Quote Library

Sacrifice

The point is not whether we give up our property, but that we do no less in any area of life than what is demanded here: that we surrender our money and our life so completely to God that we will be ready - today or tomorrow - to sell our fields and our goods, to give up our business, our investments, and our bank account, and give everything to the Lord and to the poor. The important thing is that we radically reject money and its influence, so that it can no longer dictate to us. We must devote ourselves fully to God with all our income, money, and talents. The spirit of mammon must no longer regulate our relationships with other people, but we must let our lives be ruled by the spirit of love. -- Excerpted from Salt and Light by Eberhard Arnold.

Safety

The streets are safe in Philadelphia; it's only the people who make them unsafe. -- Mayor Frank Rizzo

Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world. --Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden

Sameness

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. -- Unknown

Science

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -Albert Einstein

Secular Stupidity

The evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except that it’s missing. -- G.K. Chesterton

Seeking God

If you fail to seek God in the small things, you will seek him in vain for the large things. -- Andrew Murray

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. -- Basho Source: Little Zen Companion, Schiller.

I do not seek. I find. (Je ne cherche pas; je trouve) -- Pablo Picasso Source: Harper Book of Quotations, Harper 1993

Self-control

Old habits cannot be thrown out the upstairs window. They have to be coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. -- Mark Twain

He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others. - Leonardo da Vinci

As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom. -- Marievon Ebner-Eschenbach

To rule over oneself is the first condition for one who would rule over others. – Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1922

Self-discipline

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands. -- Seneca

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. -- Seneca

Self-Evaluation

The unexamined life is not worth living. -- Plato

Self-Image

He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Often-times nothing profits more than self-esteem grounded on what is just and right. -- John Milton

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is it which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. -- Henry David Thoreau

You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself -- and how little I deserve it. -- W. S. Gilbert

Self-knowledge

It’s the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. -- Tallulah Bankhead

No one travels so high as he who knows not where he is going. -- Oliver Cromwell Source: Goldfayl, David

Don’t let your mouth write a check your body can’t cash. -- Flip Wilson as Geraldine

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves." -- Aldous Huxley

You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you mad. -- Aldous Huxley

Full wise is he that can himself know. -- Chaucer

It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient. -- Josh Billings

Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery. -- Matthew Arnold

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power." -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint man with himself. -- Emerson

The only gift is a portion of thyself. -- Emerson

You can only see others as clearly as you see yourself." -- Stephen C. Paul

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. -- Miguel de Cervantes

A man is humble when he stands in the truth with a knowledge and appreciation for himself as he really is. -- The Cloud of Unknowing

Too many people overvalue what they’re not and undervalue what they are. -- Malcolm S. Forbes

Know yourself -- Socrates

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint man with himself. -- Emerson

Knowing your own strength is a fine thing. Recognizing your own weakness is even better. What is really bad, what hurts and finally defeats us, is mistaking a weakness for a strength. -- Sydney J. Harris

Who is man’s chief enemy? Each man is his own. -- Anacharsis

If a man does not know himself, how should he know his function and his powers? -- Montaigne

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. -- Saint Exupery

Knowledge of self is the source of our abilities. -- Lao Tzu

Self-respect

You train people how to treat you by how you treat yourself. -- Martin Rutte

This above all, to think own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. -- Shakespeare

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect. -- Geo. Bernard Shaw

The trick is to respect yourself and the other person at the same time." -- Stephen C. Paul

Self-will

How the twig is bent may be less important than the way it bends itself. -- J. Krutch

Selflessness

I became my own only when I gave myself to Another. -- C.S. Lewis

Selfishness

I have been a selfish being all my lie, in practice, though not in principle. -- Jane Austen

As for the largest-hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our chequebooks? -- "self" -- E. Philpotts

Serendipity

Serving

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degrees to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve... You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

You must give time to your fellow man -- even if it’s a little thing, do something for others -- something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. -- Albert Schweitzer

What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are. -- George Eastman

Of this I am certain. The only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. -- Albert Schweitzer

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. -- Maya Angelou

Love all, serve all. -- Logo, Hard Rock Cafe

Lives based on having are less free than lives based on either doing or being. -- William James

Yesterday three scientists won the Nobel Prize for finding the smallest object in the universe. It turns out that it’s the steak at Denny’s. -- Jay Leno

Peters and Waterman didn’t invent management by walking around -- Jesus did. -- Ken Blanchard

I believe you can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. -- Zig Ziglar

No man was ever shot by his wife while doing the dishes. -- Anonymous

Percentage of women who would rather watch a man wash dishes than dance naked: 61%. -- Details, March 1995

Sexuality

The man who knocks on the door of a brothel is knocking for God." -- G. K. Chesterton

Despite premature rumors of its demise, despite the rotten news about AIDS and date rape, and the media’s latest infatuation with virginity, sex is going strong on the campus. In most places, sex is still pretty much the only thing that matters. -- David Lipsky, Rolling Stone’s annual college issue (Fall, 1995)

Sexuality and spirituality are not enemies but friends. -- Donald Goergen

I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. -- J. Edgar Hoover

Sexual promiscuity described in a book like Ecclesiastes (it’s implied author had 700 wives and 300 concubines) is not so much an overvaluing of sex as a de-valuing. "To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it... Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in a mere absence of mind." -- G. K. Chesterton

Significance

Silence

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. -- Mother Teresa

Silence is the language God speaks and everything else is a bad translation. -- Father Thomas Keating

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness. -- Meister Eckhart

No has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut. – Sam Rayburn, 1978

He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly delightful. -- Sydney Smith, referring to Macaulay

Simplicity

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. --E. F. Schumacher

The greatest miracle is the discovery that all is miraculous. And the nature of the miraculous is -- utter simplicity."

Whenever things sound easy, it turns out there's one part you didn't hear. -- Donald E. Westlake, _Drowned_Hopes_

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson Source: The Art of Creative Thinking - book by Robert Olson (1986)

Never cut what can be untied. --Joseph Joubert

The greatest truths are the simplest -- and so are the greatest men. -- Augustus Hare

The secret of success is constancy of purpose. -- Benjamin Disraeli

Simplicity is an uprightness of soul. -- Francois Fenelon

There are two things to aim at in life; first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. -- Logan Pearsall Smith

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated." -- T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Christianity is a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything. -- T. S. Eliot The Four Quartets, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, 1943, p. 39

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. -- Hans Hoffman

Less is more -- Robert Browning

Teach us to delight in simple things. -- Rudyard Kipling

To be simple is to fix one’s eyes solely on the simple truth of God at a time when all concepts are being confused, distorted, and turned up-side down. It means to be single-hearted. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The more you know, the less you need. -- Australian Aboriginal saying

THIS PROBLEM WHEN SOLVED WILL BE SIMPLE. -- Charles Kettering’s plaque on the wall of the office of, head of General Motors Research Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio

The fastest traveler is he that goes afoot. -- Henry David Thoreau

Nothing is more real than nothing. -- Samuel Beckett

A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains. -- Henry Wheeler Shaw

Only to the extent that we decrease the mode of having, that is of nonbeing -- stop finding security and identity by clinging to what we have, by sitting on it, by holding onto our ego and our possessions -- can the mode of being emerge. -- Erich Fromm, Executive Excellence, "In Search of Leadership" by Gregory A. Gull, December, 1994, p. 16

There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. -- G. K. Chesterton

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth. -- Leo Tolstoi

If a man does his best, what else is there? -- Geo. Patton

It’s the sort of place where you have to wear a shirt. -- Nick Nolte, in North Dallas Forty

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough. -- Charles Dudley Warner

There was man, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away, the more he had." -- John Bunyan

The truth is America began as a dress-down country. We won the Revolutionary War by wearing everyday clothes and firing homemade bullets at people garbed in tailored scarlet coats. -- John Powers

Collect adventures and experiences, not things. Things will burden you. Adventures and experiences give you pleasant memories. -- William D. Montapert

Give what you have. To some it may be better than you dare to think. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. --Albert Einstein

“Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.” — Thomas Moore, 19th-century Irish poet, satirist, composer and musician (from “Loves of the Angels: Third Angel’s Story”)

"Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights." — Henry David Thoreau, 19th-century American essayist and nature writer (from "Walden")

"Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues." — Confucius, ancient Chinese sage

"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box." — Italian proverb

"A taste for simplicity cannot last for long." — Eugene Delacroix, 19th-century French painter

"The problem with property is that it takes so much of your time." — Willem de Kooning, 20th century Dutch-American painter

"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century." — Alexander Solzhenitzyn, 20th-century Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist

"Take what you can use and let the rest go by." — Ken Kesey, 20th-century American author

"Less is more." — Mies van der Rohe, 20th-century Dutch-American "Modernist" architect

"Less is a bore." — Robert Venturi, 20th-century American post-Modernist architect

"Make a virtue of necessity." — Geoffrey Chaucer, medieval English author

“You can't have everything. Where would you put it?” — Steven Wright, 20th-century American humorist

"A good is more desirable than great riches." — Bible (Proverbs 22:1)

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." — Bible (Matthew 5:5)

"Do not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do ... that they may have glory from men.... But when thou doest alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." — Bible (Matthew 6:1-4)

"The farther a man knows himself to be free from perfection, the nearer he is to it." — Gerard Groote

"He who thinks he has no faults has one." — Unknown

“The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.” — J.C. Hare

“Simplicity of character is no hindrance to the subtlety of intellect.” — John Morley, 19th-century British statesman

“If I have seen farther than other men it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton, 17th-century English mathematician and physicist

Sin

The greatest sinners are the most boring people in the world because they are also the most bored and the ones who find life most tedious. Yet when it is all over and they are dead, the record of their sins in history becomes exceedingly uninteresting and is inflicted on school children as a penance which is all the more bitter because even an eight-year-old can readily see the uselessness of learning about people like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. -- Excerpted from New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton.

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. -- H. L. Mencken

A Christian is one who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. -Ambrose Bierce

Sincerity

If you’re gonna sell out, make sure they’re buying." -- Martha Davis of the Motels

Sincerity is the high compliment you can pay. -- Emerson

The most important thing about acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made! --Geo. Burns

Singing

He started to sing as he tackled the thing that couldn’t be done, and he did it. -- Edgar A. Guest

Singleness

Marriage teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, meekness and a great many other things you wouldn’t need if you stayed single. -- Jimmy Townsend

Skill

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed. -- Henry Ford

Sleep

If I didn’t wake up I’d still be sleeping. – Yogi Berra

I usually take a two-hour nap from 1 to 4. – Yogi Berra

Small Groups

Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can make a difference; indeed, it is the only thing that ever really has." -- Margaret Mead

Smallness

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion. -- Democritus of Abdera

The sun will set without thy assistance. -- The Talmud

Solitude

All speech that moves men was minted when some man’s mind was poised and still. -- R. E. C. Browne

To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. -- Henri J. Nouwen

Speaking -- Foolishly

Mend your speech a little lest you mar your fortunes. -- Shakespeare

Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts -- Voltaire

Men dig their graves with their own teeth and die more by those fated instruments than the weapons of their enemies. -- Thomas Moffett

Samson slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. I have destroyed as many relationships with the same weapon..." -- Tim...

Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts -- Voltaire

Speaking -- Wisely

Judge a man by his question rather than by his answers. -- Voltaire

The proof that you have God’s Spirit in your life is not that you speak in an unknown tongue, but that you know how to control the tongue that you do know about." * -- J. Sidlow Baxter

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among the greatest assets I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement. -- Charles Schwab

Every word that is not first bathed in thought becomes a stone tossed in our path. -- Rudolph Steiner

46% of those who quit their jobs last year did so because they felt unappreciated. -- U.S. Department of Labor

Converted men as a class are indistinguishable from natural men; some natural men even excel some converted men in their fruits; and no one ignorant of doctrinal theology could guess by mere every-day inspection of the ‘accidents’ of the two groups of persons before him that their substance differed as much as divine differs from human substance. -- William James

Starting

The first step is the hardest." -- Marie de Vichy-Chammond

Begin, and you are halfway there." -- Alfred A. Montapert

Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. -- Napoleon Hill

The only way to start is to start. -- Anonymous

I am only one, but still I am one; I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. -- Edward E. Hale

Stasis/Balance

Find the right balance in life. Man is body... mind... spirit. Give the right amount of attention to each. -- Alfred A. Montapert

As you walk down the fairway of life, you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round. -- Ben Hogan

Getting Started

To put your ideas into action is the most difficult thing in the world. -- Goethe

A knowledge of the path cannot be substituted for putting one foot in front of the other." -- M.C. Richards

Status Quo

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not entirely absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. -- Bertrand Russell

Stewardship

Waste not, want not; willful waste makes woeful want. -- St. Basil

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. -- Norman MacEswan

Stillness

Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. – T.S. Elliot

Story

You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories. -- Leslie Marmon Silko

Stories are like fairy gold. The more you give away the more you have. -- Polly McGuire

We really don’t learn anything from our experience. We only learn from reflecting on our experience. -- Robert Sinclair

Struggles

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods... So let us celebrate the struggle! -- Swahili Warrior Song

All things are difficult before they are easy. -- Thomas Fuller

if you only do things you know well and do comfortably, you’ll never reach higher goals. -- Linda Tao Yang

Life is unfair; get over it; get a job. -- Billboard, National Urban League, Queens, NY, 1997

If at first you don’t succeed, you’re about average!" -- Dr. Robert Anthony

Good people are good because they come to wisdom through failure. -- William Saroyan

The artist does not see life as a problem to be solved, but as a medium for creation. -- Dorothy Sayers

It is not ease but effort, not facility but difficulty, that makes a man. There is perhaps no station in life in which difficulties do not have to be encountered and overcome before any decided means of success can be achieved. -- Samuel Smiles

This happens in the midst of affluent societies and in the midst of welfare states! For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up; the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: Survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. -- Viktor Frankl

Stupidity

I'm not intending to imply insult or judgment here but I am curious to know in order to be able to respond to your posts in an appropriate manner, so please forgive what appears to be, but in fact is not intended as, an insulting question: Are you stupid? --Melinda Shore

"Bimbonic Plague" -- William Safire

WNQR-FM -- "We’re Not Quite Ready For Mensa"

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. -- Albert Einstein

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits --Anonymous 

I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me. --A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh 

My father used to say to us that stupidity is the greatest sin. He did not mean simplicity of mind, but spiritual dullness: having a dead conscience and not listening with one's heart to God.  Very few people today have any idea of the riches of the human heart. Our hearts are created to experience great things; most of us have no idea of what could happen in our lives if we would overcome our stupidity and dullness. -- Excerpted from Discipleship by J. Heinrich Arnold.

Success

Success is that old ABC -- ability, breaks, and courage. -- C. Luckman

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: One is pushing down, the other is pulling up. -- Booker T. Washington

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you have.

Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. -- Arnold Glascow

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breather easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. -- Emerson

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self complacent is erroneous. On the contrary it makes them, for the most part humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel. -- W. Somerset Maugham

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has." -- Henry Ward Beecher

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

One of the great challenges for entrepreneurs is to identify a simple need." -- Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop

When you win, nothing hurts. -- Joe Namath

Success has many fathers. -- John F. Kennedy

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness. -- George Bernard Shaw

Don’t let what you can’t do interfere with what you can do. -- John Wooden

Success breeds arrogance and then failure. -- Tom Peters

It wasn’t the reward that mattered or the recognition you might harvest. It was your depth of commitment, your quality of service, the product of your devotion -- these were the things that counted in a life. When you gave purely, the honor came in the giving, and that was honor enough. -- Capt. Scott O’Grady

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up. -- Babe Ruth

Suffering

We live in a dog eat dog world and sometimes it seems like we have milkbone underwear on..." -- Norm on Cheers

Perhaps we do not realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to co-exist with Omnipotence. It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of "divine abdication." -- C. S. Lewis

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. -- Anonymous

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." -- Brendan Gill

God is often (in some sense) nearer to us, and more effectually present with us, in sickness than in health... He often sends diseases of the body to cure those of the soul. Comfort yourself with the sovereign Physician of both the soul and the body. -- Brother Lawrence

The work of spirituality is to recognize where we are -- the particular circumstances of our lives -- to recognize grace and say, "Do you suppose God wants to be with me in a way that does not involve changing my spouse or getting rid of my spouse or my kids, but in changing me, and doing something in my life that maybe I could never experience without this pain and this suffering?" -- Eugene Peterson

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