Quotations about Virtues

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.  ~Horace Mann, "Thoughts for a Young Man," 1859


We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.  ~Henry David Thoreau


Blushing is the color of virtue.  ~Diogenes


Virtue is praised, but hated.  People run from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you have to keep your feet warm.  ~Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew, 1762


Virtue is insufficient temptation.  ~George Bernard Shaw


Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.


Do not be too moral.  You may cheat yourself out of much life so.  Aim above morality.  Be not simply good; be good for something.  ~Henry David Thoreau


He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


Modesty and unselfishness - these are virtues which men praise - and pass by.  ~André Maurois, Ariel, 1924


Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche


Virtue is its own revenge.  ~E.Y. Harburn


All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.  ~Theodore M. Hesburgh


The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues.  You can't separate them.  They're wedded.  ~Henry Miller


Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company.  ~François de la Rochefoucauld


A man hasn't got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined.  ~Anne Petry


What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.  ~Voltaire


Sin is commitable in thought, word or deed; so is virtue.  ~Martin H. Fischer


To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.  ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.  ~Robert S. Lynd


The excess of virtue is a vice.  ~Greek Proverb


Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues.  ~Hugh Prather


They who disbelieve in virtue because man has never been found perfect, might as reasonably deny a sun because it is not always day.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Water which is too pure has no fish.  ~Ts'ai Ken T'an


On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.  ~George Orwell


Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where He made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero or a saint. ~Henry Ward Beecher


It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.  ~Edith Sitwell


Some folks wear their halos much too tight.  ~Author Unknown


What, after all, is a halo?  It's only one more thing to keep clean.  ~Christopher Fry


We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them.  ~La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665

Quotations about Violence

All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.  ~Marshall Rosenberg


There is a great streak of violence in every human being.  If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness.  ~Sam Peckinpah


We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid.  ~Gerard Vanderhaar


The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.  ~Chinese Proverb


What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?  ~Alan Paton


Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.  ~John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667


There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was.  The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness.  The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.  ~Gil Bailie


Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat.  ~John Frederick Boyes


Let us thank God that we live in an age when something has influence besides the bayonet.  ~Daniel Webster


In violence we forget who we are.  ~Mary McCarthy


It is clear that the way to heal society of its violence... and lack of love is to replace the pyramid of domination with the circle of equality and respect.  ~Manitonquat


Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.  ~Dave Barry


It's not the bullet with my name on it that worries me.  It's the one that says "To whom it may concern."  ~Anonymous Belfast resident, quoted in London Guardian, 1991


I believe everybody in the world should have guns.  Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too.  I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice.  However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition.  Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string.  ~Scott Adams


I will not carry a gun.... I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!  ~Hawkeye, M*A*S*H, "Officer of the Day"


Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.  ~Abraham Lincoln


Why are sex and violence always linked?  I'm afraid they'll blur together in people's minds - sexandviolence - until we can't tell them apart.  I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex."  ~Dick Cavett, 1978


And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.  ~George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"


It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it.  Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists


The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.  ~Max Stirner


Play allows us to develop alternatives to violence and despair.... ~Stuart Brown


So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private citizens will occasionally kill theirs.  ~Elbert Hubbard


He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart.  It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder.  ~Henry C. Wright, The Liberator, 7 April 1837


Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.  ~Josef de Maistre


How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness?  One man must not kill.  If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder.  It is just, necessary, commendable, and right.  Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent.  But how many does it take?  ~Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845


It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.  ~Gandhi


Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.  You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.  ~Martin Luther King, Jr.


Nonviolence doesn't always work - but violence never does.  ~Madge Micheels-Cyrus


In some cases nonviolence requires more militancy than violence.  ~Cesar Chavez


If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating.  If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG.  ~Jack Nicholson


Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.  ~Gandhi


He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Quotations about Vices

There is more than a morsel of truth in the saying, "He who hates vice hates mankind."  ~W. MacNeile Dixon


Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


We are more inclined to regret our virtues than our vices; but only the very honest will admit this.  ~Holbrook Jackson


How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.  ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Never support two weaknesses at the same time.  It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.  ~Thornton Wilder


It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues.  ~Abraham Lincoln


Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots.  ~J. Petit-Senn


Idleness is the beginning of all vices.  ~Proverb


There are two types of people in this world, good and bad.  The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.  ~Woody Allen


The Anglo-Saxon conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't; it just keeps you from enjoying it.  ~Salvador de Madariaga


If we escape punishment for our vices, why should we complain if we are not rewarded for our virtues?  ~John Churton Collins, Aphorisms in the English Review, 1914


Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1836


When our vices desert us, we flatter ourselves that we are deserting our vices.  ~Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld


No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.  ~Bertrand Arthur William Russell, On Education, 1926


It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.  ~Walter Bagehot


Our virtues and vices couple with one another, and get children that resemble both their parents.  ~George Savile, Marquess de Halifax, Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections


Without enthusiasm, virtue functions not at all, and vice only poorly.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes.  ~Lady Marguerite Blessington

Quotations about Vegetarianism

A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children.  ~David Brenner


You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit.  If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car.  ~Harvey Diamond


Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.  ~Samuel Butler, Note-Books, 1912


Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion.  Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it.  Please give our respects to its family.  ~Berke Breathed, Bloom County Babylon


If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.  ~Paul McCartney


Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn!  You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak!  Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.  ~George Bernard Shaw


One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.  ~Henry David Thoreau


How can you eat anything with eyes?  ~Will Kellogg


The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined.  If beef is your idea of "real food for real people" you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.  ~Neal Barnard


Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?  I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God.  I could be eating a slow learner.  ~Lynda Montgomery


Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.  ~George Bernard Shaw


We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could.  ~James Cromwell


If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch.  ~k.d. lang


Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson


Being a meat eater is really expensive, even if you don't count the cost of chemo.  ~Snargleplexon.com


My situation is a solemn one.  Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks.  But death is better than cannibalism.  My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.  ~George Bernard Shaw


I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.  ~Isaac Bashevis Singer, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs


Vegetarianism is harmless enough though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.  ~Robert Hutchison, address to the British Medical Association, 1930


Heart attacks... God's revenge for eating his little animal friends.  ~Author Unknown


Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


For the most part, we carnivores do not eat other carnivores.  We prefer to eat our vegetarian friends.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid - milk.  ~Rynn Berry, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998


Nothing spoils lunch any quicker than a rogue meatball rampaging through your spaghetti.  ~Jim Davis, "Garfield"  (Please note: In its original context, this is NOT about vegetarianism)


Vegetarians taste better.  ~Author Unknown


Vegetarian - that's an old Indian word meaning "lousy hunter."  ~Andy Rooney


Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?  ~Author Unknown


If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made of meat?  ~Author Unknown


I was a vegetarian until I started leaning toward the sunlight.  ~Rita Rudner


Most vegetarians I ever see looked enough like their food to be classified as cannibals.  ~Finley Peter Dunne


Vegetarian:  A person who eats only side dishes.  ~Gerald Lieberman


In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death - even vegetarians.  ~Mr. Spock, Star Trek, "Wolf in the Fold"


The human body has no more need for cows' milk than it does for dogs' milk, horses' milk, or giraffes' milk.  ~Michael Klaper


Tongue - a variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses the line between a cut of beef and a piece of a dead cow.  ~Bob Ekstrom


Recognize meat for what it really is:  the antibiotic- and pesticide-laden corpse of a tortured animal.  ~Ingrid Newkirk


I will not eat anything that walks, runs, skips, hops or crawls.  God knows that I've crawled on occasion, and I'm glad that no one ate me.  ~Alex Poulos


We all love animals.  Why do we call some "pets" and others "dinner?"  ~k.d. lang


Coexistence... what the farmer does with the turkey - until Thanksgiving.  ~Mike Connolly


I won't eat anything that has intelligent life, but I'd gladly eat a network executive or a politician.  ~Marty Feldman


I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.  ~A. Whitney Brown


A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.  ~George Bernard Shaw


A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.  ~George Bernard Shaw


If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?  ~Author Unknown


I never go without my dinner.  No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.  ~Oscar Wilde


There is no substitute for mother's milk.  ~Martin H. Fischer


I've found without question that the best way to lead others to a more plant-based diet is by example - to lead with your fork, not your mouth.  ~Bernie Wilke, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998


Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless
Christmas dinner's dark and blue
When you stop and try to see it
From the turkey's point of view.
~Shel Silverstein, "Point of View"


All normal people love meat.  If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say, "Yo Goober!  Where's the meat?"  I'm trying to impress people here, Lisa.  You don't win friends with salad.  ~Matt Groening, The Simpsons, spoken by the character Homer Simpson


Truely man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs.  We live by the death of others:  we are burial places!  I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.  ~Leonardo da Vinci


I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other....  ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854


I venture to maintain that there are multitudes to whom the necessity of discharging the duties of a butcher would be so inexpressibly painful and revolting, that if they could obtain a flesh diet on no other condition, they would relinquish it forever.  ~W.E.H. Lecky


You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?  ~George Bernard Shaw


I just could not stand the idea of eating meat - I really do think that it has made me calmer....  People's general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk:  the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because it cannot understand why its calf isn't by, it can make you think a lot.  ~Kate Bush


I think if you want to eat more meat you should kill it yourself and eat it raw so that you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having it processed for you.  ~Margi Clark


"Thou shalt not kill" does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings; and this Commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.  ~Leo Tolstoy


As soon as I realized that I didn't need meat to survive or to be in good health, I began to see how forlorn it all is.  If only we had a different mentality about the drama of the cowboy and the range and all the rest of it.  It's a very romantic notion, an entrenched part of American culture, but I've seen, for example, pigs waiting to be slaughtered, and their hysteria and panic was something I shall never forget.  ~Cloris Leachman


We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do.  Cruelty... is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions.  If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us - in fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank.  ~Rabindranath Tagore


Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh?  For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived.  How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb?  How could his nose endure the stench?  How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?  ~Plutarch


It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.  ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab Notes


Vegetarianism can easily reach religious proportions.  Refraining from meat on moral grounds serves to dignify feelings of guilt toward sad-eyed, furry creatures and substitutes righteousness for squeamishness.  ~Bill Griffith, Griffith Observatory comic strip, 1977


To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.  I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen:  "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times.  Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing.  They're supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive.  I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones.  They're all the same.  If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it.  But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything."  ~Slaughterhouse 1997


I eat everything that nature voluntarily gives:  fruits, vegetables, and the products of plants.  But I ask you to spare me what animals are forced to surrender:  meat, milk, and cheese.  ~Author Unknown (Thanks, Eric)


Think of me tonite
For that which you savor
Did it give you something real,
or could you taste the pain of my death in its flavor?
~Wayne K. Tolson, from "Food Forethought"


Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.  ~Albert Einstein


Vegans plant goodwill.  ~Terri Guillemets


The things you did with that cucumber in college does not make you a vegetarian.  ~Author Unknown


I do not like eating meat because I have seen lambs and pigs killed.  I saw and felt their pain.  They felt the approaching death.  I could not bear it.  I cried like a child.  I ran up a hill and could not breathe.  I felt that I was choking.  I felt the death of the lamb.  ~Vaslav Nijinsky


Would you kill your pet dog or cat to eat it?  How about an animal you're not emotionally attached to?  Is the thought of slaughtering a cow or chicken or pig with your own hands too much to handle?  Instead, would hiring a hit-man to do the job give you enough distance from the emotional discomfort?  What animal did you put a contract out on for your supper last night?  Did you at least make sure that none went to waste and to take a moment to be grateful for its sacrifice?  ~Anonymous

Quotations about Vanity

Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired:  even I who write this, and you who read this.  ~Blaise Pascal


Vanity is the quicksand of reason  ~George Sand


The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.  ~Thomas Wolfe


Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt.  ~Benjamin Franklin


There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.  ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1898


Without this ridiculous vanity that takes the form of self-display, and is part of everything and everyone, we would see nothing, and nothing would exist.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Beauty's sister is vanity, and its daughter lust.  ~Author Unknown


Pride does not wish to owe and vanity does not wish to pay.  ~François de la Rochefoucauld


Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly; and I am in continual danger, when in company, of being led an ignis fatuus chase by it.  ~John Adams


There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.  ~Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton


Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others.  Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.  ~Miguel De Unamuno


To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.  ~Lord Chesterfield


Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.  ~Joseph Conrad


We speak little if not egged on by vanity.  ~François de la Rochefoucauld


The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.  ~Henri Bergson


If vanity does not overthrow all our virtues, at least she makes them totter.  ~François de la Rochefoucauld


Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.  ~Louis Kronenberger


Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.  ~Logan Pearsall Smith


Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson


What makes the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own.  ~François de la Rochefoucauld


In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity;
On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools - that's vanity.
~Robert Browning


Virtue would not go to such lengths if vanity did not keep her company.  ~François de la Rochefoucauld


Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter, wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others who are within his sphere of action:  and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.  ~Benjamin Franklin

Quotations about Vacations

No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one.  ~Elbert Hubbard


A good vacation is over when you begin to yearn for your work.  ~Morris Fishbein


A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking.  ~Earl Wilson


A vacation is like love - anticipated with pleasure, experienced with discomfort, and remembered with nostalgia.  ~Author Unknown


A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it in.  ~Robert Orben


Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so.  After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do.  ~Margaret Laurence


I do not really like vacations.  I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working.  When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin.  To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded; I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time.  ~Robertson Davies


The alternative to a vacation is to stay home and tip every third person you see.  ~Author Unknown


Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.  ~William James


We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.  ~Erma Bombeck


Those that say you can't take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip.  ~Author Unknown


The rainy days a man saves for usually seem to arrive during his vacation.  ~Author Unknown


By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off.  They are the great vacationless class.  ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh


A vacation trip is one-third pleasure, fondly remembered, and two-thirds aggravation, entirely forgotten.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Vacation:  Two weeks on the sunny sands - and the rest of the year on the financial rocks.  ~Sam Ewing


College is the longest vacation you will ever take. ~ Dan Indante and Karl Marks


Too much work, and no vacation,
Deserves at least a small libation.
So hail! my friends, and raise your glasses,
Work's the curse of the drinking classes.
~Oscar Wilde


No vacation goes unpunished.  ~Karl Hakkarainen


Vacation: a period of travel and relaxation when you take twice the clothes and half the money you need.  ~Author Unknown


Vacations prove that a life of pleasure is overrated.  ~Mason Cooley


Laughter is an instant vacation.  ~Milton Berle


If some people didn't tell you, you'd never know they'd been away on a vacation.  ~Kin Hubbard


There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.  ~Robert Benchley


Vacation used to be a luxury, but in today's world it has become a necessity.  ~Author Unknown


Oh, why can't we break away from all this, just you and I, and lodge with my fleas in the hills?  I mean, flee to my lodge in the hills.  ~S.J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone, and Arthur Sheekman, Monkey Business


If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.  ~Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Quotations about Unemployment

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own.  ~Harry S Truman


Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.  ~Orson Scott Card


Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is.  ~William E. Barrett


A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun.  ~Thomas Carlyle


You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.  ~William Shakespeare


A man who has no office to go to - I don't care who he is - is a trial of which you can have no conception.  ~George Bernard Shaw


The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning you're on the job.  ~Slappy White


[O]f all the aspects of social misery nothing is so heartbreaking as unemployment.  ~Jane Addams, 1910


Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses.  ~Cato the Elder


The hardest work in the world is being out of work.  ~Whitney Young, Jr.


An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.  ~Author Unknown


Unemployment diminishes people.  Leisure enlarges them.  ~Mason Cooley


Unemployment is like a headache or a high temperature - unpleasant and exhausting but not carrying in itself any explanation of its cause.  ~William Henry Beveridge


We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.  ~John F. Kennedy


When I quit working, I lost all sense of identity in about fifteen minutes.  ~Paige Rense


When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression.  ~Jesse Jackson


I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work.  Work organizes life.  It gives structure and discipline to life.  ~Bill Clinton


What is the good of being a genius if you cannot use it as an excuse for being unemployed?  ~Gerald Barzan


The shock of unemployment becomes a pathology in its own right.  ~Robert Farrar Capon, "Being Let Go," New York Times, 5 August 1984

Quotations about Twins

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared:  twins.  ~Josh Billings


It's double the giggles and double the grins, and double the trouble if you're blessed with twins.  ~Author Unknown


My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.  ~Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Speckled Band


A good neighbor will babysit.  A great neighbor will babysit twins.  ~Author Unknown


Twice as much to love, two blessings from above.  ~Author Unknown


God touched our hearts so deep inside, our special blessing multiplied.  ~Author Unknown


It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins.  ~Chinese Proverb


Life is two-riffic with twins.  ~Author Unknown


Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?  ~Herman Melville, Redburn. His First Voyage, 1849


...So we grew together
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem...
~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Note: This isn't actually about twins)


You can spend too much time wondering which of identical twins is the more alike.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother:
I see by you I am a sweet-faced youth.
~William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors


Constant togetherness is fine - but only for Siamese twins.  ~Victoria Billings


Hearts entwined
Twenty fingers, twenty toes,
two sweet babies with cheeks of rose.
Born on the same day, two gifts from above,
lives entwined, two babies to love.
~Author Unknown


When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.  ~Steven Wright


Twin one, twin too!  ~Author Unknown


What's cuter than one baby?
A precious set of twins!
With matching little outfits -
And matchless little grins...
With twice as many babies,
How very busy you will be -
Just think of all the loving
They'll bring your family.
~Author Unknown


All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.  ~Lord Byron


Two faces to wash, and four dirty hands
Two insistent voices, making demands
Twice as much crying, when things go wrong
The four eyes closing, with slumber song
Twice as many garments, blowing on the line
Two cherubs in the wagon, soaking up sunshine
Work I do for twins, naturally comes double
But four arms to hug me, repay all my trouble.
~Author Unknown


When I was born the doctor took one look at my face, turned me over and said, "Look, twins!"  ~Rodney Dangerfield


Not double trouble, but twice blessed.  ~Author Unknown


There's two to wash, two to dry;
There's two who argue, two who cry....
There's two to kiss, two to hug;
And best of all, there's two to love!
~Author Unknown


I may be a twin but I'm one of a kind.  ~Author Unknown


We came into the world like brother and brother;
And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another.
~William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors


Body and spirit are twins:  God only knows which is which.  ~Algernon Charles Swinburne

Quotations about Truth

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.  Take which you please - you can never have both.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.  ~Aldous Huxley


Truth, like milk, arrives in the dark
But even so, wise dogs don't bark.
Only mongrels make it hard
For the milkman to come up the yard.
~Christopher Morley, Dogs Don't Bark at the Milkman


It is error alone which needs the support of government.  Truth can stand by itself.  ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia


I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.  ~Peter Altenberg


The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.  ~William James


Men ardently pursue truth, assuming it will be angels' bread when found.  ~W. MacNeile Dixon


There is no god higher than truth.  ~Mahatma Gandhi


Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The trouble about man is twofold.  He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.  ~Rebecca West


It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.  ~Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy


Truth is rarely writ in ink; it lives in nature.  ~Martin H. Fischer


When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.  ~William Blake


Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas.  ~Shoseki


Without faith there is no truth, for that is all the truth is or ever was.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


If there be no God, then what is truth but the average of all lies.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


There is no Truth.  There is only the truth within each moment.  ~Ramana Maharshi, attributed


Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit.
~Neil Peart, Turn the Page
(Thank you, Ryan)


Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.  ~Oscar Wilde


My truths do not last long in me.  Not as long as those that are not mine.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Truth breeds hatred.  ~Bias of Priene, Maxims


If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?  ~Dōgen Zenji


One of life's regrets is that you didn't always tell the truth, and now it's too late, because the truth has changed.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


People always think something's all true.  ~J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye


A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.  ~Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried


Truth is tough.  It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it all about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table


Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.  ~Leo Tolstoy


Truth is the breath of life to human society.  It is the food of the immortal spirit.  Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Seek truth and you will find a path.  ~Frank Slaughter


I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.  ~Alphonse de Lamartine, "Marseillaise of Peace," 1841


Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.  ~Jean-Paul Sartre


Don't keep searching for the truth, just let go of your opinions.  ~Author Unknown


There are more martyrs to nonsense than truth, truth preferring missionaries.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Truth is a great flirt.  ~Franz Liszt


I am of the Buddhists.  The great Teacher comes periodically.  He is followed by pupils who corrupt the texts and then a new Buddha must be born to reëstablish the truth.  ~Martin H. Fischer


We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.  ~Denis Diderot


All great truths begin as blasphemies.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska, 1919


...Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it:  consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
~Robinson Jeffers, "The Silent Shepherds," The Beginning & the End


The greatest truths are the simplest: so likewise are the greatest men.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.  ~Simone de Beauvoir


Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage.  He lives... by make-believe.  ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938


When one has one's hand full of truth it is not always wise to open it.  ~French Proverb


Once an absurdity is accepted as truth, it will seem truer the more absurd it is shown to be.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford... but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an Idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her.  ~Charles Lamb


We do not err because truth is difficult to see.  It is visible at a glance.  We err because this is more comfortable.  ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn


The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.  ~Attributed to James A. Garfield


Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.  In the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.  ~Arthur Schopenhauer


There is no truth.  There is only perception.  ~Gustave Flaubert


If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on.  ~Stopford Brooke 

Quotations about Trust

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.  ~E.M. Forster


I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.  ~Henry David Thoreau


Our distrust is very expensive.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough.  ~Frank Crane


The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.  ~Henry L. Stimson


We're all born brave, trusting, and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.  ~Booker T. Washington


I trust everyone.  I just don't trust the devil inside them.  ~Troy Kennedy-Martin, The Italian Job


You can as easily love without trusting as you can hug without embracing.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else.  ~Nicolas Walter, About Anarchism


Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence.  Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.  ~William E. Gladstone, 1866


Ultimately, there can be no complete healing until we have restored our primal trust in life. ~Georg Feuerstein


Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.  ~Charles Krauthammer


Trust your own instinct.  Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.  ~Billy Wilder


Trust is letting go of needing to know all the details before you open your heart.  ~Author Unknown


There comes a point in a relationship when you realize that you trust someone enough to let them keep their secrets.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Trust only movement.  Life happens at the level of events, not of words.  Trust movement.  ~Alfred Adler


Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.  ~William Shakespeare


A skeptic is a person who would ask God for his ID card.  ~Edgar A. Shoaff


You can only trust yourself... and barely that.  ~Paige Wilson


Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter.  ~Lemony Snicket


Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly.  ~George MacDonald


Government is an unnecessary evil.  Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness.  ~Fred Woodworth, The Match!, No. 79


A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity.  The order varies for any given year.  ~Paul Sweeney


In God we trust, all others we virus scan.  ~Author Unknown


Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.  ~Helen Rowland

Quotations about Trees

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer.  But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.  ~Henry David Thoreau


You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.  ~Denise Levertov


I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.  ~Henry David Thoreau


The trees are God's great alphabet:
With them He writes in shining green
Across the world His thoughts serene.
~Leonora Speyer


I never saw a discontented tree.  They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.  They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!  ~John Muir


Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Woodnotes"


God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods.  But he cannot save them from fools.  ~John Muir


I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.  ~Willa Cather, 1913


Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats.  ~Woody Allen


If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down?  We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.  ~Jack Handey


I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
~Ogden Nash, "Song of the Open Road," 1933


The groves were God's first temples.  ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"


Trees are your best antiques.  ~Alexander Smith


A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship.  But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.  Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves.  No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.  ~John Muir


A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.  ~Welsh Proverb


For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.  ~Martin Luther


There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.  ~Minnie Aumonier


It is difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our own life is associated with trees.  ~Wilson Flagg


And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.  ~William Shakespeare


We all travel the milky way together, trees and men... trees are travellers, in the ordinary sense.  They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true:  but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings - many of them not so much.  ~John Muir, Scribner's Monthly, November 1878


The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber.  The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, translated from French by Stuart Gilbert


Alone with myself
The trees bend to caress me
The shade hugs my heart.
~Candy Polgar


Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved.  You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?  ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982


It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson


He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
~Lucy Larcom, "Plant a Tree"


Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.  ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, 1903


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.  ~J. Lubbock


Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
~Kahlil Gibran


To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong.  We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe.  ~Henry Ward Beecher


Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a shade tree.  ~Terri Guillemets


The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods -
~Robert Frost


The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  The next best time is now.  ~Chinese Proverb


I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.  ~James Russell Lowell


Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. ~Fernando Pessoa


The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.  ~Nelson Henderson


No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets.  ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs, 1887


Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.  ~Bill Vaughn


If I knew I should die tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.  ~Stephen Girard


Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.  ~Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies, 1928


The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in their way.  ~William Blake


Trees outstrip most people in the extent and depth of their work for the public good.  ~Sara Ebenreck, American Forests


Why are there trees I never walk under
But large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
~Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1892


The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what "the story of the trees" would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand.  ~Author Unknown, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938


There are rich counsels in the trees.  ~Herbert P. Horne


God in the whizzing of a pleasant wind
Shall march upon the tops of mulberry trees.
~George Peele, David and Fair Bathsabe, 1599


The trees are whispering to me, reminding me of my roots, and my reach... shhhhhh... can you hear them?  Selflessly sharing their subtle song.  ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com


The best part of happiness is the pines.  ~Terri Guillemets


Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.  ~Cree Indian Proverb


To heal mine aching moods,
Give me God's virgin woods.
~Clinton Scollard


Many people, other than the authors, contribute to the making of a book, from the first person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing.  It is not customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, though their commitment is total.  ~Forsyth and Rada, Machine Learning


Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.  ~John Muir


If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.  ~Hal Borland


It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the nation's need of trees will become serious. We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted.  ~Theodore Roosevelt, 1907 Arbor Day Message


Oaks are the true conservatives;
They hold old leaves till summer gives
A green exchange.
~Roy Helton, Come Back to Earth


A tree never hits an automobile except in self defense.  ~American Proverb


Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze.
~James R. Russell


Trees are much like human beings and enjoy each other's company.  Only a few love to be alone.  ~Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939


Newspapers:  dead trees with information smeared on them.  ~Horizon, "Electronic Frontier"


They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.  ~James G. Watt, quoted in Newsweek, 8 March 1982


Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.  ~Henry David Thoreau, "Chesuncook," The Maine Woods, 1848


A tree which has lost its head will never recover it again, and will survive only as a monument of the ignorance and folly of its Tormentor.  ~George William Curtis


Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful.  Everything is simply happy.  Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance.  Look at the flowers - for no reason.  It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.  ~Osho


I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Will urban sprawl spread so far that most people lose all touch with nature?  Will the day come when the only bird a typical American child ever sees is a canary in a pet shop window?  When the only wild animal he knows is a rat - glimpsed on a night drive through some city slum?  When the only tree he touches is the cleverly fabricated plastic evergreen that shades his gifts on Christmas morning?  ~Frank N. Ikard, North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Houston, March 1968


You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.  ~Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964


Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series, 1844


Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.  ~J.J. Furnas


I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914


Climb a tree - it gets you closer to heaven.  ~Author Unknown


We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them.  We say we love trees, yet we cut them down.  And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved.  ~Author Unknown


Save a tree.  Eat a beaver.  ~Author Unknown


Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eating under a tree.  ~Elizabeth Russell


As the poet said, "only God can make a tree" - probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.  ~Woody Allen

Quotations about Travel

Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.  ~Elizabeth Drew


The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.  ~St. Augustine


I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.  I travel for travel's sake.  The great affair is to move.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson


When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money.  Then take half the clothes and twice the money.  ~Susan Heller


Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.  ~Charles Kuralt, On the Road With Charles Kuralt


I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full.  ~Lord Dunsany


A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.  ~Lao Tzu


Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.  ~Anatole France


No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.  ~Lin Yutang


Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.  ~Seneca


The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience.  The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him.  He goes "sight-seeing."  ~Daniel J. Boorstin


It is not down in any map; true places never are.  ~Herman Melville


What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds.  When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then.  People don't have your past to hold against you.  No yesterdays on the road.  ~William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways


The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.  ~G.K. Chesterton


To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.  ~Charles Horton Cooley


And that's the wonderful thing about family travel:  it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind.  ~Dave Barry


Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.  ~Mason Cooley


Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.  ~Regina Nadelson


I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.  ~Lillian Smith


Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.  ~Ray Bradbury


There are only two emotions in a plane:  boredom and terror.  ~Orson Welles


Now I know why they tell you to put your head between your knees on crash landings.  You think you're going to kiss your ass good-bye.  ~Terry Hanson


I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.  ~Mark Twain


I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.  ~Jean Kerr, "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall," The Snake Has All the Lines, 1958


In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children.  ~Robert Benchley


Just get on any major highway, and eventually it will dead-end in a Disney parking area large enough to have its own climate, populated by large nomadic families who have been trying to find their cars since the Carter administration.  ~Dave Barry


If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.  ~James Michener


If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport.  ~George Winters


I met a lot of people in Europe.  I even encountered myself.  ~James Baldwin


Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.  ~G.K. Chesterton


There's a book that tells you where you should go on your vacation.  It's called your checkbook.  ~Author Unknown


The time to enjoy a European trip is about three weeks after unpacking.  ~George Ade, Forty Modern Fables


I did not fully understand the dread term "terminal illness" until I saw Heathrow for myself.  ~Dennis Potter, 1978


Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.  Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.  ~Mark Twain


I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.  ~George Bernard Shaw


I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.  ~Caskie Stinnett


A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between countries, so the officials can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly.  ~Lemony Snicket


To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.  ~Aldous Huxley


The traveler sees what he sees.  The tourist sees what he has come to see.  ~G.K. Chesterton


We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.  ~Hilaire Belloc


Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.  ~Benjamin Disraeli


The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway.  ~Henry Boye

Quotations about Time

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.  ~William Faulkner


Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.  ~John Archibald Wheeler


As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.  ~Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden, 1854


Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror.  It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.  ~Martin Amis, Money


The clock talked loud.  I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.  ~Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle


Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.  ~Dion Boucicault


In reality, killing time is only the name for another of the multifarious ways by which Time kills us.  ~Osbert Sitwell


For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.  ~Doug Larson


But what minutes!  Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.  ~Benjamin Disraeli


Time goes, you say?  Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.
~Henry Austin Dobson


Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!.... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his hands are mutes.  ~Charles Dickens


Time wastes our bodies and our wits, but we waste time, so we are quits.  ~Author Unknown


Time is the fire in which we burn.  ~Delmore Schwartz, "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day," 1937  (Thanks, George)


Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
~William Shakespeare


You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.  ~James Matthew Barrie


A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.  ~John B. Priestly


It strikes! one, two,
Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch,
Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest;
Would thou could'st make the time to do so too;
I'll wind thee up no more.
~Ben Jonson


The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up.  ~J.K. Rowling, "The Hungarian Horntail," Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000


Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side.  ~The Talmud


Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.  ~Doménico Cieri Estrada


Time is making fools of us again.  ~J.K. Rowling


El tiempo da buen consejo.  ~Proverb


There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men:  time.  ~Napoleon I, Maxims, 1815


Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.  ~Faith Baldwin


When told the reason for Daylight Saving time the old Indian said, "Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket."  ~Author Unknown


Why won't they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, can't they use birth control on time?  I want an interregnum.  The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping - rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year's and Easter and Christmas - But, goodness, why need they do it?  ~John Dos Passos, 1917


How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.  ~Zall's Second Law


The years like great black oxen tread the world
And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
~William Butler Yeats, The Countess Cathleen


Time! the corrector when our judgments err.  ~Lord Byron


The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not.... ~Thomas Carlyle


Time is the coin of your life.  It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.  Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.  ~Carl Sandburg


Time is a figure eight, at its center the city of Deja Vu.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Time heals what reason cannot.  ~Seneca


I am tired of the imposed rhythms of men,
Tethered time, restrained and trained
To a monotonous beat
Digital time blinking exactness
Unliving.
~Phillip Pulfrey, "Conjecture," Beyond Me, www.originals.net


If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no time.  ~Elbert Hubbard


Darn the wheel of the world!  Why must it continually turn over?  Where is the reverse gear?  ~Jack London


Time flies on restless pinions - constant never.  ~Friedrich Schiller


The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.  ~C.S. Lewis


Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design?  ~Paracelsus


What then is time?  If no one asks me, I know what it is.  If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.  ~Saint Augustine


Time is a very healing place, one in which you can grow.  ~Denise Tanner


Each moment has its sickle, emulous
Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep
Strikes empires from the root.
~Edward Young


The inertia hardest to overcome is that of perfectly good seconds.  ~Martin H. Fischer


Time is the wisest counsellor of all.  ~Pericles


A lot like yesterday, a lot like never.  ~Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried


There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


The clocks are all turned forward from Funny Time to Right Time.  I always remember, "Spring back or Fall in."  ~Dave Beard (@Raqhun)


Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


Time is the only thief we can't get justice against. ~Terri Guillemets


Time is neither friend nor enemy it's just a measurement.  ~Mike Dolan, www.hawaiianlife.com


Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst.  ~Willaim Penn


Time is the longest distance between two places.  ~Tennessee Williams


Among life's regrets is all the time wasted being early for everything.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds my golden time!  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Man goes nowhere.  Everything comes to man, like tomorrow.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Whether we wake or we sleep,
Whether we carol or weep,
The Sun with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time.
~Edward Fitzgerald


For centuries, man believed that the sun revolves around the earth.  Centuries later, he still thinks that time moves clockwise.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it:  he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  ~Henry David Thoreau


The Present is a Point just passed.  ~David Russell


Methinks I see the wanton hours flee,
And as they pass, turn back and laugh at me.
~George Villiers


Time is an equal opportunity employer.  Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day.  Rich people can't buy more hours.  Scientists can't invent new minutes.  And you can't save time to spend it on another day.  Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving.  No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.  ~Denis Waitely


Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.  ~Charles Caleb Colton


One must learn a different... sense of time, one that depends more on small amounts than big ones.  ~Sister Mary Paul


Time is an old firmly rooted tree; we are the breeze rustling its leaves. ~Terri Guillemets


Day, n.  A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.  ~Ambrose Bierce


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.  ~Louis Hector Berlioz


Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.  ~Tony Hendra, "Deteriorata" (Thanks Tom)

Quotations about Thrift

Thrift is not an affair of the pocket, but an affair of character.  ~S.W. Straus


Thrift comes too late when you find it at the bottom of your purse.  ~Seneca


Thrift was never more necessary in the world's history than it is today.  ~Francis H. Sisson


Whatever thrift is, it is not avarice.  Avarice is not generous; and, after all, it is the thrifty people who are generous.  ~Lord Rosebery


The thrift that does not make a man charitable sours into avarice.  ~M.W. Harrison


Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.  ~Calvin Coolidge


A bargain ain't a bargain unless it's something you need.  ~Sidney Carroll, A Big Hand for the Little Lady


Be thrifty, but not covetous.  ~George Herbert


By sowing frugality we reap liberty, a golden harvest.  ~Agesilaus


I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living.  ~John D. Rockefeller


Cannot people realize how large an income is thrift?  ~Cicero


Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.  ~Samuel Johnson


Thrift means that you should always have the best you can possibly afford, when the thing has any reference to your physical and mental health, to your growth in efficiency and power.  ~Orison Swett Marden


He who does not economize will have to agonize.  ~Confucius


Frugality is misery in disguise.  ~Publilius Syrus


Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.  ~Benjamin Franklin


We are not to judge thrift solely by the test of saving or spending.  If one spends what he should prudently save, that certainly is to be deplored.  But if one saves what he should prudently spend, that is not necessarily to be commended.  A wise balance between the two is the desired end.  ~Owen Young

Quotations about Thinking

The mind is what it thinks. To make it true, think true. ~Nisargadatta Maharaj


No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.  ~Voltaire


Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.  ~Edmund Burke


Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.  ~Carl G. Jung


Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.  ~Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun


No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head.  ~Terry Josephson


You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think.  ~Walter Anderson, The Confidence Course, 1997


Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?  ~Winnie the Pooh


People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.  ~Soren Kierkegaard


Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.  ~John F. Kennedy


The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.  ~Will Durant


Begin challenging your own assumptions.  Your assumptions are your windows on the world.  Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.  ~Alan Alda


I like to think of thoughts as living blossoms borne by the human tree.  ~James Douglas


The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it.  ~H.G. Wells


Our minds are lazier than our bodies.  ~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678


Invest a few moments in thinking.  It will pay good interest.  ~Author Unknown


Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory.  ~G. Behn


Thinking is like loving and dying.  Each of us must do it for himself.  ~Josiah Royce


It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.  ~Luther Burbank


Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself.  ~Martin H. Fischer


We spend our days in deliberating, and we end them without coming to any resolve.  ~L'Estrange


Our job is not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of the decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking.  ~Author Unknown


Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.  ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923


The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life.  The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.  ~H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1925


Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once a week.  ~George Bernard Shaw


...the thoughtful excitement of lonely rambles, of gardening, and of other like occupations, where the mind has leisure to must during the healthful activity of the body, with the fresh and wakeful breezes blowing round it...  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Belief is when someone else does the thinking.  ~Buckminster Fuller, 1972

Irons rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.  ~Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, 1508


A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man.  But they don't bite everybody.  ~Stanislaw Lec, Unkempt Thoughts, 1962


Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.  ~G.C. Lichtenberg


The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.  ~Albert Einstein


Brain, n.  An apparatus with which we think that we think.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


At a certain age some people's minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat.  ~William Lyon Phelps


It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else.  ~Stanley Kubrick


We are dying from overthinking.  We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything.  Think.  Think.  Think.  You can never trust the human mind anyway.  It's a death trap.  ~Anthony Hopkins


One cannot think crooked and walk straight.  ~Author Unknown


Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


No amount of energy will take the place of thought.  A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity.  ~Henry Van Dyke


Tell your friends not to think aloud
Until they swallow.
~Nickelback, "Leader of Men," The State


Believing is easier than thinking.  Hence so many more believers than thinkers.  ~Bruce Calvert


A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought.  There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor  ~Victor Hugo


Sometimes I think and other times I am.  ~Paul Valéry, Variété: Cantiques spirituels, 1924


Few minds wear out; more rust out.  ~Christian N. Bovee


From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging.
~John Milton


What a blessing it is to be alone with your thoughts when so many are alone with their inability to think.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


We use 10% of our brains.  Imagine how much we could accomplish if we used the other 60%.  ~Ellen Degeneres


Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.  ~John Erskine


Some people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are too good.  ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche


If a man's stomach has been filled by eating greens and other vegetables, although the most precious dainties with exquisite tastes should be given him, he cannot swallow them, he must first get rid of a few portions of the greens; so in reading, the same is true of the mixed thoughts which distract the mind, which are about the dusty affairs of a vulgar world.  ~Robert Morrison, quoted in The Middle Kingdom by Samuel Wells Williams


Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months - and without a new thought for years on end.  ~Kent Ruth


The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.  ~John Locke, 16 May 1699


Men who borrow their opinions can never repay their debts.  ~George Savile, Marquess de Halifax, Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections


A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks freely.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action.  Twice would have been quite enough.  ~Confucius, Analects


Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew.  They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming.  But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.  ~Steve Allen


What luck for rulers, that men do not think.  ~Adolph Hitler


Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd.  ~Voltaire, 1767


Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.  Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.  Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.  Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.  ~Bertrand Russell


[Thinking is] what a great many people think they are doing when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.  ~William James


For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.  ~Luther Burbank


How wonderful that we have met with a paradox.  Now we have some hope of making progress.  ~Niels Bohr


You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.  ~Author Unknown


He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.  ~William Drummond, Academical Questions


Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.  ~Howard Mumford Jones