw that it was equally so with all of us, and with all the worlds. For I seemed to see a thousand worlds taking part with us in the
great show. And I saw everything through the calm eyes, the
exultant, almost derisive, yet not unkindly, eyes of the playwright. …Well,
it had seemed that my exit had come; but no, there was still a cue for
me. Somehow I was so strengthened by this new view of things that I
struggled out of the snow-drift. And here I am once more. But I am a
new man. My spirit is free." Spoken by "Divine
Boy," Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men, Chapter 5, Section
3, 1931
"There is, however, a limit at which
forbearance ceases to be a virtue." Edmund Burke, Observations on a Late Publication on the
"There's hope a great man's memory may outlive
his life half a year." William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1601
"They are ill discoverers who think there
is no land, when they can see nothing but sea." Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605
"This animal is very bad; when attacked, it
defends itself!" 19th Century,
"This filthy 20th
century! I
hate its guts!" A. L. Rowse, 20th century
"This is the bitterest pain among men, to
have much knowledge but no power." Herodotus, before425 BC
"This is the hardest of all: to close the
open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver." Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883
"This long disease,
my life."
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1734
"This only grant
me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high." Abraham
Cowley, A Vote, 1636
"Those have most power to hurt us, that we love." Francis Beaumont, The Maid's Tragedy, 17th Century
"Those who wish to appear wise among fools,
among the wise seem foolish." Quintilian, ca 80 AD
"Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first
makes mad." Euripides, Fragment, before 406 BC
"Thus I live in the world rather as a
spectator of Mankind than as one of the species." Joseph Addison (1672-1719), The Spectator, 1711
"Thus the earliest vertebrates, like the
earliest amphibia, the earliest mammals, and the
earliest primates, were small predators. Over and over again in evolution,
the originators of new modes of life were small predators, and the key
innovations at each stage conferred a selective advantage in predation."
John Morgan Allman, Evolving Brains, 1999, p. 73
"Time is the most valuable thing a man can
spend." Theophrastus, ca 300 BC
"Time, the avenger! Unto thee I lift
my hands, and heart, and crave of thee a gift." Lord Byron, 1818
"Time, which strengthens friendship,
weakens love." Jean de La Bruyere, Les Caracteres,
1688
"To be a pessimist is to never be
disappointed." Anonymous
"To do just the opposite is also a form of
imitation." Georg Christoph
Lichtenberg, Aphorisms, 1798
"To every man is given the key to the gates
of Heaven; the same key opens the gates of Hell." Buddhist proverb
"To know that which before us lies in daily
life is the prime wisdom." John Milton,
"To laugh at men of sense is the privilege
of fools." Jean de La Bruyere, Les Caracteres,
1688
"To many, total abstinence is easier than
perfect moderation."
"To overcome difficulties is to experience
the full delight of existence." Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims
"To protect the faith is the highest
calling of the radical creed. The more the evidence weighs against the
belief, the more noble the act of believing
becomes." [There is a] readiness to
reshape reality to make the world correspond to an idea, ...a
willingness to tinker with the facts to serve a greater truth." Collier, P
and D. Horowitz, Destrucive Generation, Second Thought Books, p.
246, 37, 37, 1995
"To weep is to make less the depth of
grief." William Shakespeare, King
Henry the Sixth, 1591
"To whom nothing is given, of him can
nothing be required." Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, 1742
"Too great haste in paying off an
obligation is a kind of ingratitude." Francois Duc
de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"True friendship is never serene." Marie
de Rabutin-Chantal, Lettres a Madame de Grignan, 1671
"True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd: Welcome the coming, speed the parting
guest." Alexander Pope, Translation
of the Odyssey, 1756
"Truly, to tell lies is not
honorable; but when the truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonorably
is pardonable." Sophocles, before 406 BC
"Truth is the cry of all, but the game of
the few." George Berkeley, Siris, 1744
"Truth often suffers more from the heat of
its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers."
William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude,
1693
"Two great European
narcotics, alcohol and Christianity." Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Unsung, the noblest deed will die." Pindar, Isthmean Odes, before 438
BC
"Until I was twelve years old, it did not
occur to me that everybody did not write as easily as they breathed. …So I
became a journalist..."It taught me firmly and inexorably that there are
no rules of humnan conduct which are not broken over
and over again, often with what appears to be impunity. ...although I was
committed to all the news that was fit to print, I was constantly astonished by
the news that was not fit to print and which few people would have
believed." Source lost
"Until you understand a writer's ignorance,
presume yourself ignorant of his writings." Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographica Literaria,
1817
"Unto every one that hath shall be given,
and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away
even that which he hath." [Republican motto? No, it's a Richard Dawkins
explanation of positive feedback in mating preference situations.] Richard
Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker,
"We all have strength enough to endure the
misfortunes of others." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections;
or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"We are always doing something for
Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us." Joseph Addison,
The Spectator, 1714
"We are ne'er like angels till our passion
dies." Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore, 1604
"We can do noble acts without ruling the
earth and sea." Aristotle
"We confess to little faults only to
persuade ourselves that we have no great ones." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections;
or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"We know what we are, but know not what we
may be." William Shakespeare, Hamlet,
1601
"We must laugh before we are happy, for
fear we die before we laugh at all."
Jean de La Bruyere, Les Caracteres, 168
"We must take the current when it serves,
or lose our ventures." William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1599
"We often do good
that we may do harm with impunity." Francois de la Rochefoucauld
"We pardon to the extent that we
love." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld,
Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral
Maxims, 1678
"We rarely find anyone who who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content
with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest." Horace, Satires, ca 20 BC
"We rarely find that people have good sense
unless they agree with us." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections;
or, Sentences and Moral Maxims, 1678
"We refuse praise from a desire to be
praised twice." La Rochefocauld
"We work in the twentieth century and dream
in the twelth... those who try to bask in vanquished
sunlight..." Erwin Edman, The Contemporary and His Soul,
"What are the long-term effects of instant
gratification? Ironically, human nature is often the greatest deterrent to
making an intelligent decision. But who can blame us? We're only
human!" Add in New Yorker, by Nuveen (specialists in tax-free investments), Feb. 25, 1991
"What I call nature, and fools call
God." Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book,
(1870)
"What is a freind? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." Aristotle, ca
330 BC
"What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or
God only a blunder of man?" Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, 1883
"What is now proved was once only
imagined." William Blake
"What is wanted is not the will-to-believe,
but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite." Bertrand Russell
"What may man within him hide, though angel
on the outward side!" William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604
"What we cannot speak about we must pass
over in silence." Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922
"What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starv'd hackney sonneteer,
or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How
the wit brightens! How the style refines!" Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
"What's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks, and formless ruin of oblivion." William
Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida,
1602
"What's the use of knowing things if no one
knows you know it? What's the use of doing deeds when no one knows who did
it?" Anonymous
"When bad men combine, the good must
associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied
sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770
“When God is at last dead for Man, when the last
gleam of light is extinguished, and we are surrounded by the impenetrable
darkness of a universe that exists for no purpose, then at last Man will know
that he is alone, and must create his own values to live by.” Nietsche paraphrase
"When its whole significance dawns upon you
[referring to evolution], your heart sinks into a heap of sand within
you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable
reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and
aspiration." George B. Shaw
"When our vices desert us, we flatter
ourselves that we are deserting our vices." Francois de la Rochefoucauld
"When the plumbers want to be philosophers,
forcing the philosophers to do their own plumbing, we will arrive at a place
wherein neither the plumbing nor the philosophy holds water." Thomas D.
Murray,
"When the populace takes to reasoning, all
is lost." Voltaire
"When the well's dry, we know the worth of
water." Benjamin Franklin, Poor
Richard's Almanac, 1733
"When we are born, we cry that we are come
to this great stage of fools." William Shakespeare, King Lear, 1605
"When you have
nothing to say, say nothing." Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1822
"Who overcomes by force hath overcome but
half his foe." John Milton,
"Whom they have
injured they also hate." Seneca, ca 50 AD
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools
from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of the fools, but the fools
do not imitate the successes of the wise."
Marcus Porcius Cato, ca 160 BC
"Wit that can creep,
and pride that licks the dust." Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1734
"With you I should love to live, with you
be ready to die." Horace, Odes, ca 20 BC
"Women sometimes forgive a man who forces
the opportunity, but never a man who misses one." Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand-Perigord, ca. 1857
"Words are like leaves; and where they most
abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely
found." Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism,
1711
"Words have a longer life than deeds."
Pindar, Nemean Odes, before
438 BC
"You are born with a job to do, and you
must find it and do it, and there are no excuses for you if you fail through
lack of Perseverance." Plutarch, Morals: Of the Training of Children. ca.
50 BC
"You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and
Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your neighbor ... Public
opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it
requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to
follow other men's habits." Walter Bagehot, Biographical Studies,1907, Sir
Robert Peel
"You saw his weakness, and he will never
forgive you." Johann Christoph Friedrich von
Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, 1804
"You tread upon my patience." William
Shakespeare, King Henry the Fourth, 1597
"Your children are not your children. They
are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through
you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to
you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have
their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for
their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in
your dreams. You may strive to like them, but seek not to make them like
you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are
the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The
archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His
might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the
archer's hand be for gladness; for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He
loves also the bow that is stable." Kahlil Gibran, “On Children,” The
Prophet,
────────────────────────────────────────────
I hesitate to include the following amateur
“quotes” in the same book as the ones in Part 1. I'll edit most of them out later this year.
Asking the right question is more important than
giving the right answer."
"God must have had an inordinate fondness
for idiots, else he wouldn't have made so many." (A shameless variation on
Haldane's comment about beetles)
“I am a nobody; nobody
is perfect; therefore I am perfect."
“If happiness were my goal I would have been
born a cow.”
“I'm proud of my ability to accept cold
facts. For example, I've done a pretty good job of accepting the
possibility that I might die.”
“It's a lucky man who's a tool for
something."
“It's frustrating when you know all the answers,
but nobody bothers to ask you the questions."
“Just as a man must question those of his
thoughts that meet with ready acceptance, so must he adhere to those that are
immediately rejected.”
“Let us salute the amazing ability of people to
figure out which side of their bread is buttered."
"Men and women deserve each
other!"
“Men kill, women enslave."
"Men like him wouldn't exist if women
weren't attracted to the type."
“Most of human behavior has to do with gaining
access to the best genes the opposite sex has to offer.”
“My main disappointment in life is that year
after year I discover that there are fewer and fewer intelligent people in the
world.”
"My definition of "idiocy" begins
with the assertion that there's a "how" explanation for everything
and a "why" explanation for nothing, and those who don't understand
this are idiots.”
"My life has benefited greatly by not
getting much of what I wanted!"
"Not only are things not what they seem to
be, they are often not what we think they are after we discover they're not
what they seem to be."
“One
way to distinguish Republicans from
Democrats is that the former excuse the unethical inclinations of the
wealthy whereas the latter excuse the unethical inclinations of the
poor.”
"Sports may be 'just a game' - but its evolutionary purpose is
preparation for the kill."
"Tell me your most cherished belief, and I'll mock it!" A misanthrope's
credo
“The laws of physics render familiar notions of
consciousness irrelevant to the inevitable unfolding human drama. Our free will
can alter events just as much as a moviegoer can alter the movie. Indeed, we
are all Marching Morons.”
“The older I get, the dumber the rest of
humanity becomes!"
"The older I get, the more I become who I
am."
"The person who
knows less, sometimes understands more."
“The simple person believes that ‘if it feels
good, do it,' whereas the wise person believes ‘if it feels good, don’t trust
it.’”
"There's a game called ‘conversation’ with
rules that stipulate that you must overlook stupidity, hypocrisy and
irrelevance.”
“Thinking is a subversice
activity. It undermines the power of our primitive right brain."
“Those with the bleakest prospects in their
future are the most desperate to prolong life."
"To err is human. Indeed, it is our
trademark."
"Truth is the one thing you can hit people
over the head with, without it being felt!"
“Well, first, I want to commend you for keeping
a straight face while you said that."
"When surrounded by a world of idiots the
best defense is to live a good life."
“When people begin to agree with me, it is time
for concern that I have taken a wrong path."
"Which serves the other: The chicken
or the egg?"
"Why should a human value
things that any animal can do?" "Such
as?" "Such as fighting well, wooing
the females, having sex, raising offspring - basically, everything that comes
naturally. Humans should value things that only humans can
do." "Such as?" "Such as
understanding the world, understanding ourselves and others, understanding how
things came to be the way they are, and appreciating the beauty of
things." (in the same vein as Schopenhauer)
"Women are most discredited by their liking
of men."
"Women like being man-handled!"