A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
Twain, Mark
Truth
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Sophocles
Deception
A lie never lives to be old.
Syrus, Publilius
Action
A rolling stone can gather no moss.
Keats, John
Beauty
A thing of beauty is a joy forever, Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.
Zola, Emile
Art
A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.
Beard, Mary
Action
Action without study is fatal. Study without action is futile.
Woolcott, Alexander
Pleasure
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening.
Shakespeare, William
Labor
An enterprise, when fairly once begun, should not be left till all that ought is won.
Horace
Anger
Anger is momentary madness.
Butler, Samuel
Deception
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Tolstoy, Leo
Art
Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.
Da Vinci, Leonardo
Death
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
Hume, David
Greed
Avarice, the spur of industry.
Michelangelo
Beauty
Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.
Bancroft, George
Beauty
Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite.
Proverb (Chinese)
Prudence
Before you beat the dog, learn his master's name.
Plutarch
Character
Character is simply habit long continued.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Character
Character is that which can do without success.
Twain, Mark
Courage
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
Churchill, Winston
Courage
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.
Plutarch
Courage
Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess, of courage.
Churchill, Winston
Danger
Danger--if you meet it promptly and without flinching--you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
Juvenal
Death
Death alone discloses how insignificant are the puny bodies of men.
Havergal, Frances
Doubt
Doubt indulged soon becomes doubt realized.
Epictetus
Envy
Envy is the adversary of the fortunate.
Hugo, Victor
Old Age
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
Washington, George
Government
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence--it is force.
Franklin, Benjamin
Truth
Half the truth is often a great lie.
Goethe
Power
Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers!
Franklin, Benjamin
Pride
He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
Pindar
Hope
Hopes are the dreams of those who are awake.
Aurelius, Marcus
Anger
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Franklin, Benjamin
Humility
Humility makes great men twice honorable.
Jefferson, Thomas
Integrity
I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations--to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements and under all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting in the long run even the interests of both.
Jefferson, Thomas
Power
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
Franklin, Benjamin
Death
I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.
Hesse, Hermann
Hate
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Proverb (Chinese)
Integrity
If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.
Einstein, Albert
Imagination
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Bacon, Francis
Nature
In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.
Plutarch
Power
It is an observation no less just than common, that there is no stronger test of a man's real character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice.
Twain, Mark
Honor
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
Longfellow, Henry W.
Love
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
Goethe
Pride
It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.
Epictetus
Learning
It is impossible for a man to learn what he already thinks he knows.
Shenstone, William
Envy
Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority; envy our uneasiness under it.
Epictetus
Death
Let death be daily before your eyes, and you will never entertain any abject thought, not too eagerly covet anything.
Socrates
Power
Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
Webster, Daniel
Law
Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.
Shakespeare, William
Honor
Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more dear than life.
Proverb (Chinese)
Death
Life is a dream walking. Death is a going home.
Browning, Robert
Love
Love is the energy of life.
Mitford, William
Death
Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Nature
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Da Vinci, Leonardo
Nature
Nature never breaks her own laws.
Hugo, Victor
Nature
Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Law
No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.
Syrus, Publilius
Honor
No one ever lost his honor, except he who had it not.
Cicero
Old Age
No one is so old as to think he cannot live one more year.
Ballou, Hosea
Deception
Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.
Cicero
Old Age
Old age is by nature rather talkative.
Jackson, Andrew
Courage
One man with courage makes a majority.
Coleridge, Samuel
Honor
Our own hearts, and not other men's opinions, form our true honor.
Byron, Lord
Pleasure
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Power
Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Power
Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity; and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.
Plato
Labor
Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.
Proverb (Jewish)
Pride
Pride is the mask of one's own faults.
Marquis, Donald
Procrastination
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
Cicero
Prudence
Prudence is the knowledge of things to be sought, and those to be shunned.
Franklin, Benjamin
Labor
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Douglas, William O.
Law
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
Wilde, Oscar
Selfishness
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Wilde, Oscar
Pleasure
Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.
Juvenal
Greed
Some men make fortunes, but not to enjoy them; for, blinded by avarice, they live to make fortunes.
Huxley, Aldous
Pleasure
Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.
Thoreau, Henry David
Pleasure
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Locke, John
Mankind
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
Aristotle
Art
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Butler, Samuel
Deception
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Confucius
Prudence
The cautious seldom err.
Stevenson, Robert L.
Deception
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
Lyly, John
Envy
The greatest harm that you can do unto the envious, is to do well.
Horace
Mankind
The human race afraid of nothing, rushes on through every crime.
Junius
Integrity
The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct, not by their professions.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Honor
The louder he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons.
Wilde, Oscar
Mankind
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
Quintilian
Art
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
Plato
Government
The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of bad men.
Disraeli
Success
The secret of success is constancy of purpose.
Sophocles
Justice
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Franklin, Benjamin
Danger
There is no little enemy.
Heraclitus
Change
There is nothing permanent except change.
Drucker, Peter F.
Action
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Shakespeare, William
Doubt
Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.
Franklin, Benjamin
Deception
Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.
Newman, John Henry
Change
To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
Proverb (Jewish)
Truth
Truth is the safest lie.
Valery, Paul
Danger
Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
Goethe
Deception
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
Bryant, William Cullen
Change
Weep not that the world changes--did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.
Tolstoy, Leo
Beauty
What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Goethe
Government
What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Aristotle
Learning
What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
Longfellow, Henry W.
Death
When a great man dies, for years the light the leaves behind him lies on the paths of men.
Jefferson, Thomas
Anger
When angry, count to ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
Seneca
Procrastination
While we are postponing, life speeds by.
Shaw, G. E.
Art
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
Hoffer, Eric
Danger
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
