Everyone must row with the oars he has.
ENGLISH PROVERB

Those who are absent are always wrong.
ENGLISH PROVERB

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems 
depopulated.
LAMARTINE (1820)

If life must not be taken too seriously -
then so neither must death.
SAMUEL BUTLER "Death" (1912)

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that 
that it has ne meaning.
HENRY MILLER "Creative Death" (1941)

Now humanity does not know where to go because no one is waiting 
for it; not even God.
ANTONIO PORCHIA (1968)

Few men, I believe, are much worth loving, in whom there is not 
something well worth laughing at.
AUGUSTUS WILLIAM HARE "Guesses at Truth" (1827)

There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
NAPOLEON after the retreat from Russia (1812)

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.
SENECA (1st century)

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember 
that three of his fingers are pointing at himself.
UNKNOWN

Even doubtful accusations leave a stain behind them.
THOMAS FULLER, M.D. (1732)

It is honorable to be accused by those who deserve to be accused.
LATIN PROVERB

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
EMERSON "Essays: Second Series" (1844)

When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb,
it's well to remember that things take time.
PIET HEIN "T.T.T" (1966)

It is not enough to aim, you must also hit.
ITALIAN PROVERB

Since it is not granted to us to live long, let us transmit to 
posterity some memorial that we have at least lived.
WILLIAM MELMOTH and W.M.L. HUTCHINSON

To achive great things, we must live as though we were never 
going to die.
VAUVENARGUES (1746)

Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow 
from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE "The Devil's Dictionary" (1881-1911)

There is a scarcity of friendship, but not of friends.
THOMAS FULLER, M.D. (1732)

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through 
life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his 
friendship in constant repair.
SAMUEL JOHNSON (1775)

Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and 
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
AMBROSE BIERCE "The Devil's Dictionary" (1881-1911)

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn 
to do without the things that you can not get.
ELBERT HUBBARD "The Notebook" (1927)

With the catching ends the pleasures of the chase.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1838)

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and 
an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
GEORGE BERNANOS (1955)

It is better to wear out than to rust out.
RICHARD CUMBERLAND (1730)

The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is 
the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
ERIC HOFFER "The ordeal of change" (1964)

What is the use of running if you are not on the right road?
GERMAN PROVERB

If you want work well done, select a busy man: the other kind has 
no time.
BERT HUBBARD "The Note Book" (1927)

Men need some kind of external activity, for they are inactive 
within. 
SCHOPENHAUER (1851)

Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get 
where they are going.
JAMES THURBER "The Wolf Who Went Places" (1956)

Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.
ITALIAN PROVERB

There are no conditions to which a man cannot become accustomed, 
especially if he sees that all those around him live in the same 
way.
LEO TOLSTOY "Anna Karenina" (1873)

Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy; but good 
administration can never save bad policy.
ADLAI STEVENSON (1952)

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to 
ourselves.
AMBROSE BIERCE "The Devil's Dictionary" (1881-1911)

Always we like those who admire us, but we do not always like 
those whom we admire.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD "Maxims" (1665)

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An 
inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
G.K. CHESTERTON "All Things Considered" (1908)

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than 
the dead calm of ignorance and faith!
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL "The Gods" (1872)

Better to be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.
AESOP "Fables" (6th c BC)

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's 
affliction is to remember that he once was happy.
BOETHIUS "The Consolation of Philosophy" (A.D. 524)

Adversity is the first path to truth.
BYRON "Don Juan" (1819)

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life: by 
indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON "Lacon" (1825)

Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.
EURIPIDES "Antiope" (408 BC)

When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him.
INDIAN PROVERB

No man can smile in the face of adversity and mean it.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE (1911)

It is the first shower that wets.
ITALIAN PROVERB

People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right's no 
guarantee against misfortune.
WILLIAM McFEE "Casuals of the Sea" (1916)

People could survive their natural trouble all right if it 
weren't for the trouble they make for themselves.
OGDEN NASH "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" (1938)

The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that 
money can't cure. Which is a trouble that is even more 
troublesome if you are poor.
OGDEN NASH "The Terrible People" (1959)

That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
NIETZSCHE "Maxims and Missiles" (1888)

If fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your teeth.
PERSIAN PROVERB

To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise 
in misfortune is to conquer fate.
AGNES REPPLIER "Under Dispute" (1924)

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection - that is the 
last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, 
whether by character or achievement.
MARK TWAIN "When in Doubt, Tell the Truth" (1923)

It is well known what a middle man is: he is a man who bamboozles 
one party and plunders the other.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI (1845)

Little by little, the pimps have taken over the world. They don't 
do anything, they don't make anything - they just stand there and 
take their cut.
JEAN GIRAUDOUX "The Madwomen of Chaillot" (1945)

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant 
angle, is a deep delight to the blood.
GEORGE SANTAYANA "The Latin School" (1944)

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we 
differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON "Lacon" (1825)

To  spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only  at 
the  price  of total detachment, which excludes  the  ability  to 
experience happiness.
ERICH FROMM "Man for Himself" (1947)

Reserve  is an artificial qulity that is developed in most of  us 
but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM "The Summing Up" (1938)

What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and 
lose his own soul.
BIBLE "Mark 8:36" 

No bird soars to high, if he soars with his own wings.
WILLIAM BLAKE "Proverbs of Hell" (1790)

He who does not hope to win has already lost.
JOSE JOAQUIN OLMEDO (1968)

The organization of American society is an interlocking system of 
semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously 
unenlightened, mislead by a mass media notoriously phony.
PAUL GOODMAN "The Community of Scholars" (1962)

In America, with all it's evils and faults, you can still reach 
through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether 
that sun is rising or setting for our country.
DICK GREGORY "Nigger" (1964)

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at 
driver's license age than at voting age.
MARSHALL McLUHAN "Understanding Media" (1964)

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat 
some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make 
you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an 
American.
MALCOLM X (1965)

We Americans are the lavishest and showiest and most luxury-
loving people on the earth; and at our masthead we fly one true 
and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen.
MARK TWAIN "Diplomatic Pay and Clothes" (1899)

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents 
obey their children.
DUKE OF WINDSOR (1957)

A man who prides himself on his ancestry is like the potato 
plant, the best part of which is underground.
SPANISH PROVERB

I know of no more disagreeable situation than to be left feeling 
generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at.
FRANK MOORE COLBY "The Colby Essays" (1926)

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
MARK TWAIN (1894)

Cat, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be 
kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
AMBROSE BIERCE "The Devil's Dictionary" (1881-1911)

The latin proverb, homo homini lupus - man is a wolf to man - is 
a libel on the wolf, which is a gentle animal with other wolves.
GEOFFREY GORER (1966)

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have 
treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that 
beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they 
would depict the Devil in human form.
WILLIAM RALPH INGE "The Idea of Progress" (1922)

There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of 
a truly faithful dog.
KONRAD Z. LORENZ "King Solomon's Ring" (1952)

Of all God's cretures there is only one that cannot be made the 
slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed 
with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the 
cat.
MARK TWAIN (1935)

An archeologist is the best husband any women can have: the older 
she gets, the more interested he is in her.
AGATHA CHRISTIE (1954)

Just because we can do something on a computer doesn't mean that we ought to.
SEYMOUR PAPERT

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
UNKNOWN

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
STARSKY AND HUTCH

Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
BO DIDDLEY

The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human
mind to correlate all its contents.
H P LOVECRAFT

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
KEN KESEY

It's not the size of the ship, it's the size of the waves.
LITTLE RICHARD

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
SIGMUND FREUD

When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one
I've never tried before.
MAE WEST

Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
BILLY ROSE

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
KARL MARX
If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of
it ... it would have been much better.
KARL MARX'S MOTHER

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the
largest shopping center in the world?
RICHARD M NIXON

Anything anybody can say about America is true.
EMMETT GROGAN

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land
in Los Angeles.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.
SPIRO AGNEW

If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
RONALD REAGAN

The superior man is troubled by the limits of his ability; he is not
troubled by the fact that men do not recognize his ability.
CONFUCIUS, "Analects"

Every man who can be a first-rate something... has no right to be a
fifth-rate something; for a fifth-rate something is no better than
a first-rate nothing.
J. G. HOLLAND, "Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects"

It is a great ability to be able to hide one's ability.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, "Maxims"

They can because they think they can.
VIRGIL, "Aeneid"

Just as it weakens enmities, a long separation often revives frienships.
MARCEL PROUST, "The Past Recaptured"

Absense lessens moderate passions and increases great ones just as the wind 
extinguishes a candle and stirs up a fire.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, "Maxims"

Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
CHARLES DICKENS, "David Copperfield"

Nothing under the sun is accidental.
G. E. LESSING, "Emilia Galotti"

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without 
action.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, "Lothair"

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead 
also.
JAMES II

Although men flatter themselves with their great deeds, they are less often 
the result of a great design than the result of chance.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, "Maxims"

However magnificent an action may be, it should not be considered great unless 
it is the result of a great purpose.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, "Maxims"

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely 
action.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, "Among My Books"

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing 
familiar with its object.
JOSEPH ADDISON, "The Spectator"

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, "Poor Richard's Almanac"

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who want it the most always like it the 
least.
LORD CHESTERFIELD, "Letters to his Son"

Advice is not disliked because it is advice; but because so few people know 
how to give it.
LEIGH HUNT, "The Indicator"

It is poor advice that cannot be altered.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS, "Maxims"

I love everything that's old -- old friends, old times, old manners, old 
books, old wine.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, "She Stoops to Conquer"

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings 
wisdom.
H. L. MENCKEN, "Prejudices: Third Series"

Old age has a great sense of peace and freedom.  When the passions relax their 
hold you have escaped, as Sophocles said, not from one master, but many.
PLATO, "The Republic"

Old age is sad not because our joys have stopped but because our hopes are 
ended.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER, "Titan"

The youth of America is their oldest tradition.  It has been going on now for 
three hundred years.
OSCAR WILDE, "A Woman of No Importance"

One who boasts of his ancestry praises another.
SENECA, "Hercules Furens"

I would rather make my name than inherit it.
W. M. THACKERAY, "The Virginians"

Anger as soon as fed is dead;
'Tis starving makes it fat.
EMILY DICKINSON, "Selected Poems"

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.
EPHESIANS IV

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, "Poor Richard's Almanac"

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him 
and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.
SAMUEL BUTLER, "Note-Books"

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
SHAKESPEARE, "Coriolanus"

A good appearance is a silent recommendation.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS, "Maxims"

It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS, "The Barber of Seville"

The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten.
CALVIN COOLIDGE, "Acceptance Speech (1920)"

Medals and and speeches and victories are nothing to them anymore.  They died 
and others lived and nobody knows why it is so.
ERNIE PYLE, "Here Is Your War"

Art is long, and time is fleeting.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, "A Psalm of Life"

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's Heaven for?
ROBERT BROWNING, "Andrea del Sarto"

No one has ever died an atheist.
PLATO, "Laws"

Who hath not served cannot command.
JOHN FLORIO, "First Fruites"

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security and not 
progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, "Among My Books"

If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
MATTHEW XV

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot conscientiously be regarded as a 
thing of beauty.
MARK TWAIN, "Answers to Correspondents"

Beauty perishes in life but not in art.
LEONARDO DA VINCE, "Notebooks"

What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational 
attempts to justify our instincts.
THOMAS H. HUXLEY, "On the Natural Inequality of Man"

People believe nothing so firmly as what they least understand.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, "Essays"

Countless advertising pitches on TV every day prove that the American body is 
hopelessly vile.  We would all do well to get rid of it.
BROOKS ATKINSON, "Tuesdays and Fridays"

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
ALEXANDER POPE, "An Essay on Criticism"

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed 
and digested.
FRANCIS BACON, "Essays"

The pen is mightier than the sword.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON, "Richelieu"

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
SHAKESPEARE, "Hamlet"

It is a quality of great minds to say much in a few words; it is a quality of 
small minds to use many words to say nothing.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, "Maxims"

Who likes not his business, his business likes not him.
WILLIAM HAZLITT, "English Proverbs"

Whatsoever a man soeth, that shall he also reap.
GALATIANS VI

The better part of valor is discretion.
SHAKESPEARE, "Henry IV"

Assasination is the extreme form of censorship.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, "The Rejected Statement, Part I"

The clatter of a changing world is not pleasant, and those who have enjoyed 
the comforts and protection of the old order may be shocked and unhappy when 
they behold the vigorous young builders of a new world sweeping away their 
time-honored antiquities.
HELEN KELLER, "Midstream"

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
ALEXANDER POPE, "An Essay on Criticism"

Integrity is applauded -- and starves.
JUVENAL, "Satires"

It is in trivial matters, when he is off his guard, that a man reveals his 
character most truly.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, "Parerga und Paralipomena"

To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
SHAKESPEARE, "Hamlet"

In charity there is no excess.
FRANCIS BACON, "Essays"

He gives twice that gives soon... he will soon be called to give again.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, "Poor Richard's Almanac"

A man is sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he 
has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of being thought to have but little.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, "Autobiography"

The only persons permitted to punish children should be persons who love them.
MARLENE DIETRICH, "ABC"

The degree of a nation's civilization is marked by its disregard for the 
necessities of existence.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, "Our Betters"

Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the steam engine 
and the electric telegraph.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, "Maxims for Revolutionists"

One half of the world must sweat and groan that the other half may dream.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, "Hyperion"

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom 
give up their privileges voluntarily.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., "Letter from Birmingham City Jail"

One man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a wooden 
ladle.
JAMES BALDWIN, "Nobody Knows My Name"

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a woman's head-dress.
ADDISON, "The Spectator"

One should not argue with a woman about the necessity of owning a mink.
MARLENE DIETRICH, "ABC"

The facts of the matter are that the Soviets and ourselves give wholly 
different meanings to the same words... war, peace, democracy, and popular 
will.
JOHN F. KENNEDY (after meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna, 1961)

You know a Communist's whole life work is based on complaint of how everything 
is done....  So if they ever get their country running good they will defeat 
their own cause.
WILL ROGERS, "Autobiography"

What men call... good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a 
litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, "Journal"

Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first.  It is our 
system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and 
hatreds of his competitors.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, "Representative Man"

Fishes live in the sea... as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little 
ones.
SHAKESPEARE, "Pericles"

I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their 
comfort about with them.
GEORGE ELIOT, "The Mill on the Floss"

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that somebody may be looking.
H. L. MENCKEN, "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

A clear conscience needeth no excuse, nor feareth any accusation.
LIVY, "History of Rome"

Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask instead what you can do for your country.
JOHN F. KENNEDY (Inauguration Speech, 1961)

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, "Poor Richard's Almanac"

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.
JONATHAN SWIFT, "A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding"

Conversation is a reflection of the mind.  A man is as he talks.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS, "Maxims"

True security lies in mutual responsibility rather than in separate individual 
endeavors.
FEODOR DOSTOEVSKY, "The Brothers Karamazov"

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self- 
sufficiency....  Dependence on society teaches him the lesson of humanity.
GANDHI, "Young India (1929)"

We Americans, probably the world's champion sentimentalizers about nature, are 
at one and the same time probably the world's most voracious and disrespectful 
destroyers of wild and rural countyside.
JANE JACOBS, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"

He that is valiant and dare fight,
Though drubbed, can lose no honor by't.
SAMUEL BUTLER, "Hudibras"

True courage lies in the middle, between cowardice and recklessness.
CERVANTES, "Don Quixote"

One cannot answer for his courage if he has never been in danger.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, "Maxims"

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it 
suits him, a coward.
EDGAR ALLAN POE, "Marginalia"

I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of 
danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN, "Memoirs"

I never met a man I didn't like.
WILL ROGERS

I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.
NATHAN HALE

The worst cowardice is to know what is right and to fail to do it.
CONFUCIUS, "Analects"

The timid man calls himself cautious.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS, "Maxims"

Take not away the life you cannot give:
For all things have an equal right to live.
DRYDEN, "Pythagorean Phil"

A thief passes for a gentleman when stealing has made him rich.
THOMAS FULLER, "Gnomologia"

Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.
SHAKESPEARE, "The Merchant of Venice"

You do wrong if you praise, but worse if you criticize, what you do not really 
understand.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, "Notebooks"

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
JONATHAN SWIFT, "Thoughts on Various Subjects"

Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, 
biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or at 
the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton"

While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance
and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
SAMUEL JOHNSON, "The Plays of Shakespeare"

He who would write and can't write can surely review.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, "A Fable for Critics"

When will the time come when public opinion will tolerate no longer any 
popular amusements which depend on the ill-treatment of animals!
ALBERT SCHWEITZER, "Out of My Life and Thought"

I must be cruel, only to be kind.
SHAKESPEARE, "Hamlet"

Prevention is better than cure.
CHARLES DICKENS, "Martin Chuzzlewit"

Doing nothing is often the best remedy.
HIPPROCRATES, "Aphorisms"

Time is the best of medicines.
OVID, "Remedia Amoris"

Some remedies are worse than the disease itself.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS, "Maxims"

Curiosity is really vanity....  We never take a sea voyage only for the 
pleasure of seeing; we always hope to tell about it.
BLAISE PASCAL, Pensees

Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools.
JOHN RAY, "English Proverbs"

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to 
see a bad one.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, "Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit"

Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took revenge by speaking 
ill of it.
VOLTAIRE, "Zadig"

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.
SAMUEL JOHNSON, (in Boswell's "Life of Johnson")

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
SHAKESPEARE, "Julius Caesar"

He whom the gods love dies young, while he has his health, his senses, and 
his understanding.
PLAUTUS, "Bacchides"

The bee that hath honey in her mouth hath a sting in her tail.
JOHN LILY, "Euphues"

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
LORD CHESTERFIELD, "Letters to his Son"

The man who can right himself by a vote will seldom resort to a musket.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, "The American Democrat"

It would be dangerous delusion if our confidence in the men of our choice 
should silence our fears for the safety of our rights.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, "Kentucky Resolutions"

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic, we are 
praising it; consequently, the defenders of every king of regime claim that it 
is a democracy.
GEORGE ORWELL, "Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays"

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the 
corrupt few.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, "Maxims for Revolutionists"

We ought to aim at reducing our desires rather than increasing our income.
ARISTOTLE, "Politics"

There are two tragedies in life... One is not to get your heart's desire.  The 
other is to get it.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, "Man and Superman"

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, "Don Quixote"

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.
RAPLH WALDO EMERSON, "Clubs"

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion 
that makes horceraces.
MARK TWAIN, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"

I begin to suspect that a man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, "The House of Seven Gables"

Doubts are more cruel than the very worst truths.
MOILERE, "Le Misanthropes"

Marriage: a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, 
making in all, two.
AMBROSE BIERCE

A little neglect may breed great mischief... for want of a nail the shoe was 
lost; for want of a show the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was 
lost.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, "Poor Richard's Almanac"

All is well that ends well.
JOHN HEYWOOD

Happy is the nation without a history.
CESARE BONESANA, Marchese di Beccaria

First comes fodder, then comes morality.
BERTOLT BRECHT

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his 
friends.
ST. JOHN

In works of labour, or of skill,
    I would be too busy, too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
    For idle hands to do.
ISAAC WATTS

Help yourself, and heaven will help you.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE

I owe much; I have nothing.  I give the rest to the poor.
FRANCOIS RABELAIS

Imagination is as good as many voyages -- and how much cheaper!
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended in Action alone.
THOMAS CARLYLE

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The happiest life consists in ignorance,
Before you learn to grieve and to rejoice.
SOPHOCLES

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... ?
SHAKESPEARE

Progress has been much more general than retrogression.
CHARLES DARWIN 

Whatsoever is in the heart of the sober man, is in the mouth of the drunkard.
JOHN LYLY, "Euphues"

The aim of education should be to teach the child to think, not what to think.
JOHN DEWEY, "School and Society"

'Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
ALEXANDER POPE, "Moral Essays"

A common fear brings even enemies together.
ARISTOTLE, "Politics"

A man has no greater enemy than himself.
CICERO, "Ad Atticum"

If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both 
enjoy, they become enemies.
THOMAS HOBBES, "Leviathan"

Not many men have the moral strength to be happy in a friend's good fortune 
without a trace of envy.
AESCHYLUS, "Agamemnon"

The doctrine that all men are ... or have been, at any time, free and equal, 
is an utterly baseless fiction.
THOMAS H. HUXLEY, "On the Natural Inequality of Man"

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal....
THOMAS JEFFERSON, "The Delcaration of Independence"

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
GEORGE ORWELL, "Animal Farm"

Non-cooperation with evil is as much of a duty as is cooperation with good.
MOHANDIS K. GHANDI (in Louis Fischer, "The Life of Mahatma Ghandi")

Growing old is mandatory.... Growing up is optional.
UNKNOWN