George

You see things as they are and ask, 'Why' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not'

Better keep yourself clean and bright you are the window through which you must see the world.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.

Swindon What will history say Burgoyne History, sir, will tell lies as usual.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Money enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor he takes my measure anew every time he sees me, whilst all the rest go on with their old measurements, and expect them to fit me.

There is only one universal passion fear.

We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was good what would he say now

The man who listens to Reason is lost reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about They are more true they are the only things that are true.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die and do not outlive yourself.

Self-denial is not a virtue it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

I'm not a teacher only a fellow-traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead-ahead of myself as well as you.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature

A lifetime of happiness No man alive could bear it it would be hell on earth.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central mystery is an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of equality and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance.

You see things and you say, 'Why' But I dream things that never were and I say, Why not

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I can't forgive my friends for dying I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

We don't stop playing because we grow old we grow old because we stop playing.

He who has never hoped can never despair.

All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

The notion that the colonel need be a better man than the private is as confused as the notion that the keystone need be stronger than the coping stone.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Activity is the only road to knowledge.

No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

What use are cartridges in battle I always carry chocolate instead.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Few people think more than two or three times a year I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.

Martyrdom... is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them that's the essense of inhumanity.

Do you know what a pessimist is A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

Alcohol is a very necessary article... It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

Hell is full of musical amateurs music is the brandy of the damned.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

What is life but a seires of inspired follies The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance it doesn't come every day.

I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

It's never too late to be who you might have been.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

It seems to me we can never give up longing And wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, And we must hunger after them.

If you sit down at set of sun And count the acts that you have done, And counting find One self-denying deed, one word That eased the heart of him who heard One glance most kind That fell like sunshine where it went- Then you may count that day well spent.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

The tendancy of liberals is to create bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovaryisme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

To judge wisely, we must know how things appear to the unwise.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Be courteous, be obliging, but don't give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade.

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

There's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.

The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.

They're only truly great who are truly good.

Young men think old men are fools but old men know young men are fools.

The young always have the same problem- how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.

To fly from, need not be to hate, makind All are not fit with them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'dAnd the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still

Adversity is the first path to truth.

I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves.

They never fail who die in a great cause.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.

For what were all these country patriots born To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn

My time has been passed viciously and agreeably at thirty-one so few years months days hours or minutes remain that 'Carpe Diem' is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds-for who can trust to tomorrow

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure men love in haste but they detest at leisure.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five

And yet a little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation such as a revolution, a battle, or an adventure of any lively description.

He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly

Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.

My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

I feel my immortality over sweep all pains, all tears, all time, all fears, - and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep, into my ears, this truth, - thou livest forever

Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given To lift from earth our low desire.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem-and in my esteem age is not estimable.

Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his country.

Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.

For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavouring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.

...Two and two are four. Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found to be generally true that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon --so long as there is no answer to it-- gives claws to the weak.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Orthodoxy is Unconsciousness.

People sleep peacably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

The Establishment center ... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster -- a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation.

It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U. S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the senate.

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society violence punctuated by committee meetings.

This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

In the 1940s a survey listed the top seven discipline problems in public schools talking, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, getting out of turn in line, wearing improper clothes, not putting paper in wastebaskets. A 1980s survey lists these top seven drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, assault. (Arson, gang warfare and venereal disease are also-rans.)

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

It is extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.

Americans are overreachers overreaching is the most admirable of the many American excesses.

Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

If you can't have faith in what is held up to you for faith, you must find things to believe in yourself, for a life without faith in something is too narrow a space to live.

The minute you start talking about what you're going to do if you lose, you have lost.

Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.

I get a standing ovation jaust standing.

I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the last one left.

Nice to be here At my age it's nice to be anywhere.

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

I would go out with women my age, but there are no women my age.

Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.

I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.

Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can't wait to finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't wait to get out -- and you can't wait to come home, because the soup is hot.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.

I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.

Age to me means nothing. I can't get old I'm working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you're working, you stay young. When I'm in front of an audience, all that love and vitality sweeps over me and I forget my age.

Do not trust your memory it is a net full of holes the most beautiful prizes slip through it.

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

To please everybody is impossible were I to undertake it, I should probably please nobody.

Money, we know, will fetch anything and command the service of any man.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

Differences in political opinion are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may perhaps be necessary.

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered ... deeply ... finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company.

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration but the honing is uniform.

Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and archive mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement, against that past.

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.

A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Thse who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.

The Soul is the voice of the body's interests.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to.

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.

All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

Half our standards come from our first masters, and the other half from our first loves.

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.

Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

Love is only half the illusion the lover, but not his love, is deceived.

The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend.

... everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

An ideal cannot wait for its realization to prove its validity.

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions their reasons are always different.

When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.

A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

Sanity is a madness put to good use.

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another people are friends in spots.

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean.

Music is essentially useless, as life is.

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is.

In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality....The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral.

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.

To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education, and a career.

America is a young country with an old mentality.

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument its function is to make the worse appear the better.

The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.

Music is essentially useless, as life is but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

Our character...is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.

Happiness is the only sanction of life where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.

Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.

Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other argument is necessary to suggest that never miss the opportunity to give encouragement.

Have a variety of interests ... These interests relax the mind and lessen tension on the nervous system. People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest.

Man is what he believes.

People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

Literature ... is the rediscovery of childhood.

There is no time like the pleasant.

Hell, Madame, is to love no longer.

What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

The world is dying for want, not of good preaching, but of good hearing.

Sow an act...reap a habit Sow a habit...reap a character Sow a character...reap a destiny.

The heart that is to be filled to the brim with holy joy must be held still.

Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.

Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on hold fast hold out. Patience is genius.

Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience.

I take as my guide the hope of a saint in crucial things, unity - in important things, diversity - in all things, generosity.

My grandkids say, 'Reality Bites.' O.K., but it also challenges and rewards...I believe our best days are yet to come.

The greatest gift a parent can give a child is unconditional love. As a child wanders and strays, finding his bearings, he needs a sense of absolute love from a parent. There's nothing wrong with tough love, as long as the love is unconditional.

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

Surely a tired woman on her way to work at six in the morning on a subway deserves the right to get there safely . everyone who changes his or her life because of crime . have been denied a basic civil right.

The notion of political correctness . declares certain topics. certain expressions . even certain gestures off-limits. What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship.

The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no, and they'll push and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And all I can say to them is read my lips No New Taxes.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. referring to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger. referring to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. referring to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

Some people see things that are and ask, Why Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that ...

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

People love to admit they have bad handwriting or that they can't do math. And they will readily admit to being awkward 'I'm such a klutz' But they will never admit to having a poor sense of humor or being a bad driver.

There's a moment coming. It's not here yet. It's still on the way. It's in the future. It hasn't arrived. Here it comes. Here it is It's gone.

Wouldn't it be weird if the only way people could die was that their heads suddenly exploded without warning If there was simply no other cause of death One day you'd be sitting there having a hot chocolate, and suddenly your head would explode.

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also - if you love them enough.

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.

How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting--died

For health and the constant enjoyment of life, give me a keen and ever-present sense of humor it is the next best thing to an abiding faith in providence.

Faith in tomorrow, instead of Christ, is Satan's nurse for man's perdition.

Where the determination is, the way can be found.

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed --I well know. For it is a sign that he has tried to surpass himself.

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.

There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.

Habit with him was all the test of truth, It must be right I've done it from my youth.

Deceivers are the most dangerous members of society. They trifle with the best affections of our nature, and violate the most sacred obligations.

Congealed thinking is the forerunner of failure... make sure you are always receptive to new ideas.

It is not observed in history that families improve with time.

I walked beside the evening sea And dreamed a dream that could not be The waves that plunged along the shore Said only Dreamer, dream no more

I have lived, tomorrow, I shall sleep in glory.

Audacity, more audacity and always audacity.

Play is the beginning of knowledge.

Each happiness of yesterday is a memory for tomorrow.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it.

Let the other guy have whatever he wants before the fight. Once the bell rings he's gonna be disappointed anyway.

Generally when there's a lot of smoke...there's just a whole lot more smoke.

Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense.

I could prove God statistically.

Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind.

And if I laugh at any mortal thing, This that I may not weep.

If one has not given everything, one has given nothing.

What a wonderful thing it is to be sure of one's faith How wonderful to be a member of the evangelical church, which preaches the free grace of God through Christ as the hope of sinners If we were to rely on our works--my God, what would become of us

Sometimes the best gain is to lose.

The best mirror is an old friend.

Love and a cough cannot be hid.

Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.

Hope is the poor man's bread.

You must lose a fly to catch a trout.

Every mile is two in winter.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

Living well is the best revenge.

Go not for every grief to the physician, nor for every quarrel to the lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot.

The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, love do not require coupons.

Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.

One sometimes feels a guest of one's time and not a member of its household.

The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.

The accords were fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith-a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will-but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world-faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.

The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.

Days change so many things -- yes, hours -- we see so differently in suns and showers.

What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.

Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream, And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream.

It is good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.

Colleges don't make fools. They only develop them.

Education is about the only thing lying around loose in the world, and it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he's willing to haul away.

Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

In my experience, there is no such thing as 'luck.'

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

I ask, Who are the militia They consist now of the whole people, except for a few public officers.

The trouble was, all people saw on television were a few of my outspoken supporters out front and they came away thinking that was me.

You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.

The whole campaign was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina.

When people ask if the United States can afford to place on trial the president, if the system can stand impeachment, my answer is, Can we stand anything else

The longer the title, the less important the job.

Who rises from a prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.

But O the truth, the truth. The many eyes That look on it The diverse things they see.

Continental people have sex-lives the English have hot-water bottles.

Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.

The difficulty in life is the choice.

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

Women can form a friendship with a man very well but to preserve it--to that end a slight physical antipathy must probably help.

A ready way to lose your friend is to lend him money. Another equally ready way to lose him is to refuse to lend him money. It is six of one and a half dozen of the other.

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Love demands infinitely less than friendship.

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

If a man does his best, what else is there

A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what you want them to achieve, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhiliration of victory.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Education a debt due from present to future generations.

A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.

We are in favor of tolerance, but it is a very difficult thing to tolerate the intolerant and impossible to tolerate the intolerable.

Memory is not so brilliant as hope, but it is more beautiful, and a thousand times as true.

Some people seem as if they can never have been children, and others seem as if they could never be anything else.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that humor excites in those who lack it.

Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness.

Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. I think that is the only way to keep adding to one's talent, to one's affections, and one's inner happiness.

There is only one happiness in life, to love and to be loved.

Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.

There are but few saints amongst scientists, as among other men, but truth itself is a goal comparable with sanctity.

The ability to relate and to connect, sometimes in odd and yet striking fashion, lies at the very heart of any creative use of the mind, no matter in what field or discipline.

Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.

The mind's first step to self-awareness must be through the body.

Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown.

I learned in business that you had to be very careful when you told somebody that's working for you to do something, because the chances were very high he'd do it. In government, you don't have to worry about that.

Oh, you know. I am secretary of state. My trips aren't successful. I just talk to people.

It was an attempt to stick the Congress's finger in King Hussein's eye.

Nothing ever gets settled in this town. ... a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me. And so that's the atmosphere in which you administer.

The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.

Education...has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

History repeats itself and history never repeats itself are about equally trueWe never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.

A country losing touch with its own history is like an old man losing his glasses, a distressing sight, at once vulnerable, unsure, and easily disoriented.

We need to make a world in which fewer children are born, and in which we take better care of them.

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

We are immortal until our work on earth is done.

It is the first step of wisdom to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the society in which they occur.

We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.

In the choice of a horse and a wife, a man must please himself, ignoring the opinion and advice of friends.

Always begin anew with the day, just as nature does it is one of the sensible things that nature does.

The living need charity more than the dead.

After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity.

Anybody can win unless there happens to be a second entry.

'Whom are you' he asked, for he had attended business college.

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.

What's the use of worrying It never was worthwhile.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world it is God's gift to humanity.

You know what's interesting about Washington It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.

We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

Don't confuse being 'soft' with seeing the other guy's point of view.

I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them.

Praise the bridge that carried you over.

As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

Weather forecast for tonight dark.

I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect.

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight They never mention that part to us, do they

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

Death comes to all But great achievements raise a monument Which shall endure until the sun grows old.

It is the mind which creates the world about us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched.

Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice.

The idea of legally establishing inalienable, inherent and sacred rights of the individual is not of political but religious origin.

The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by orginality, overcomes everything.

The only cure for grief is action.

Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing - peace is the measure.

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective.

Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.

Don't be a fool and die for your country. Let the other sonofabitch die for his.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer

Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and our gifts.

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.

Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.

If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport.