INSPIRATIONAL
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
--William Blake
The weak have no place here, in this life or any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.
--Swami Vivekananda
I, God, am in your midst. Whoever knows me can never fall, not in the heights, not in the depths, nor in the breadths, for I am love, which the vast expanses of evil can never still.
-- Hildegard of Bingen
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. --Winston Churchill
There is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure. --Winston Churchill
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. --Winston Churchill
Prayer is a song of the soul, and the soul wants to sing.-- George King
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.-- Mark Twain
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.-- Arthur C. Clarke: Technology and the Future
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.--Albert Einstein: Science and Religion
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. I believe in the latter.--Albert Einstein
Move and live; stand still and die. --George King
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.-- Albert Einstein
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we subconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.--Marianne Williamson: A Return to Love.
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to enhance all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.-- Albert Einstein
Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe - a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different of the religiosity of someone more naive.-- Albert Einstein
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.-- G. K. Chesterton
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan. --Martin Luther King
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. --Martin Luther King
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. --Martin Luther King
Segregation is the adultery of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality. --Martin Luther King
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. --Martin Luther King
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. --Martin Luther King
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. --Martin Luther King
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. --Martin Luther King
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. --Martin Luther King
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. --Martin Luther King
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. --Martin Luther King
LOVE
Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell. Katherine Hepburn
Somewhere there was once a Flower, a Stone, a Crystal, a Queen, a King, a Palace, a Lover and his Beloved, and this was long ago, on an Island somewhere in the ocean 5,000 years ago....Such is Love, the Mystic Flower of the Soul. This is the Center, the Self. -- Carl Jung
And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. -- Kahlil Gibran
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What greater thing is there for two human souls that to feel that they are joined... to strengthen each other... to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.--George Eliot
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God." And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet
There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.-- Mother Teresa
The only gift is a portion of thyself.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.--Lao Tzu
To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.---
Anne-Sophie Swetchine (1782-1857), Russian-French author
There is no instinct like that of the heart. -- Lord Byron
Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own home. Give love to your children, to a wife or husband, to a next-door neighbor.-- Mother Teresa
Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.-- Elbert Hubbard
The best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts, Of kindness and of love. -- William Wordsworth
To laugh often and love much... to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give one's self... this is to have succeeded.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
PHILOSOPHICAL
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.-- Winston Churchill
A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake. --Confucius: Wisdom and Ignorance
A smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.-- Unknown
No one really knows enough to be a pessimist.--Norman Cousins
How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of goodwill! In such a place even I would be an ardent patriot.--Albert Einstein
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.--Isaac Asimov
If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.-- African Proverb
You can pray to the head of a sardine if you believe in it enough.--Japanese proverb
The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.-- Leonardo da Vinci
Reject hatred without hating.--Mary Baker Eddy
The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.--Freidrich Nietzche
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.--George Bernard Shaw
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.--Thomas Jefferson
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. --Winston Churchill
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. --Winston Churchill
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. --Winston Churchill
I never worry about action, but only inaction. --Winston Churchill
It's a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right. --Winston Churchill
Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it. --Winston Churchill
It's no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. --Winston Churchill
Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. --Winston Churchill
Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. --Winston Churchill
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. --Winston Churchill
The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself. --Winston Churchill
The price of greatness is responsibility. --Winston Churchill
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day. --Winston Churchill
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. --Winston Churchill
Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent. --Winston Churchill
When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened. --Winston Churchill
WISDOM
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
-- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
-Benjamin Franklin
"Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything." - George Bernard Shaw
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. -
Mark Twain
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
- Herman Hesse
"If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of Energy, Frequency, and Vibration" - Dr. Nikola Tesla
"Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter." -Einstein
He who cares for the opinion of the multitude will never soar above the crowd.
-- Letters from the Masters of Wisdom, Helena P. Blavatsky
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.-- Cicero
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
-- Martin Fischer
The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. --Heraclitus, 535-475 BC (approximately), Philosopher and Author
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table. -- D.H. Lawrence
If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt.It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics. -- Gurdjieff
Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known to us in nature. -- St. Augustine.
Sanity is, in its essence, nothing more than the ability to live in harmony with nature's laws.
-- Freeman Dyson, "Disturbing The Universe
WIT
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. --Winston Churchill.
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. --Winston Churchill
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." --Clarence Darrow
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. --William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. --Groucho Marx
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. --Mark Twain
I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend. . . If you have one. --Oscar Wilde
Churchill's response: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend
second, if there is one."
I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here. --Winston Churchill
He is a self-made man and worships his creator. --Stephen Bishop
I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial. --John Bright
He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others. --Irvin S. Cobb
He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. -Samuel Johnson
He had delusions of adequacy. --Paul Keating
Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it? --Walter Kerr
His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork. --Mark Twain
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. --Mae West
Oscar Wilde Lady Astor once remarked to Winston Churchill at a Dinner Party,"Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee!" Winston replied, "Madam if I were your husband I would drink it!"
Lady Astor also once remarked to Winston Churchill at a Dinner Party, "Sir Winston, you're drunk!" To which, Winston replied, "Yes, Madam, I am. And you're ugly! But in the morning, I shall be sober. And you shall still be ugly!"
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. Anonymous
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? - Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. - Oscar Wilde
Biography lends to death a new terror. - Oscar Wilde
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde
Either those curtains go or I do. - Oscar Wilde
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
- Oscar Wilde
He hadn't a single redeeming vice. - Oscar Wilde
I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible. - Oscar Wilde
I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. - Oscar Wilde
I have nothing to declare but my genius. - Oscar Wilde
I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. - Oscar Wilde
I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying. - Oscar Wilde
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. - Oscar Wilde
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. - Oscar Wilde
If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn't deserve to have any.
- Oscar Wilde
Imagination is a quality given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humaor is provided to console him from what he is. - Oscar Wilde
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. - Oscar Wilde
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. - Oscar Wilde
Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success. - Oscar Wilde
Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace. - Oscar Wilde
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. - Oscar Wilde
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. - Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. - Oscar Wilde
People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately. - Oscar Wilde
Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered. - Oscar Wilde
The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk. - Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. - Oscar Wilde
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. - Oscar Wilde
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. - Oscar Wilde
There is no sin except stupidity. - Oscar Wilde
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
- Oscar Wilde
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. - Oscar Wilde
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. - Oscar Wilde
About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable. - Oscar Wilde
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. - Oscar Wilde
There are two theories about how to win an argument with a woman. Neither one works. Anon.
Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you judge them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. Anon.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Oscar Wilde
Either those curtains go or I do. Oscar Wilde (his last words)
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.--Mark Twain
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific. Jane Wagner
Any time you think you have influence, try ordering around someone else's dog.-- Unknown
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous.-- Peter Benchley
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.--Winston Churchill
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.--Oscar Wilde
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.--Winston Churchill
I do not like noise, unless I make it myself.--French proverb
I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.-- Jane Austen
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.-- Oscar Wilde
Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand.-- Cardinal de Retz
Be careful about reading health books. You might die of a misprint.-- Mark Twain
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.--Mother Teresa
There is a vast difference between the savage and civilized man, but it is never apparent to their wives until after breakfast. -- Helen Rowland
Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it. -- Maurice Chevalier
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me most are those I do understand.--Mark Twain
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.--Abraham Lincoln
Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to. -- Mark Twain
Most people stumble over the truth now and then, but they usually manage to pick themselves up and go on, anyway. -Winston Churchill
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -Winston Churchill
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. -Winston Churchill
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen. -Winston Churchill
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. -Winston Churchill
He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about. -Winston Churchill
I am an optimist. It does not seem to much use being anything else. -Winston Churchill
I am easily satisfied with the very best. -Winston Churchill
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. -Winston Churchill
I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks. -Winston Churchill
If I was your wife Sir, I'd poison you! Madam, if you were my wife, I'd let you! -Winston Churchill
Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending - sit down. -Winston Churchill
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true. -Winston Churchill
There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you. -Winston Churchill
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. -Winston Churchill
We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. -Winston Churchill
Working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays are grudged as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation.-Winston Churchill
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him out to the public. -Winston Churchill
