Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.

What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.

Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.

Erica: "What's wrong with you?" Dana: "I have an extra letter in my alphabet.

Aaron: Man, I hate the letter "S"! Eric: Why? Aaron: 'Cause it's hard to write!

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

Eric: You know something Derrick? Derrick: What? Eric: People are less friendly when they're on fire.

There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.

A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.

Intolerance is the ''Do Not Touch'' sign on something that cannot bear touching. We do not mind having our hair ruffled, but we will not tolerate any familiarity with the toupee which covers our baldness.

That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.

Eric (looking at report card): "How's this work? It says I have no tardies, but one of the comments is 'tardies have hurt student's work.'" J.D.: "You must have been pretty sneaky!!

There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites --opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity --where energies flow smoothly in one direction --there will be much doing but no music.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.

A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Ericka: "But now there's no room in the sugar thing for the little you in the black dress!" Ellie: "I know, that's why I'm in that one on the other table.

The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity

However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.

Friendship Never explain -- your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe it anyway. A real friend never gets in your way, unless you happen to be on the way down. A friend is someone you can do nothing with and enjoy it. However much we guard ourselves against it, we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of

Perhaps a modern society can remain stable only by eliminating adolescence, by giving its young, from the age of ten, the skills, responsibilities, and rewards of grownups, and opportunities for action in all spheres of life. Adolescence should be a time of useful action, while book learning and scholarship should be a preoccupation of adults.

One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action --the ability to pass directly from thought to action.

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.

Death has but one terror, that it has no tomorrow.

Animals often strike us as passionate machines.

When people are bored it is primarily with themselves.

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.

There is always a chance that he who sets himself up as his brother's keeper will end up by being his jail-keeper.