Heart
A. W. Tozer:
Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.
Anne Frank:
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.
Barbara De Angelis:
The real act of marriage takes place in the heart, not in the ballroom or church or synagogue. It’s a choice you make – not just on your wedding day, but over and over again — and that choice is reflected in the way you treat your husband or wife.
Blaise Pascal:
The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.
Blaise Pascal:
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
Blaise Pascal:
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.
Carl Jung:
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
Charles Dickens:
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Charles H. Perkhurst:
The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of.
Charlotte Bronte:
Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. (Suicide Note, August 17, 1935)
Confucius:
To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
David Korten:
If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth. This requires building economies with heart.
Edmund Burke:
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton:
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
Elizabeth Stone:
Making the decision to have a child – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.
Emily Dickinson:
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Friedrich von Schiller:
If you want to study yourself — look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people — look into your own heart.
Golda Meir:
At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.
Helen Keller:
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched … but are felt in the heart.
Henri-Frederic Amiel:
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.
James Baldwin:
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
James Earl Jones:
One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
Kahlil Gibran:
Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
Lord Byron:
There is no instinct like that of the heart.
Marianne Williamson:
In every community there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it.
Marietta McCarty:
Joy is a heart full and a mind purified by gratitude.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.
Neil Gaiman:
Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…
This entry continued …
Pearl S. Buck:
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.
Pearl S. Buck:
Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.
Pema Chodron:
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.
Poem of a Buddhist nun:
Only within burns the fire I kindle.
My heart the altar.
My heart the altar.
Princess Diana:
Only do what your heart tells you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Sara Paddison:
You may not always be able to feel a deeper heart feeling right away, but stay focused in the heart. The sincerity of your effort can reconnect you to your heart current and start the juices flowing. To plug in, think of someone you love or remember what feels good, maybe a fulfilling experience. Feelings help you remember.
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama:
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
May our heart’s garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.
Thornton Wilder:
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Vaclav Havel:
The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness, and in human responsibility.
Virginia Woolf:
The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
Wallace Stegner:
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Washington Irving:
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
William Wordsworth:
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart…
Winston Churchill:
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
Zelda Fitzgerald:
Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much a heart can hold.
Advice
Abigail Van Buren:
People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
Adlai Stevenson:
We should be careful and discriminating in all the advice we give. We should be especially careful in giving advice that we would not think of following ourselves. Most of all, we ought to avoid giving counsel which we don’t follow when it damages those who take us at our word.
Aeschylus:
It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
African proverb:
It takes a village to raise a child.
Agatha Christie:
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it.
Albert Camus:
I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.
Albert Schweitzer:
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.
Alfonso the Wise (attributed):
Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. 13th century
Amelia Earhart:
Never do things others can do and will do, if there are things others cannot do or will not do.
Anna Quindlen:
Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? “Keep her,” I replied…. The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.
Bessie Stanley:
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction. [published 11/30/1905 in the Lincoln (Kansas) Sentinel - an adaptation of this is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, though nothing like it has been found in his writings.]
Bessie Stanley (adapted; erroneously attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson):
Success
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
Often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, it is an adaptation of a poem published in 1905 by Bessie Stanley. No version of it has been found in Emerson’s writings. For more information see http://www.transcendentalists.com/success.htm
Bill Cosby:
A word to the wise ain’t necessary, it’s the stupid ones who need the advice.
Carolyn Wells:
Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive.
Charles A. Beard:
All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
Erica Jong:
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Francis Bacon:
He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.
G. K. Chesterton:
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
Georg C. Lichtenberg:
One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.
George Burns:
Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.
Gloria Steinem:
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
Gracián:
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
Harry S Truman:
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
Heinrich Heine:
He only profits from praise who values criticism.
Henri Nouwen:
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
Horace:
Whatever advice you give, be brief.
James Callaghan:
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice.
Karl Barth:
Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.
Lillian Hellman:
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Louisa May Alcott:
When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don’t take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do; then they act upon it, and if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it; if it fails, they generously give her the whole.
in Little Women
Marcus Aurelius:
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
Margaret Fuller:
Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.
Mark Twain:
Always do right–this will gratify some and astonish the rest. message to Young People’s Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, New York, February 16, 1901
Nelson Algren:
Never play cards with any man named “Doc.”
Never eat at any place called “Mom’s.”
And never, never, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.
Oscar Wilde:
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde:
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Pamela Glenconner:
Bitter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them.
Deep are the thoughts of a child: Quiet them.
Sharp is the grief of a child: Take it from him.
Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden it.
Pete Seeger:
“Do-so” is more important than “say-so.”
Rabindranath Tagore:
He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Go put your creed into the deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously):
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ramona L. Anderson:
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.
Robert Frost:
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
Samuel Smiles:
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.
Thomas Fuller:
If better were within, better would come out.
Thomas Jefferson:
Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.
to his daughter Martha
Thomas Jefferson:
A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life:
1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
6. We never repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which never have happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
(letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825)
W. Somerset Maugham:
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
Woody Guthrie:
Take it easy — but take it.
Beauty
Albert Camus:
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
Albert Einstein:
The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour — property, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.
Albert Einstein:
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
Living Philosophies, 1931
Albert Einstein:
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
Anais Nin:
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
Anne Lamott:
Joy is the best makeup.
Buckminster Fuller:
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
Candace Bergen:
People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don’t have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart.
Chinese proverb:
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
Claudette Colbert:
It matters more what’s in a woman’s face than what’s on it.
D. H. Lawrence:
Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition.
Evelyn Underhill:
For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
Frederick Turner:
To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory.
Georgia O’Keeffe:
I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
Helen Keller:
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched … but are felt in the heart.
Henry Miller:
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Jean Kerr:
I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
John Keats:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
John Ruskin:
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for example.
Joseph Addison:
Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
Kahlil Gibran:
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Kalidasa:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
Kenneth Patton:
The day I see a leaf is a marvel of a day.
Louise Bogan:
I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
Oscar Hammerstein, II:
Do you love me because I’m beautiful,
or am I am beautiful because you love me?
Pierre Auguste Renoir:
The pain passes, but the beauty remains.
Rachel Carson:
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
Rachel Carson:
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Truth, and goodness, and beauty are but different faces of the same all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. ‘Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Robert C. Fuller:
Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issue of how our lives fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things. This is true even when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is “spiritual” when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.
Robert Louis Stevenson:
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
Rudyard Kipling:
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: — “Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade.
Sir Walter Scott:
Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.
Sophia Loren:
Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got.
Thomas F. Healey:
Don’t strew me with roses after I’m dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
Virginia Woolf:
The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
Willa Cather:
Oh, this is the joy of the rose: / That it blows, / And goes.
Belief
Adlai Stevenson:
What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand. speech, Libertyville, Illinois, May 21, 1954
Alfred Korzybski:
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Anatole France:
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
Andre Gide:
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Anne Frank:
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.
Bertrand Russell:
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires — desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Buddha:
Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true. [paraphrased]
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine.
D. H. Lawrence:
The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.
Demosthenes:
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
Edith Hamilton:
Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
Frank Lloyd Wright:
The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
G. K. Chesterton:
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
George Bernard Shaw:
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
George Orwell:
Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
Hannah Senesh:
One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one’s life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.
Harry Emerson Fosdick:
Nothing else matters much — not wealth, nor learning, nor even health — without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.
Isaiah Berlin:
Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of douts of my own.
John Burroughs:
It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
John Lovejoy Elliott:
I have known many good people who did not believe in God. But I have never known a human being who was good who did not believe in people. [language slightly modified]
Mark Twain:
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. Autobiography, 1959
Mark Twain:
Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Michael Korda:
To succeed, we must first believe that we can.
Nikos Kazantzakis:
By believing passionately in something that does not yet exist, we create it.
Pearl S. Buck:
When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.
Pearl S. Buck:
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.
Philip K. Dick:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; Unbelief, in denying them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Robert Fulghum:
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — myth is more potent than history — dreams are more powerful than facts — hope always triumphs over experience — laughter is the cure for grief — love is stronger than death.
Rudyard Kipling:
I always try to believe the best of everybody — it saves so much trouble.
Sophia Lyon Fahs:
Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage
exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and
deeper sympathies.
This entry continued …
Sydney J. Harris:
An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
Thomas Jefferson:
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Thomas Jefferson:
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson:
All … religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.
Voltaire:
As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.
William James:
We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.
William Robertson Smith:
Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of the true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods.
Winston Churchill:
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
Books
Abraham Lincoln:
People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
Albert Camus:
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Aldous Huxley:
A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.
Amy Lowell:
For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.Boston Athenaeum
Amy Lowell:
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Ann Richards:
I have a real soft spot in my heart for librarians and people who care about books.
Anna Garlin Spencer:
The experience of the race shows that we get our most important education not through books but through our work. We are developed by our daily task, or else demoralized by it, as by nothing else.
Arnold Lobel:
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Barbara Tuchman:
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
Bertrand Russell:
There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Cicero:
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Daniel J. Boorstin:
A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
Denise Levertov:
I don’t think one can accurately measure the historical effectiveness of a poem; but one does know, of course, that books influence individuals; and individuals, although they are part of large economic and social processes, influence history. Every mass is after all made up of millions of individuals.
Elizabeth Drew:
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
Elizabeth Hardwick:
The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
Emily Dickinson:
There is no frigate like a bookTo take us lands away.
Francis Bacon:
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested.
Georg C. Lichtenberg:
A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.
Harriet Martineau:
Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.
Henry G. Strauss:
I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read about the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.
Henry Miller:
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum — of both books and money! But especially books, for books represent infinitely more than money. A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.
Henry Ward Beecher:
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
John Ruskin:
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
John Ruskin:
A book worth reading is worth buying.
Katherine Mansfield:
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
Kathleen Norris:
Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:
No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Lenore Hershey:
Do give books – religious or otherwise – for Christmas. They’re never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.
Louisa May Alcott:
She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.
Margaret Fuller:
A house is no home unless it contain food and fire for the mind as well as for the body.
Mark Twain:
There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn’t because the book is not there and worth being written — it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.
Mark Twain:
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mortimer Adler:
If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess.
Mortimer Adler:
In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
Mortimer Adler:
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
Nick Bantock:
Our house was a temple to The Book. We owned thousands, nay millions of books. They lined the walls, filled the cupboards, and turned the floor into a maze far more complex than Hampton Court’s. Books ruled our lives. They were our demigods.
Norman Cousins:
A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas — a place where history comes to life.
Oscar Wilde:
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, the worst. What is the right use? What is the end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satelite instead of a system.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
Rose Macaulay:
Only one hour in a day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep, and that is the hour spent in bed with a book after being called in the morning.
Theodore Parker:
The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading: but a great book that comes from a great thinker — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and with beauty.
Theodore Parker:
The books that help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
Thomas Jefferson:
[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.
William Ellery Channing:
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds… In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most previous thought, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.
bell hooks:
Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
Civilization
Albert Schweitzer:
Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it — a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
Ariel and Will Durant:
Education is the transmission of civilization.
Barbara Tuchman:
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
Felix Adler:
There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization.
Henry David Thoreau:
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
Howard Winters:
Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Thomas Jefferson:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Vince Lombardi:
Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
Character
Abigail Van Buren:
The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.
Abraham Lincoln:
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Albert Einstein:
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Anne Frank:
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.
Benjamin Franklin:
There never was a good knife made of bad steel.
Cicero:
It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.
Clarence Darrow:
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
Eleanor Roosevelt:
Character building begins in our infancy, and continues until death.
Eleanor Roosevelt:
People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.
Faith Baldwin:
Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down within incredible swiftness.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.:
Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece — by thought, choice, courage, and determination.
Helen Keller:
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Henry David Thoreau:
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Henry David Thoreau:
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
James A. Froude:
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
Character develops itself in the stream of life.
Lillian Hellman:
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group. [Letter to the US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1952]
Margaret Chase Smith:
Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.
Margaret Chase Smith:
The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.
Mark Twain:
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.
Rabbi Zusya:
In the world to come, I shall not be asked, “Why were you not Moses?” I shall be asked, “Why were you not Zusya?”
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works. (sermon, October 15, 1826)
Robert Coles:
Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?
Sam Adams:
It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.
Scott Alexander:
All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.
Thomas Carlyle:
Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.
Victor Frankl:
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
William Lyon Phelps:
This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.
Woodrow Wilson:
If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.
Death
Amelia Burr:
Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.
Anais Nin:
People living deeply have no fear of death.
Charlie Daniels:
A brief candle; both ends burning
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning
A friend to share the lonesome times
A handshake and a sip of wine
So say it loud and let it ring
We are all a part of everything
The future, present and the past
Fly on proud bird
You’re free at last.
written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. “They all eat one another!” he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, “They all feed one another,” and called it good.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Death? Why this fuss about death. Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! … Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. (Suicide Note, August 17, 1935)
Ecclesiastes:
For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Elie Wiesel:
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
(Oct. 1986)
Emily Dickinson:
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson:
What is—”Paradise”—
Who live there—
Are they “Farmers”—
Do they “hoe”—
Do they know that this is “Amherst”—
And that I—am coming—too—
This entry continued …
Emily Dickinson:
Love — is anterior to Life –
Posterior — to Death —
Initial of Creation, and
The Exponent of Earth —
Emily Dickinson:
Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen —
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs — between –
This entry continued …
Emily Dickinson:
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
This entry continued …
Emily Dickinson:
Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
“Dissolve” says Death—The Spirit “Sir
I have another Trust”—
Death doubts it—Argues from the Ground—
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.
Emily Dickinson:
All but Death, can be Adjusted—
Dynasties repaired—
Systems—settled in their Sockets—
Citadels—dissolved—
Wastes of Lives—resown with Colors
By Succeeding Springs—
Death—unto itself—Exception—
Is exempt from Change—
Epicurus:
Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.
Ernest Becker:
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity – designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.
Ernest Becker:
[W]e now know that the human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are protected from: the fear of life and the fear of death… Heidegger brought these fears to the center of his existential philosophy. He argued that the basic anxiety of [humanity] is anxiety about being-in-the-world, as well as anxiety of being-in-the-world. That is, both fear of death and fear of life, of experience and individuation.
Ernest Becker:
The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.
Felix Adler:
Religion is a wizard, a sibyl . . .
She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration.
She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn.
She faces death, and prophesies life.
Florynce Kennedy:
I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything but dying is really the only chance we’ll get to rest.
Forrest Church:
Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.
Gilda Radner:
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Isaac Asimov:
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.
James F. Bymes:
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death
John Muir:
Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
Louisa May Alcott:
Beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come.in Little Women, chapter 36
Margaret J. Wheatley:
Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die.
Norbert Capek:
It is worthwhile to live
and fight courageously
for sacred ideals.
This entry continued …
Paul Anka:
And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain,
My friends, I’ll say it clear,
I’ll state my case of which I’m certain.
I’ve lived a life that’s full, I’ve travelled each and evr’y highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way.
Rabbi Zusya:
In the world to come, I shall not be asked, “Why were you not Moses?” I shall be asked, “Why were you not Zusya?”
Robert Fulghum:
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — myth is more potent than history — dreams are more powerful than facts — hope always triumphs over experience — laughter is the cure for grief — love is stronger than death.
Roman Tombstone:
Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler.
But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way.
There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon,
No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus.
All we who are dead below
Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else.
I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler,
Lest even while dead I seem loquacious to you.
Scott Alexander:
All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.
Sogyal Rinpoche:
…when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.
Thomas F. Healey:
Don’t strew me with roses after I’m dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
Thomas Mann:
A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.
Toni Morrison:
Birth, life, and death — each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
W. Somerset Maugham:
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
William Shakespeare:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
This entry continued …
Winston Churchill:
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
