Favorite Quotes

From WikiPaul - Paul Swanson's wiki

It costs nothing, but creates much good. It enriches those who receive it without impoverishing those who give it away. It happens in a flash but the memory of it can last a lifetime. No one is so rich or mighty that he can get along without it. No one is so poor that he can't feel rich when receiving it. It creates happiness in the home, fosters goodwill in business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and nature's best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen for it is something of no value to anyone until it is given away willingly.

Some people are too tired to give one. Give them one of yours, as no one needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give. -The Value of a Smile: Based on the writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. -Maya Angelou

. . . everything you lost which you had loved give you that feeling [of emptiness]. He said the only way 'round it was not to love anything, which was worse because you would feel empty all the time. -Little Tree, from The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter

If ye don't know the past, then ye will not have a future. If ye don't know where your people have been, then ye won't know where your people are going. -Grampa, from The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter

We must seek democracy and not the substitution of one tyranny for another -Martin Luther King Jr.

To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. -Martin Luther King Jr.

But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is, therefore, to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is compe-tent for a State to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race. -Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissention of Plessy v. Ferguson

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great. -Bussy-Rabutin (1618-1693), French soldier and writer.

Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire. -Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Don't love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her. -Anonymous

You don't marry someone you can live with -you marry the person who you cannot live without. -Unknown

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. -Seneca (4 B.C. - 65 A.D.)

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. -Abraham Lincoln

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it. -W.C. Fields

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. -Elbert Hubbard

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. -Plato

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity. -Albert Einstein

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove -lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. -Mark Twain

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -Winston Churchill

Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve

 -Benjamin Franklin

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

The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well. -H.T. Leslie

Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible. -St. Francis of Assisi

There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best. -William E. Gladstone

I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work. -Harry S. Truman

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

 -Blaise Pascal

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way. -Franklin P. Adams

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three -- all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have. -Edward Everett Hale

A true friend is the most precious of all possessions and the one we take the least thought about acquiring.

 -La Rochefoucauld

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

  -Booker T. Washington

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

A great man is always willing to be little.

 -Ralph Waldo Emerson

It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. -Howard Ruff

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. -Will Rogers

I do not consider it an insult but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure. -Clarence Seward Darrow

One does not insult the river god while crossing the river. Anonymous. Chinese proverb.

I always say that, next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained. -Duke of Wellington

Such another victory and we are ruined. -Pyrrhus

The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts. -Omar Nelson Bradley

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. -Victor Hugo

In war, indeed there can be no substitute for victory. -Douglas MacArthur

So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak . . . He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

If you cannot recognize the man in the mirror, it is time to step back and see when you stopped being yourself. -Corran Horn, I, Jedi (Michael Stackpole)