Some of my favorite quotes...

Embattling Quotes

-      “He knew that if he died, it would be while trying to escape.” – Amistad

-      “A voice in his head pushed him forward. ‘Free. Get Free.” – Amistad

-      “There in no fury like the rage of an ex-slave.” – Amistad

-      “He glowed in the flame of battle.  He was a true warrior.” – Amistad.

-      “To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” - Elbert Hubbard

-      “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world.  For indeed, that’s all who ever have.” – Margaret Mead

-      “Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions.  You may have a heart of gold—but so does a boiled egg.” – Anon.

-      “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” – Albert Einstein

-      “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.  I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection.  ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” – Thomas Paine

-      “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” – Henry Ford

-      “The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost

-      “I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo

-      “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” – Helen Keller

-      “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr

-      “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller

-      “Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.” – William Shakespeare

-      “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln

-      “A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.  Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.” – Sydney Smith

-      “We have met the enemy and it is us.” – Walt Kelly

-      “He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt.  He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him a spinal cord would suffice.” – Albert Einstein

-      “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

-      “Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost

-      “Today, if you are not confused, you are just not thinking clearly.” – U. Peter

-      “Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.” – Kin Hubbard

-      “Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.” – Ansel Adams

-      “Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend an acquaintance or a stranger.” – Franklin Jones

-      “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” – William Shakespeare

-      “All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.” – Orison Swett Marden

-      “I slept and dreamed that life was beauty.  I awoke—and found that life was duty.” (How true this is for many.) – Ellen Hooper

-      “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” – Anon.

-      “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

-      “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

-      “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” – Albert Einstein

-      “True friends stab you in the front.” – Oscar Wilde

-      “I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for…” – Thornton Wilder

-      “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

-      “Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.” – Herodotus

-      “To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it—who can say this is not greatness?” – William Makepeace Thackeray

-      “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” – Ursula K. LeGuin

-      “The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.” – Walter Lippmann

-      “I hear and I forget.  I see and remember.  I do and I understand.” – Confucius

-      “The only thing you will take with you when you’re gone is what you leave behind.” – John Allston

-      “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it, Almighty God!  I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” – Patrick Henry

-      “Talk less—say more.” – Swedish Proverb

-      “The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.” – Joan Borysenko

-      “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” – Robert Byrne

-      “It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

-      “What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

-      “The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” – William James

-      “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” – W.M. Lewis

-      “Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.” – Johann Won Schiller

-      “There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.” – George Washington

-      “Men seldom give pleasure where they are not pleased themselves.” Samuel Johnson

-      “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.” – James Montgomery

-      “The fewer words the better prayer.” – Martin Luther

-      “God hears no more than the heart speaks; and if the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf.” – Thomas Brooks

-      “What is pride?  A whizzing rocket that would emulate a star.” – William Wordsworth

-      “All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.” – Adlai Stevenson

-      “The prophet and the martyr do not see the hooting throng.  Their eyes are fixed on the eternities.” – Benjamin N. Cardozo

-      “Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference, which is, at least, half infidelity.” – Edmund Burke

-      “It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him.” – Joseph Joubert

-      “Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God himself.” – Miguelde Unamuno y Jugo

-      “The world is not a prison house but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.” – Edwin Arlington Robinson

-      “A [so called] Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to do on Monday.” – Thomas Ybarra

-      “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” – G.K. Chesterton

-      “Life is the risk we cannot refuse.” – Mason Cooley

-      “To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.” – Corneille Pierre

-      “In battle it is the cowards who run the most risk; bravery is the rampart of defense.” – Gaius Sallustius Crispus

-      “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

-      “We conquer not in any brilliant fashion we conquer by continuing.” – George Matheson

-      “There are souls in this world which have the gift of finding joy everywhere and of leaving it behind them when they go.” – Fredrick Faber

-      “Half of our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.” Anon.

-      “We must get beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.” – John Hope Franklin

-      “The longest journey is the journey inward.” – Dag Hammarskjold

-      “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” – John D. Rockefeller

-      “But where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.” –  Sir Thomas Brown

-      “Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson

-      “The pen is the tongue of the mind.” – Cervantes

-      “Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.” – J.B. Priestley

-      “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” – James Baldwin

-      “Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.” – David Grayson

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

-      “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” – Charles Dickens

-      “The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.” – Jonathan Swift

-      “We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear.  Although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable, we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.” – Randolph Bourne

-      “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

-      “To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.” – Charles Caleb Colton

-      “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

-      “They never fail who die in a great cause.” – George Gordon Byron

-      “Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence.   This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.” – Sloan Wilson

-      “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” – William Feather

-      “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch

-      “The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” – Anon.

-      “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” – Socrates

-      “Wisdom begins in wonder.” – Socrates

-      “Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.” – Margaret Fuller

-      “Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be a part of.” – Geri Weitzman

-      “If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we’re heading.” – Chinese proverb

-      “Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” – Chinese Proverb

-      “Big wind, lotta dust, no rain.” – American Indian after attending church

-      “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Winston Churchill

-      “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” – Jim Elliot

-      “I am not sure I should have dared to start; but I am sure I should not have dared to stop.” – Winston Churchill

-      “If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

-      “No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you’re keeping the man-child alive.” – Anon.

-      “The lion must roar.” – C.S. Lewis

-      “A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

-      “Adults are always asking children what they want to be when they grow up—they’re looking for ideas.” – Paula Poundstone

-      “We don’t stop having fun when we’re old, we’re old when we stop having fun.” – Anon.

-      “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s heaven for?”  - Robert Browning

-      “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  Security does not exist in nature, nor to the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.” – Helen Keller

-      “These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.” – Gilbert Highet

-      “The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.” – Hubert Humphrey

-      “One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who only have an interest.” – John Stuart Mill

-      “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry David Thoreau

-      “Too much of a good thing—can be wonderful.” – Mae West

-      “If one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams, and endeavors to lead a life which they have imagined, they will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau

-      “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why…I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” – Robert Francis Kennedy

-      “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

-      “You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.” – Olin Miller

-      “We live by encouragement and die without it—slowly, sadly, angrily.” – Celeste Holm

-      “If you could kick the person responsible for most of your troubles, you wouldn’t be able to sit down for six months.” – Gordon Gray

-      “Religion is lost with the repression of the high hope of adventure.” – Alfred North Whitehead

-      “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” – C.S. Lewis

-      “He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.  Failure is the true test of greatness.” – F.D. Mattiesen

-      “To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy—and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.” – Robert A Heinlein

-      “The important thing is this: Top be able to at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” – Charles du Bois

-      “The greatest tragedy in life is that most people spend their entire lives indefinitely preparing to live.” – Paul Tournier

-      “The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion.  He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him he’s always doing both.” – James Michener

-      “Take your passion and make it happen.” – Song lyric from the movie Flashdance

-      “Fear not that life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.” – John Henry Cardinal Newman

-      “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.” – E.E. Cummings

-      “Oh, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” – George Elliot

-      “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

-      “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Alan Key, former researcher for Apple Computer

-      “I felt something more, like stabs of joy.  These pointed to something other and outer.”  C.S. Lewis

-      “It cannot be that any creature should know him (God) as he is and not desire him.” – George MacDonald

-      “While translating the New Testament I discovered its truth to be pulsing with life and power.  I felt like an electrician, working with wiring while the power was still on.” – J.B. Phillips

-      “The only worse thing than being talked about is not being talked about.” – Oscar Wilde

-      “The pleasures of life men acquire by difficulty.” – Augustine

-      “The drippings of grace; longing for a sent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a  country we have never yet visited.” – C.S. Lewis

-      “To be great is to be misunderstood.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

-      “No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime.  The test of goodness is the page of history.” – William Hazlitt

-      “People rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it.” – La Rouchefoucauld

-      “Those most conscious of another world have made the most effective Christians in this one.” – C.S. Lewis

-      “Hope is passion for what is possible.” – Kierkegaard

-      “Those who believe in God can never, in a way, be sure of Him again.  Once they have seen Him in a stable, they can never be sure where He will appear or to what lengths He will go, to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation He will descend in His wild pursuit of man.” – Frederick Buechner

-      “Humility is not thinking less of myself, but not thinking of myself at all.” – Andrew Murray

-      “There is nothing so useless as doing effectively that which should not be done at all.” – Peter Drucker

-      “The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.” – Joanna Macy

-      “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” – John Le Carre

-      “We lead by being human.  We do not lead by being corporate, by being professional or by being institutional.” – Paul Hawken

-      “To be a leader of men one must turn one’s back on men.” – Havelock Ellis

-      “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1787

-      “One of the reasons mature people stop growing and learning is they become less and less willing to risk failure.” – John Gardner

-      “Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion.  You must set yourself on fire.” – Reggie Leach

-      “What the word makes clear, music make alive.” – Friedrich Schleiermacher

-      “We need the tonic of wildness.” – Thoreau

-      “For all the sad words of tongues and pen the saddest are these: It might have been…” – John Greenleaf Whittier

-      “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents.” – Carl Jung

-      “Let him who desires peace prepare for war.” – Vegetius, 375

-      “Only he who sees the invisible can do the impossible.” – Anon.

-      “Imagination…it’s limits are only those of the mind itself.” – Rod Sterling

-      “I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning…” – J.B. Priestley

-      “If God does not enter your kitchen, there is something wrong with your kitchen.  If you can’t take God into your recreation, there is something wrong with your play.  We all believe in the God of the heroic.  What we need most these days is the God of the humdrum, the commonplace, the everyday.” – Peter Marshall, Sr.

-      “Pray the largest prayers.  You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger.  Pray not for crutches but for wings!” – Phillips Brooks

-      “Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth, but falling in love.” – Richard Foster

-      “You pay God a great compliment by asking great things of Him.” – Teresa of Avila

-      “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.  The proper function of man is to live, not just exist.  I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.  I shall use my time.” – Jack London

-      “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that inconsolable.” – Sydney J. Harris

-      “To give light we must endure burning.” – Viktor Frankl

-      “The Word became flesh—and then through theologians it became words again.” – Karl Barth

-      “Self-confidence is the result of a successfully survived risk.” – Jack Gibbs

-      “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” – Henry David Thoreau

-      “I became my own only when I gave myself to Another.” – C.S. Lewis

-      “We need to find God, and he can’t be found in noise and restlessness.  God is the friend of silence.” – Mother Teresa

-      “To put your ideas into action is the most difficult thing in the world.” – Goethe

-      “The artist does not see life as a problem to be solved, but as a medium for creation.” – Dorothy Sayers

-      “Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” – Susan Ertz

-      “It is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved.” – George MacDonald

-      “We can never give up longing and wishing while we are alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good and we must hunger for them.” – George Elliot

-      “Our present life feels like a real fight—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulness, are needed to redeem.” – William James

-      “The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” – Walter Bagehot

-      “We grow great by dreams.  All big men are dreamers.  They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening.  Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which come always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.” – Woodrow Wilson

-      “It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” – Douglas MacArthur

-      “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church.  We should be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lask us to our pews.  For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” – Anne Dillard

-      “Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.” – Michelangelo

-      “A pastor is someone who talks in someone else’s sleep.” – W.H. Auden

-      “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical.  It is the power of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good a dead.  To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.  In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.” – Albert Einstein

-      “A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” – John Stuart Mill

-      “All is but lip wisdom which wants experience.” – Sir Philip Sydney

-      “Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

-      “I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.” – Martial

-      “The truly brave are soft of heart and eyes, and feel for what their duty bids them do.” – Byron

-      “It is better to be the widow of a hero, than the wife of a coward.” – Dolorus Ibarruri

-      “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

-      “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” – William Shakespeare

-      “Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin

-      “Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times.  They wish, as Pinder said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

-      “Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.” – Jules de Gaultier

-      “Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.” – Oscar Wilde

-      “It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.” – Aesop

-      “The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that is stupid and irrational.  But he, whose noble soul it’s fears subdues, and bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.” – Joanna Baillie

-      “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.” – G.K. Chesterton

-      “Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.” – Austin O’Malley

-      “The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.” – Jacques Benigne Bossuel

-      “Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.” – Jacques Benigne Bossuel

-      “I do not know the dignity of his birth, but I do know the glory of his death.” – Douglas MacArthur

-      “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

-      “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.   We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.  We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful.” – C.S. Lewis

-      “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone.” – Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe

Comments

Famquo said…
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
jessie said…
this is Jessica again. Yes, one of my favorite quotes is: "if you want to be happy, be" by Elizabeth Barett.

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