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Quotes - the more serious ones



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Some of my favorite quotes...

This page has the more serious quotes. For the rest, try The Quote Wall.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
--Albert Camus

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
--Erasmus

The fearless are merely fearless. People who act in spite of their fear are truly brave.
--unknown

Continue to be yourself because in the end that's what people will remember about you.
--unknown

He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.
--Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
--Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
--Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist (1825-1895)

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh, writer (1906-2001)

Any fine morning, a power saw can fell a tree that took a thousand years to grow.
--Edwin Way Teale, naturalist and author (1899-1980)

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
--Lucius Annaeus Seneca, writer and philosopher (BCE 3-65 CE)

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.
--Adam Lindsay Gordon, poet (1833-1870)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
--Eric Hoffer

Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect. It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections.

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
--Chinese Proverb

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
--Ursula Le Guin.

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
--Catherine

Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So, of course, we killed him.
--Orson Scott Card - Speaker for the Dead

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
--Anais Nin, author

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
--Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
--Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
--Paulo Freire, educator (1921-1997)

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
--Peter Ustinov, actor, writer and director (1921- )

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
--Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

The opposite. I love only life. But life can only continue in the face of death.
--Orson Scott Card - The Worthing Saga

His mother had often said, "When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action." She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
--Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (1949- )

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.
--Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy,not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common -- this is my symphony.
--William Henry Channing, clergyman, reformer (1810-1884)

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
--Robert M. Pirsig

Without darkness there are no dreams.
--Karla Kuban, novelist

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
--George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

Open-minded people tend to be interested in Buddhism because Buddha urged people to investigate things -- he didn't just command them to believe.
-- the Dalai Lama

You become writer by writing. It is a yoga.
--R.K. Narayan, novelist (1906-2001)

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
--Isaac Newton,philosopher and mathematician (1642-1727)

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
--Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust Survivor (1905-1997)

A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
--Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer (1803-1873)

God never occurs to you in person but always in action.
--Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Compassion is the basis of morality.
--Arnold Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)

The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reach us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the
radiation of their personalities.
--Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931)

whoever keeps putting the frozen monkies in the incinorator down in the basement, I WILL FIND YOU AND WHEN I DO, YOU'LL BE SORRY YOU EVER MESSED WITH THE JANITOR.
thank you,
The Management
--Trevor Wilhelms' IM away message

The only gift is giving to the poor;
All else is exchange.
--Thiruvalluvar, poet (c. 30 BCE)

Words are things; and a small drop of ink
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
--Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)

You can sometimes count every orange on a tree but never all the trees in a single orange.
--A.K. Ramanujan, poet (1929-1993)

Easy reading is damned hard writing.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a
pessimist sees only the red stoplight... The truly wise person is
color-blind.
--Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
--Lily Tomlin

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
--Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

There must be more to life than having everything.
--Maurice Sendak

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of discussion.
--Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or
offer your own version in return.
--Salman Rushdie, writer (1947- )

Each one of us is responsible for building the society we want. Peace Corps volunteers do that with people-to-people exchanges, using their energy, their spirit, and their creativity to solve problems. This is the American way. Once we see a need, we want to serve - even when the neighbor we reach out to help is halfway around the world.
--President Ronald Reagan

Life is a chain of moments of enjoyment, it isn't only survival.
--http://www.funstun.com/thinkitover.cfm

Every day, a bell rings, A city awakes, a workday begins, a
market opens and the world gets down to business, all because
every day a bell rings. Let freedom ring.
--former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani

When I don't understand something, I reach up and hold God's
hand. And we walk together in silence.
--Mahatma Gandhi

This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite
in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down
enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will
ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and
all that is good and just in our world.
--President George W. Bush

If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.
--Sandy Dahl, the wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl.

It often happens that those of whom we speak least on earth are best known in heaven.
--Nicolas Caussin, preacher and moralist (1583-1651)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby
become a monster. And if you gaze for long into the abyss, the
abyss gazes also into you.
--Nietzsche

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all
evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still
savages.
--Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
--Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
--Hal Borland, journalist (1900-1978)

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
-Anais Nin, writer (1903-1977)

Each summer I leave camp knowing that the people around me, young or old, are engaged in active spiritual search and that the Light can be seen working in them. I leave knowing that all creatures tend toward grace and honesty when approached with trust. I leave knowing that the Spirit leads us towards tenderness and towards each other, and I know that way opens. This community affects me so.
-- Dana Foster, Director, Shiloh Quaker Camp

I look for what needs to be done.... After all, that's how the universe
designs itself.
--R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world?
--Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (1929-1945)

A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.
--Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but becase of the people who do nothing about it.
--Albert Einstein

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
-- Aldous Huxley

The difference between men and boys is that a man will take responsibility for his actions and a boy will make excuses.
-- William Bozzone

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true
to anyone else or anything else is ... impossible.
--Richard Bach, writer (1936- )

Some people think,
Life is just a game.
Well it's not.
So dont be that lame,
To think life is all fun.
And take for granted,
Your special one.
If they love you,
Love them back.
If they have hard times,
Give them some slack.
They deserve love,
If they love you.
Cherish every moment,
And they will too.
You never know,
When they will be gone.
So remember,
Cherish every smile,
That they share with you.
Cause if they go.
What will you do?
Think About It ....... When they're gone, will they still be in your heart? If you die, what will they do? Love your lovers like you've never loved before. Cause you never love what you have ........... until it's gone.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions--the little,
soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look or heartfelt
compliment.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet (1772-1834)

There is a word sweeter than mother, home or heaven -- That word is
liberty.
--Epitaph on the grave of Matilda Joslyn Gage, suffragist, abolitionist (1826-1898)

Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is.
--Leonardo Da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)

It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
--Antoine de St. Exupery

God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?
--Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

One ring to rule them all,
One ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.
--J.R.R. Tolkien

Every person you meet is changed by the meeting. You alone have the power to determine how.

In our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.
--His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.
- Orson Scott Card - Xenocide

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
--Henry Miller, novelist (1891-1980)

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
--Henry Miller, novelist (1891-1980)

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
--Carl Sagan

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur.
(Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out.)

Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
--Aldous Huxley, author and critic (1894-1963)

Man's life does not commence in the womb and never ends in the grave.
--Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990)

I believe that it doesn't take a village to raise a child-it takes a parent with the guts to stand up to the kid and spank his butt and say "NO!" when it's necessary to do so.
--Ted Nugent

All knowledge comes from experience. All the rest is just information.
--Albert Einstein

The will to win is worth nothing unless you have the will to prepare.

"What does the candle represent?"
"Life."
"Whose life?"
"All life, every life. We're all born as molecules in the hearts of a billion stars, molecules that do not understand politics, policies and differences. In a billion years we, foolish molecules forget who we are and where we came from. Desperate acts of ego. We give ourselves names, fight over lines on maps. And pretend our light is better than everyone else's. The flame reminds us of the piece of those stars that live inside us. A spark that tells us: you should know better. The flame also reminds us that life is precious, as each flame is unique. When it goes out, it's gone forever. And there will never be another quite like it. So many candles will go out tonight. I wonder some days if we can see anything at all."
Sheridan and Delenn: Babylon 5; "And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder" - J. Michael Straczynski

A Medieval scholar wrote:
"Freedom consists of nothing less than love--boundless, courageous, uncalculating love. Love is freedom from oneself; love is perfect freedom. A truly free man is free because he loves. Those men are in a state of freedom."
My greatest teacher once told me that a man who has risked his life knows that careers are worthless, and a man who will not risk his career has a worthless life.

And we forget because we must
And not because we will.

Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.
--Orson Scott Card - Children of the Mind

The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. The choices they made were real. They mattered.
--Orson Scott Card - Atlantis

He is a fool who has forgotten what became of his ancestry
seven generations before him and who does not care what will
become of his progeny seven generations after him.
--Kazakh Proverb

If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you give a man tech support, he'll call you for the rest of his life.
--Quoted in "Ask Dr Mac 52"

Superman isn't brave. You can't be brave if you are indestructible. It's every day people like me and you that are brave, knowing we can easily be defeated but still continue forward. That's TRUE Bravery!
--Jesse Downs

I cannot tell you now;
When the wind's drive and whirl
Blow me along no longer,
And the wind's a whisper at last—
Maybe I'll tell you then—
some other time.
When the rose's flash to the sunset
Reels to the rack and the twist,
And the rose is a red bygone,
When the face I love is going
And the gate to the end shall clang,
And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"—
Maybe I'll tell you then—
some other time.
I never knew any more beautiful than you:
I have hunted you under my thoughts,
I have broken down under the wind
And into the roses looking for you.
I shall never find any
greater than you.
--Carl Sandburg

...Death is conquered by the memories we leave in the minds of the living...

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we will find something new.
--Voltaire, Candide

The story the oversoul tells me fits all the facts that I see. Your story, in which I'm endlessly deceived, can also explain all those
facts. I have no way of knowing that your story is not true-but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will choose the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life,and the life that disgusts me-your life, your view of life-is the lie."
--Orson Scott Card - The Call of Earth

The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.
--Orson Scott Card - Xenocide

A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living.
--Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
-- Richard P. Feynman

Si tu fais des images, ne parle pas, n'écris pas ne t'analyse pas, ne réponds à aucune question.
[if you take photos, don't speak, don't write, don't analyze yourself, and don't answer any questions.]
--Robert Doisneau

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
--Alan Ashley-Pitt

Fears over tomorrow and regrets over yesterday are twin thieves that rob us of the moment.
--Anonymous

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
--Albert von Szent-Gyorgy

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.
--Colin Wilson

Without the rocks, the stream would lose its song.
--Proverb

A problem, at its core, is really just an opportunity to learn and explore.
--Stephen Coleman

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Each of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way.
--Suzuki Roshi

A child on the farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and thinks of home.
--Carl Burns

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
--Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by
the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw
off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the
trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
--Mark Twain

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
--Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910)

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.
--G.K. Chesterton

Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.
--Miguel de Cervantes

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice.
It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
--William J Bryan

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
--Ralph Waldo Emmerson

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong
and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a
thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually
turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
--Douglas Adams

Life consists of problems, living is solving those problems. You should live life to its fullest and never look back on the past.
--Unknown

Do not be dismayed at good-byes. A good-bye is
necessary before meeting again and meeting again after
moments or lifetimes is certain for those who are
friends.
--Richard Bach

There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are
blessings given to us to learn from.
--Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
--Mahatma Gandhi

We are none of us truly isolated; we are connected to one another by a web of regularities and by a host of shared, deep-seated certainties.
--Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox, Anthropologists

Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
--David Lloyd George

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that
heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but
'That's funny...'
--Isaac Asimov

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
--Helen Keller

The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest
memory.
--Old Chinese Proverb

Things should be made as simple as possible -- no simpler.
--Albert Einstein

Each problem that I solved became a rule which served
afterwards to solve other problems.
--Rene Descartes

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
--General George Patton

There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.
--Douglas MacArthur

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to
add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
--Antoine de Saint Exupery

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
--Confucius

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
--Confucius

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early
and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone
unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can
be done just as well as now.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it, but can describe it
only from the vantage point of distance.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one
can be sure of changing is oneself.

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

To talk goodness is not good... Only to do it is.
--Chinese Proverb

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment - the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal.

Integrity has no need of rules.

God is Love. God loves you with more love than you can even begin to imagine. He loves you just the way He created you. Love sees your imperfections as character and uniqueness, what makes you special. Love comforts you in pain, laughs with you in joy, and forgives you when you fall. Forgiveness isn't earned, it's given, just as Love is so freely given to you. God paints the world with beauty even though we don't deserve it. He colors your life with grace because He loves you. You are His creation. You were created in the image of Love and you are beautiful just the way you are...

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.

And so the legend goes that if you break the skin of another with the
barb of the toothache tree you will capture his spirit. And the two spirits--your two souls-- will live forever . . . as one.

If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance!
--Anonymous

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.

I wish they would only take me as I am.

"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."

"Some authors should be paid by the quantity NOT written."
-Anonymous

"The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it."

"Some people are working backstage, some are playing in the orchestra, some are on-stage singing, some are in the audience as critics and some are there to applaud. Know who and where you are."
-Unknown

"Work is good but it's not that important."
-Anonymous

"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training."

"Millions of opinions are given every single day. Usually, about 5 of them are actually ASKED for! 3 of THOSE are either invalid or complete lies, and the other two are disregarded by the person asking. Funny, isn't it?"

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions, small people always do that. But the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

"Discretion is being able to raise your eyebrow, instead of your voice."
-Unknown

"Remember that people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold, but so does a hard boiled egg."
-Annonymous

Travel Quotes

"I have found that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train."

"Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'as pretty as an airport' exist."

"On a long journey even a straw weighs heavy."

"Trust in Allah, but tie your camel."

"Eat your vegetables."

"I'm sorry to say so but, sadly, it's true that Band-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you."

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."

"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign."