Quotable Quotes

Here's a small compilation of quotes that i liked and built up over an year or so.. not many, but i love each of them for one reason or the other. been pretty selective but hey! its all about the mood that was..happy reading! :)
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Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
-Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.
-Alice Walker, writer (1944- )

War, at first, is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.
-Karl Kraus, writer (1874-1936)

Be like the bird, who halting in his flight / On limb too slight, / Feels it give way beneath him, yet sings / Knowing he has wings.
-Victor Hugo, writer (1802-1885)

The river does not swell with clear water.
-Italian proverb

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
-Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don't swallow it.
-Hank Ketcham, comic artist (1920-2001)

We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.
-Carlos Castaneda, mystic and author (1925-1998)

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.
-Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man
-George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

Once you label me you negate me.
-Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher (1813-1855)

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
-Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)

One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.
-Charles A. Beard, historian (1874-1948)

If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on 'Babe' that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian.
-James Cromwell, actor (1940- )

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
-Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
-Pearl S. Buck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1892-1973)

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

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

In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.
-Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
-Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
-John Keats, poet (1795-1821)

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
-James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)

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

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.
-Lewis H. Lapham, editor (1935- )

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

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
-Jacques Deval, writer and director (1895-1972)

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
-Wernher von Braun, rocket engineer (1912-1977)

Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it.
-Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (1948- )

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

It is a funny thing about life, if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
-Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in.
-Sam Harris, author (1967- )

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them- who were above such trifling.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.
-Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
-Stephen King, novelist (1947- )

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
-John Wooden, sports coach (1910- )

In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated.
-Margaret Halsey (1910-1997)

What I stand for is what I stand on.
-Wendell Berry, farmer, author (1934- )

The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.
-Rita Mae Brown, writer (1944- )

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquaintance, next a mistress, and only then a friend
-Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness, and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o'clock.
-Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
-George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer.
-Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)