quotes

If, presume not to God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise, and rudely great.

- Pope, Alexander

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

- Russell, Bertrand

Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

- Lowell, James Russell

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Most of the time in married life is taken up by talk.

- Nietzsche, Friedrich

He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure.

- Horace

Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

He who has a mind to do mischief will always find a pretense.

- Syrus, Publilius

If a million people say a foolish thing, is it still a foolish thing.

- Anatole France

10.

To see a man fearless in dangers. untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

- Seneca

11.

A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.

- Didion, Joan

12.

We usually get what we anticipate.

- Bristol, Claude M.

13.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

14.

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

- Anna Quindlen

15.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting

- Benjamin Franklin

16.

Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.

- Rogers, Will

17.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.

- J. B. S. Haldane

18.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

- Niels Bohr

19.

The idea of hunting and gathering as the best way for life has become quite popular recently, much more popular in some circles than the idea of simple farming as the best way of life. Many of the new primitives regard the beginnings of agriculture as one of humanity's major steps in the wrong direction. Most of the people who are drawn to such ideas do their actual hunting and gathering in grocery stores, but the *feeling* is there; it takes the form of a religion...expressed by particpating in American Indian rituals - or primitive-style rituals that are created anew.

- Walter Truett Anderson - "Reality Isn't What it Used to Be"

20.

Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNALLY to reenact their escape.

- Artaud, Antonin