Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

I am not now, and never have been, a girl friend of Henry Kissinger.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies.

Henry James created more convincing women than Iris Murdoch put together.

It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?;"Elizabeth Carpenter

The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists -- in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.

To live we must conquer incessantly, we must have the courage to be happy.

There was definitely frustration about Henri's non-appearance. We weren't happy about it.

Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.

Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.

Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.

The best path through life is the highway.

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past -- a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.

Tears are the symbol of the inability of the soul to restrain its emotion and retain its self command.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.

Woman is the salvation or the destruction of the family. She carries its destiny in the folds of her mantle.

Common sense is calculation applied to life.

There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.

Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

Doubt of the reality of love ends by making us doubt everything.

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?;"Thomas Henry Huxley

Do you want me to suck yours?;"Janet Henry, referring to a lollipop

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!-Henri Frederic Amiel

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Frederick Douglass taught that literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. There are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path.

Hope is only the love of life.

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults --a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.

Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.

It is not what he had, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.

Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary -- they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.

Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.

Infatuation is when you think that he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Conners, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger, and nothing like Robert Redford--but you'll take him anyway.

Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence.