Quote Library

When you get to the top of the mountain, your first inclination is not to jump for joy, but to look around. -- James Carville

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. -- Walter Bagehot

I didn’t bite off more than I could chew -- it just grew in my mouth. -- Dr. Robert Ballard

Accountability

Everyone needs a bottom line of some sort; everyone needs to be responsible, accountable to whomever it is they are serving. -- Bob Buford

Accuracy

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. -- H.H. Munro, 1924

Achievement

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness. I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise." -- Robert Frost

Action

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all. -- Georges Bernanos

I do not believe in fate that falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in fate that falls on them unless they act.
--G K Chesterton, _Generally Speaking_

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. -- Friedrich Engels

The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering! -- Ashleigh Brilliant

The great end of life is not knowledge but action. -- Thomas Henry Huxley, "Technical Education," 1887

Deliberation is the action of the many; action is the function of one. -- Charles de Gaulle, War Memoirs, 1960

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing. -- Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson, May 5, 1787

Truth divorced from experience will always dwell in the realms of doubt." -- Henry Drause

Don’t do nothing just because you can’t do everything. -- Bob Pierce

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. -- Theodore Roosevelt

"Do-so" is more important than "say-so" -- Pete Seeger

No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, December 29, 1940

Adapting

As he grew older my dad’s pants kept creeping up on him. By 65 he was just a pair of pants and a head. -- Jeff Altman

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices and superstitions. -- Edward R. Murrow

Addictions

I ain’t got to. But I can’t help it. -- William Faulkner

Adversity/ Suffering

What does not destroy me, makes me strong. --Friedrich Nietzsche 

Integrity is keeping my commitments even if the circumstances when I made those commitments have changed. -- David Jeremiah

If I have learned anything, I owe it neither to precepts nor to books, but to a few opportune misfortunes. Perhaps the school of misfortune is the very best. -- Louise Honorine de Choiseul (1734-1801)

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. -- Joseph Campbell

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?" -- Sydney J. Harris

You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. -- John Ciardi

Those whom God loveth he allows to have the snot kicked out of. -- Plaque over the desk of Jamie Buckingham

People build most nobly when limitations are at their greatest. -- Frank Lloyd Wright

There is no inherent problem in our desire to escalate our goals, as long as we enjoy the struggle along the way. -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

 "The breakfast of champions is not cereal, it's the opposition." - Nick Seitz

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.  - William Hazlitt

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man  who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. - Thomas Carlyle

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant. - Horace

All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and  obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. - Walt Disney

Adversity is the first path to truth. - Lord Byron

Adversity is the trial of principle.  Without it man  hardly knows whether he is honest or not. - Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

Prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.   Fancis Bacon (1561-1626)

However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner... sulking and nausea.  - Tom K. Ryan

Advice

Advice what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn’t. -- Unknown

Never give advice... A wise man won't need it. A fool won't heed it. --Unknown

Adulthood

Adults are always asking children what they want to be when they grow up -- they’re looking for ideas. -- Paula Poundstone

Aggresivity

The firstest gets the mostest. -- Nathan Bedford Forrest, Civil War General

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided. – Theodore Roosevelt, 1913

Aging

To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am. -- Bernard Baruch

We don’t stop having fun when we’re old; we’re old when we stop having fun. -- unknown

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive. -- John Cassavetes

Source: Harper Book of Quotations, Harper 1993

Hope I die before I get old. -- Pete Townsend

"There’s no peer pressure." -- Unknown, Woman’s response to being asked about the benefits of turning 102.

The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything. -- Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," 1894

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool. -- George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo, 1925

AIDS

"I'm still going to go there. I'm going to represent a broad movement. We will be back next year and you'll be hearing from me. You'll be hearing from the sleeping giant that is the church. I mean, what is going on with the churches? It is incredible. I tell these evangelicals in the United States there are 2,300 verses of scripture about the poor. It's the central message outside of personal redemption, the idea of dealing with the poor. And I'm asking them, where are they? Where are they on this? On a recent poll of evangelical churches, only six per cent said they wanted to do something about AIDS. It is unbelievable, the leprosy of our time if you like. But it's starting to turn; the Church is starting to wake up." -- Bono

Altruism

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own. -- Confucius

Ambition

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? -- Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto, 1855

Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead. -- James Thurber, Fables for our Times, 1940

One often passes from love to ambition but rarely returns from ambition to love. -- La Rochefoucauld, Reflections, 1665

America

America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization. -- John O'Hara

In America one sees a good deal of Christianity, but it does not address the spiritual needs of the people. Just as salty seawater cannot quench thirst, much of American religion cannot satisfy a spiritually thirsty person because it is saturated with materialism. Although America is a "Christian" nation and there are many sincere Christians in America, the majority of the people there have no faith. There, where it is so easy to have religion, where religion is offered on every side and no one is persecuted for their beliefs, life should be peaceful. Instead, there is a mad rush and hustle and bustle after money and comfort and pleasure. In India, many Christians suffer bitter persecution but continue to find happiness in their new faith. Because it is so easy to have faith in America, people do not appreciate what a comfort there is in faith. -- Excerpted from Wisdom of the Sadhu by Sadhu Sundar Singh

Anger

When angry count to ten; when very angry count to one hundred." -- Thomas Jefferson

When angry, count to five; when very angry, swear. -- Mark Twain

You can’t shake hands with a clinched fist. -- Indira Gandhi

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. -- Frederick Buechner

Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.  Babylonian Talmud, tractate Gittin

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were. Cherie Carter-Scott, "If Love Is a Game, These Are the Rules"

When anger rises, think of the consequences.  Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor. Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603), in Francis Bacon, Apophthegms, 1625

Anger as soon as fed is dead-  'Tis starving makes it fat. Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), Poems, Second Series, 1891

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.  Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD)

If you would cure anger, do not feed it. Say to yourself: 'I used to be angry every day; then every other day; now only every third or fourth day.' When you reach thirty days offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods. Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD)

Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to. Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Anger, 1985

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry. Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - 1887)

Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life. Joan Lunden, in Healthy Living Magazine

Animals

I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. -- Abraham Lincoln

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. -- Mahatma Gandhi

It is just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. -- Mark Twain

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. -- Garison Keillor

A veterinarian can learn a lot about a dog owner he has never met by just observing the dog. – Stephen Brown

Anxiety

Anxiety is unbelief in disguise. -- Don Hawkins

Anxiety is like sand in an oyster; a few grains produce a pearl, too many, kill. -- saying

There is not such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it. -- Ovid (d. A.D. 1), Metamorphasis

Appreciation

We know the worth of a thing when we have lost it. -- French Proverb

Arguments

The aim of argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress. -- Joseph Joubert, Pensees, 1842

"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering! -- Ashleigh Brilliant

Never argue with a fool. Someone watching may not be able to tell the difference. --Anonymous 

Army

The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability. -- T. Lehrer

The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe. -- Bill Murray

Art / Artists

Artist: Someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he -- for some good reason -- thinks it would be a good idea to give them. -- Andy Warhol

Asking for Help

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask! -- W. Clement Stone

Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it. -- W. Clement Stone

Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom. -- C. H. Spurgeon

You don’t always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don’t ask for... unless it’s contagious! -- Franklyn Broude

Basically most people want to give. They almost encourage you to ask. -- Brad Winch

You’ve got to ask! Asking is, in my opinion, the world’s most powerful -- and neglected -- secret to success and happiness. -- Percy Ross

We find what we expect to find, and we receive what we ask for. -- Elbert Hubbard

Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom. -- C. H. Spurgeon

Many things are lost for want of asking. -- English Proverb

Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people. Nor for others, easier. -- Baltasar Gracian

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. -- Ghandi

Attitude

Productivity is a function of attitude, and cost is a function of productivity. So it all comes down to attitude. -- John Charvat, Zebco

Develop a healthy disrespect for the impossible. -- Gene Hoffman, Super Valu

We’re lost, but we’re making good time! – Yogi Berra

Authenticity

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth. --Benjamin Disraeli

We are what we pretend to be, but we better be very careful what we pretend.  --Kurt Vonnegut

Authority

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority. - Joseph Addison

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction. Sir Alfred Jules Ayer

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker. Mikhail Bakunin

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. --Leonardo Da Vinci

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. -- Charles De Gaulle

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt. -- Robert Lindner

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority. -- Hans Reichenbach

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