Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

Helpless, unknown, and unremembered, most human beings, however sensitive, idealistic, intelligent, go through life as passengers rather than chauffeurs. Although we may pretend that it is the chauffeur who is the social inferior, most of us, like Toad of Toad Hall, would not mind a turn at the wheel ourselves.

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

"What made the deepest impression upon you?' inquired a friend one day of Lincoln, 'when you stood in the presence of the Falls of Niagara, the greatest of natural wonders?' ---- 'The thing that stuck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls,' Lincoln responded with the characteristic deliberation, 'was where in the world did all that water come from?'

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

Old men and far travelers may lie with authority.

Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority. Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere.

Philosophers call God ''the great unknown'' ''The great misknown'' is more like it!

Art made tongue-tied by authority.

The wisest have the most authority.

I was sorry to have my name mentioned among the great authors because they have a sad habit of dying off.

The two most engaging powers of a good author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.

Of journeying the benefits are many: the freshness it bringeth to the heart, the seeing and hearing of marvelous things, the delight of beholding new cities, the meeting of unknown friends, and the learning of high manners.

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut [Animals] up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph... ''Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?''

Why keep on enacting laws when we already have more than we can break.

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

William : "Why don't you just stay in my room tonight?" Unknown girl: "You have a bunk bed. There wouldn't be room for both of us.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters.

The shades of night were falling fast,As though an Alpine village passedA youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,A banner with the strange device,ExcelsiorHis brow was sad his eye beneath,Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,And like a silver clarion rungThe accents of that unknown tongue,Excelsior

Where ambition ends happiness begins.

There have been as great souls unknown to fame as any of the most famous.

I traveled among unknown men, in lands beyond the sea; nor England! did I know till then what love I bore to thee.

The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says ''I''; The leader says ''WE''. The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says, ''GO''; the leader says lets, ''GO!''

It is impossible to make wisdom hereditary.

An important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.

We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our ''white mythology.'' Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.

By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority--literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.

I am willing to put myself through anything; temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as long as I can see that the experience will take me to a new level. I am interested in the unknown, and the only path to the unknown is through breaking barriers, an often-painful process.

Successful men follow the same advice they prescribe for others.

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

If the reviewing of books be... ''an ungentle craft,'' the making of them is, for the most part, a dishonest one -- and that department of literature which ought to be entrusted to those only who are distinguished for their moral qualities is, not infrequently, in the hands of authors totally devoid of good taste, good feeling, and generous sentiment. The writers of Lives have, in our time, assumed a license not enjoyed by their more scrupulous predecessors -- for they interweave the adventures of the living with the memoirs of the dead; and, pretending to portray the peculiarities which sometimes mark the man of genius, they invade the privacy and disturb the peace of his surviving associates.

I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.

Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admired when it sparkles in the setting of modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive any injury.

The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom ''charitable'' souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.

I think I may define taste to be that faculty of the soul which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike.

Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humanness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy.

He who would be useful, strong, and happy must cease to be a passive receptacle for the negative, beggarly, and impure streams of thought; and as a wise householder commands his servants and invites his guests, so must he learn to command his desires and to say, with authority, what thoughts he shall admit into the mansion of his soul.

Behind every successful man there are usually a lot of unsuccessful years.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.