A.Word.A.Day : The magic and music of words.

The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. -Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering. -Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed

because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth.-Edward De Bono, consultant, writer, and speaker (1933- )

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison, fourth US president (1751-1836)

Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)

True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive. -Mignon McLaughlin, author (1915-)

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal that has the true religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period. -Nicholas Sparks, author (1965- )

He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it. -Henry Thomas Buckle, historian (1821-1862)

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. -Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. -William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994)

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to

be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity. -Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and writer (1884-1962)

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. -Theodore Rubin, psychiatrist and writer (1923- )

Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. -Ludwig Feuerbach, philosopher (1804-1872)

I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it. -Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots. -Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

Testing can show the presence of errors, but not their absence. -Edsger Dijkstra, computer scientist (1930-2002)

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. -Bill Watterson, comic strip artist (1958- ), in his comic strip Calvin & Hobbes

Rare is the person who can weigh the faults of others without putting his thumb on the scales. -Byron J. Langenfeld

Once upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor's son. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other child. -Lao-tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE)

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. -Anne Lamott, writer (1954- )

My life is my message. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

It does not require many words to speak the truth. -Chief Joseph, native American leader (1840-1904)

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. -Ralph Waldo Emerson,writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. -Robert M. Sapolsky,neuroscientist and author (1957- )

The power to command frequently causes failure to think. -Barbara Tuchman, author and historian (1912-1989)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. -Robert T. Pirsig, author and philosopher (1928- )

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. -J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

If you want to work on your art, work on your life. -Anton Chekhov, short-story writer and dramatist (1860-1904)

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety. -Joseph Joubert,essayist (1754-1824)

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.-Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. -Dave Barry, author and columnist (1947- )

Lower your voice and strengthen your argument. -Lebanese proverb

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.-John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it. -Don Marquis, humorist and poet (1878-1937)

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)

A library is thought in cold storage. -Herbert Samuel, politician and diplomat (1870-1963)

Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. -Flannery O'Connor, writer (1925-1964)

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. -Robert King Merton, sociologist (1910-2003)

It is as easy to dream a book as it is hard to write one. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)

True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess. -Louis Nizer, lawyer (1902-1994)

If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral. -Samuel P. Ginder, US navy captain

I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself. -Pietro Aretino, satirist and dramatist (1492-1556)

The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for centuries surely stands in a lonely place. -Gary Zukav, author (1942- )

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. -Hans Hofmann, painter (1880-1966)

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. -Thomas Pynchon, writer (1937- )

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. -Graham Greene, novelist and journalist (1904-1991)

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. -Rwandan Proverb

Loneliness... is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man. -Madame de Stael, writer (1766-1817)

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor and political activist (1928- )

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. –Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities...still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. -Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882)

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border. -Pablo Casals, cellist, conductor, and composer (1876-1973)

There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth. –Chinese proverb

Let the gods avenge themselves. -Roman law maxim, on blasphemy

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. -H. Jackson Brown, Jr., writer

Good deeds are the best prayer. -Serbian proverb

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. –Thomas Carlyle, writer (1795-1881)

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. -Lord Chesterfield, statesman and writer (1694-1773)

Courage without conscience is a wild beast. -Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)

Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)

The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all. –Pablo Casals, cellist, conductor, and composer (1876-1973)

If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. -Carl Sagan, astronomer and author (1934-1996)

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. –Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882)

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. –George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason. -Thomas Carlyle, historian and essayist (1795-1881)

What you do is of little significance; but it is very important that you do it. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. –Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

Patience is also a form of action. -Auguste Rodin, sculptor (1840-1917)

I and the public know. / What all schoolchildren learn. / Those to whom evil is done. / Do evil in return -W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973)

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. -Ralph Waldo Emerson , writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. -Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882)

A bit of perfume always clings to the hand that gives the rose. –Chinese proverb

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven. -Edward De Bono, consultant, writer, and speaker (1933- )

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. -Susan B Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906)

Hatred - the anger of the weak. -Alphonse Daudet, writer (1840-1897)

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. -Richard Francis Burton, explorer and writer (1821-1890)

A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak. -James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground. -Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, editor and orator (1817-1895)

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members. -Pearl S. Buck, Nobelist novelist (1892-1973)

All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean merges into the drop. -Kabir, reformer, poet (late 15th century)

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints. -Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter. -James Earl Jones, actor (1931- )

In the faces of men and women I see God. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer. -Saadi, poet (c. 1200 AD)

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. –Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. -Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. –Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

The highest exercise of charity is charity towards the uncharitable. -J.S. Buckminster, clergyman and editor (1797-1812)

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean merges into the drop. -Kabir, reformer, poet (late 15th century)

Home is not where you live but where they understand you. –Christion Morgenstern, writer (1871-1914)

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)

Those who wish to sing always find a song. -Swedish proverb

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. -Harper Lee, writer (1926- )

There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)

To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, 'There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.' –Ansel Adams, photographer (1902-1984)

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. -Joseph Addison, writer (1672-1719)

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. -Dalai Lama

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give. -P.D. James, writer (1920- )

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door. -Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887)

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. -Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890)

The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.  -W. Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965)

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak. -Michel De Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind. -Malayan Proverb

If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. -Voltaire, philosopher and writer (1694-1778)

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations--such is a pleasure beyond compare. -Kenko Yoshida, essayist (1283-1352)

Assumptions are the termites of relationships. -Henry Winkler, actor (1945-

No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. -Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)

Some fellows pay a compliment like they expected a receipt. -Kin Hubbard, humorist (1868-1930)

I like not only to be loved, but to be told that I am loved; the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become. -Louis Pasteur, chemist and bacteriologist (1822-1895)

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? –Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president (1809-1865)

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)

If a triangle could speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. -Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677)

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world. –Leo Buscaglia, author, speaker and professor (1924-1998)

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." - H.L.Mencken

The hardest person to awaken is the one already awake. -Tagalog saying

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. -Alfred Hitchcock, film-maker (1899-1980)

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. -James McNeill Whistler, painter (1834-1903)

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. -Lewis Carroll, mathematician and writer (1832-1898)

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim. -James Reston, journalist (1909-1995)

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. -Hanlon's Razor

People hate as they love, unreasonably. -William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863)

"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong" ---Peter T. McIntyre

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)

What is art but a way of seeing? -Thomas Berger, writer (1924- )

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)

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

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

No two persons ever read the same book. -Edmund Wilson, critic (1895-1972)

There are two kinds of fool. One says, “This is old, and therefore good.” And one says, “This is new, and therefore better.” -John Brunner, science fiction writer (1934-1995)

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering. -Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

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- )

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1889-1951)

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)

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea , at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. -Saint Augustine (354-430)

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. -Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat, author, and lecturer (1884-1962)

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)

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet and artist (1883-1931)

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

God has no religion. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -William Pitt, British prime-minister (1759-1806)

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” Johann von Goethe

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. –Japanese Proverb

The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. -Hungarian proverb

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.  Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885)

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet and artist (1883-1931)

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.  Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty.  Jefferson Davis, confederate president (1808-1889)

When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

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)

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation. -Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887)

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. -Gloria Steinem, women’s rights activist, editor (1934- )

So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs. -Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850-1919)

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators. -Albert Camus, writer and philosopher (1913-1960)

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? -Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and author (1712-1778)

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.  Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet and artist (1883-1931)

If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot. -John Bunyan, preacher and author (1628-1688)

Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914)

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.  Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. -Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1867-1959)

The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck. -Louis-Hector Berlioz, composer (1803-1869)

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. -Voltaire, philosopher (384-322 BCE)

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.  William Butler Yeats, poet, dramatist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)

Never confuse motion with action. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914)

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides. -Rita Mae Brown, writer (1944- )

Luck never gives; it only lends. -Swedish proverb

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -Carl Sandburg, poet (1878-1967)

Every word was once a poem. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

Simplicity doesn’t mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don’t want to have what you don’t need. -Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990)

Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than “try to be a little kinder.” -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

Language is not neutral. It is not merely a vehicle which carries ideas. It is itself a shaper of ideas. -Dale Spender, writer (1943- )

Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of the billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things within that enormous immensity. -Wernher von Braun, rocket engineer (1912-1977)

Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.  Leonardo Da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519)

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (1928- )

We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies? -Edward Young, poet (1683-1765)

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out - it’s the grain of sand in your shoe. -Robert Service, writer (1874-1958)

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. -Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same. -Heraclitus, philosopher (Ca. 540-470 BCE)

There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed. –Buddha

When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him. -George Bernard, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take. -C.  Northcote Parkinson, author and historian (1909-1993)

It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect (1867-1959)

If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and philosopher (1772-1834)

A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.  Bret Harte, author (1836-1902)

Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.  Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)

Every saint has a past and every sinner a future. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937)

To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

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

William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (1564-1616)

We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom. -Michel Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. -Will Durant, historian (1885-1981)

You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. -Navajo Proverb

Morals are an acquirement—like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis—no man is born with them.—Mark Twain

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.—Will Durant

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong.—Robert

Louis Stevenson

Money, and not morality, is the principle of commercial nations.—Thomas

Jefferson

Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality: They discourse like angels but they live like men.—Samuel Johnson

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.—Friedrich W. Nietzsche

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.—Albert Schweitzer

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.—Immanuel Kant

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives—of approving of some and disapproving of others.—Charles Darwin

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it. -Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. -Anais Nin

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. -Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. -G.K. Chesterton

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. -Alice Walker (1944-)

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. -William Arthur Ward, American newspaper editor, writer

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge

He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt. –Seneca

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one.  Thomas Carlyle

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Just remember-when you think all is lost, the future remains. -Bob Goddard

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us. -Epicurus, Greek philosopher (341-270 BC)

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. -Paul Tournier

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts. -Pascal (1623-1662)

He who allows oppression, shares the crime. -Erasmus Darwin, British physician, scientist, reformer, and poet; grandfather of Charles Darwin [The Botanic Garden] (1731-1802)

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.  Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer (1899-1986)

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.  Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian writer (1862-1949)

Since light travels faster than sound, isn’t that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak? -Steven Wright

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away. -Arthur Helps (1813-1875)

Imagination is the eye of the soul. -Joubert (1754-1824)

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.  Ouida, pen name of Marie Louise de la Ramee (1839-1908)

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.  Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

The refusal to choose is a form of choice; disbelief is a form of belief.  Frank Barron

You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched. -Phaedrus (fl. 25 A.D.)

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness. -Chuang-tzu (B.C. 350)

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. -Henry David Thoreau

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. -Samuel Johnson

The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth. -G.C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be. -Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

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. -Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910)

The way I see it, if you want rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. Dolly Parton

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward. Arthur Koestler

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805)

If words are to enter men’s minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men’s defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. -J.B. Phillips

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire - then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. –Robert Fulghum

Do not praise yourself / not slander others: / There are still many days to go / and any thing could happen. –Kabir

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future. -Sydney J. Harris

The lie that exalts us is dearer than a thousand sober truths. –Alexander Pushkin

To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life. -Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)

Man: a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal. -Alexander Hamilton

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity. -George Bernard Shaw

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. -Henry David Thoreau

Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it. -Harold S. Hulbert

The funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t. -Gibby Hayes

There is a point beyond which even justice becomes unjust. -Sophocles, Electra

To see things in the seed, that is genius. -Lao-tzu

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. -Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968)

Noise proves nothing—often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. -Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910)

For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted. -Jean Paul Richter

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. –Plato

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. -Robert Pirsig

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject. -Marcus Aurelius

He has no hope who never had a fear. -William Cowper (1731-1800)

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) [The Devil’s Dictionary]

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.  Voltaire

The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them. -Antoine De Saint-Exupery [Wind, Sand, Stars

God is a comic playing to an audience that’s afraid to laugh. -Voltaire (1694-1778)

There are two kinds of light—the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. -James Thurber

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. –Cicero

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. -Carl W. Buechner

The more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics. –Albert Einstein

One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer. -Stephen Hawking

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. -William Somerset Maugham

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld

To have great poets, there must be great audiences. -Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us. -Peter De Vries, novelist (1910-1993)

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. -Immanuel Kant, philosopher (1724-1804)

A Word A Day