Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death. And not till we know, that one grief outweighs ten thousand joys will we become what Christianity is striving to make us.

Each day is a special gift from God, and while life may not always be fair, you must never allow the pains, hurdles, and handicaps of the moment to poison your attitude and plans for yourself and your future. You can never win when you wear the ugly cloak of self-pity, and the sour sound of whining will certainly frighten away any opportunity for success. Never again. There is a better way.

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us--and those around us -- more effectively. Look for the learning.

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish good results while the strongest, by dispersing his effort over many chores, may fail to accomplish anything. Drops of water, by continually falling, hone their passage through the hardest of rocks but the hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind.

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.

Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges Nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind.

One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure. Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon. The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future.

If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they're thinking, you can throw a real grenade.

You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.

Apparent failure may hold in its rough shell the germs of a success that will blowwom in time, and bear fruit throughout eternity.

You may be recognized soon. Hide.

May your camel be as swift as the wind.

There used to be a thing or a commodity we put great store by. It was called the People. Find out where the People have gone. I don't mean the square-eyed toothpaste-and-hair-dye people or the new-car-or-bust people, or the success-and-coronary people. Maybe they never existed, but if there ever were the People, that's the commodity the Declaration was talking about, and Mr. Lincoln.

Alcohol may be man's worst enemy. but the bible says love your enemy.

If you find serenity and happiness, some people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Love may be blind but jealousy has 20-20 vision.

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free. Tom Robbins Before you give up hope, turn back and read the attacks that were made on Lincoln.

God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.

Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.

I may be the girl next door, but you wouldn't want to live next to me.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars.

Maybe I wanted to hear it so badly that my ears betrayed my mind in order to secure my heart.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.

Inspiration may be a form of super consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness

Old men and far travelers may lie with authority.

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story.

Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge it.

What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in --that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

Please choose the way of peace. ... In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.

Your labor only may be sold, your soul must not.

Only in the spirit of attack, born in a brave heart, will bring success to any fighter aircraft, no matter how highly developed it may be.

Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration.

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.

May I always be worth of my friends.

Long stormy spring-time, wet contentious April, winter chilling the lap of very May but at length the season of summer does come.

To me, there's no better symbol for the world than a grasshopper lying dead on a gravel road, and maybe there's a globe lying next to him.

My wife's jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.

Great passions, my dear, don't exist: they're liars fantasies. What do exist are little loves that may last for a short or a longer while.

For like as herbs and trees bringing forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

Every man's ability may be strengthened or increased by culture.