I used to be something of a quote collector. Here are some personal favorites. A mix of wit, wisdom, and flat out goofiness (though I kept out the really inflammatory ones
)
"You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth." - Winston Churchill
"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing." - Benjamin Franklin
"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." - Confucius
"To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage." - Confucius
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered." - G. K. Chesterton
"You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it." - Samuel Butler
"He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god."
- Aristotle
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self." - Aristotle
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
"Good can imagine Evil: but Evil cannot imagine Good." - W. H. Auden
"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one." - Marcus Aurelius
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." - Francis Bacon
"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." - Francis Bacon
"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." - James Baldwin
"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." - Sir James M. Barrie
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing." - Robert Benchley
"The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes." - William Cowper Brann
"The pleasure of criticizing robs us of the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things." - Jean de La Bruyère
"Those who make the worst use of their time most complain about its shortness." - Jean de La Bruyère
"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world." - Buddha
"Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." - Edmund Burke
"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises." - Samuel Butler
"In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing." - Thomas Carlyle
"If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep." - Dale Carnegie
"Pay less attention to what men say. Just watch what they do." - Dale Carnegie
"The Christian ideal has not been tired and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." - G. K. Chesterton
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." - G. K. Chesterton
"Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others." - Winston Churchill
"If a man could mount to heaven and survey the mighty universe, his admiration of its beauties would be much diminished unless he had some one to share in his pleasure." - Cicero
"Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come home." - Bill Cosby
"Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts." - Charles Dickens
"Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, but good men starve for want of impudence." - John Dryden
"It's more comfortable to feel that we're a slight improvement on a monkey than such a falling off from the angels." - Finley Peter Dunne
"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice." - Albert Einstein
"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." - Benjamin Franklin
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." - Martin Luther King Jr.
"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - Kahlil Gibran
"What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." - Ernest Hemingway
"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who survive; the 'learned' find themselves fully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer
"Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sum -- but you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Man's mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"To escape criticism: do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." - Elbert Hubbard
"The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher." - Thomas Henry Huxley
"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
"Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind."- W. Somerset Maugham
"The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking." - Christopher Morley
"I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Learn as if you were following someone whom you could not catch up, as though you were frightened of losing." -Confucious
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." -Bertrand Russel
"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." -Socrates
"If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say." -Winston from
Ghostbusters
"Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out." -Italian Proverb
"Those who know others are intelligent;
Those who know themselves have insight.
Those who master others have force;
Those who master themselves have strength."
- Lao Tzu from the
Tao Te Ching
"What you from your fathers have inherited, earn it, in order to possess it." -Goethe
