I was in the mood to post some favorite quotes... these all fall under a certain theme.
- I went to the woods, because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau
- If we did all things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas Edison
- There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal.
The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
Benjamin Mays
I'm glad you did this. I've thought about posting some quotes myself, and now I can just do it in response to yours. =)
ReplyDeleteI keep a journal of snippets from all of the books that I read. My last one I sent on with my husband to Iraq. I figure he can open it up randomly and perhaps find some inspiration. The one I'm filling now, I plan to pass on to a child, should I have one.
But some of my favorites:
Home is a perversion. - Bruce Chatwin
As you are not unaware, I am much travelled. This fact allows me to corroborate the assertion that a voyage is always more or less illusory, that there is nothing new under the sun, that everything is one and the same, et cetera, but also, paradoxically enough, to assert that there is no foundation for despairing of finding surprises and something new: in truth, the world is inexhaustible. - Jorge Luis Borges
You got to leave room for the fool in everybody. - Ntozake Shange
Life is an adventure in forgiveness. - Norman Cousins
...she had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. - Flannery O'Connor
Only igorant women are virtuous. - Confucious
If a man does not reach his limit, how can he discover the way to go beyond it? - Jason Elliot
Of course, the things we would most want to say, to change, to soften, the very words that could, in fact, alter the course of our lives or the very orbits of worlds, are the words that we cannot say, not then, not later, or ever. - Kate Braverman
There is no sin except stupidity. - Oscar Wilde
Religion is the answer to the question "why?" for those who are afraid to admit "I don't know."
ReplyDelete[this one is losing it's lustre]
VRML will do for the web what 3D movies did for the film industry
Both by me! ;-)
Hrm. Religious quotes:
ReplyDeleteThe Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed. - Franz Kafka
Any God you have to defend is already dead. - Reverend John Shelby Spong
We must not confuse the term religious instinct with an actual drive in man towards what is known as organized religion. - Migene Gonzalez Wipper
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. - Mark Twain
If you step in something mushy, chances are it will be smelly.
ReplyDelete-WRT
Since you are quoting yourself, I will share one of mine that always brings groans and eye-rolls around my house: "Any job worth doing, Is worth doing well."
ReplyDelete"Give me a place to stand and I will move the world."
ReplyDelete-Archimedes
"The intellect of man is forced to choose - perfection of the life, or of the work."
-W.B. Yeats
"The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
And on the lighter side....
"The early bird may get the worm. But the second mouse gets the cheese."
-unknown
What is now proved was once impossible. - William Blake
ReplyDeleteAll men dream, but not all equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake to find it was all vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, and make things happen. - T. E. Lawrence
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never given in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. - Sir Winston Churchill
Thinking realistically never got anyone anywhere; be true to your heart and aim for your dreams. - Margaret Thatcher
If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim. - Margaret Thatcher
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained. - Mark Twain
I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work. - Thomas Edison
It's never too late to be what you might have been. - George Eliot
And here's a thought on human nature, from the demon Crowley, in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens":
Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millennium, when he'd felt like sending a message back Below saying Look, we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, there's nothing we can do to them that they don't do to themselves and they do things we've never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They've got what we lack. They've got *imagination*. And electricity, of course. One of them had written it, hadn't he ... "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."