A couple dozen quotations of the sort I like to collect. Most of them, as usual, come from the newsletter A Word a Day. Have fun!
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
Faith is believing what you know ain't so. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
"Faith" is a fine invention / For gentlemen who see -- / But microscopes are prudent / In an emergency. -Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886)
Snakes and ladders: the game of organized religions. -Yahia Lababidi, writer (b. 1973)
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.' -Sydney J. Harris, journalist (1917-1986)
In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose. -Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine, mystic (1782-1857)
Words are the small change of thought. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)
We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless. -Lech Walesa, human rights activist, Polish president, Nobel laureate (b. 1943)
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti, author, speaker, and philosopher (1895-1986)
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. -Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist (1875-1926)
Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities when directing one's course by it, one must still try to follow its direction. -Vincent van Gogh, painter (1853-1890)
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another. -Juvenal, poet (c. 60-140)
Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others. -Frederick Saunders, librarian and essayist (1807-1902)
Like cars in amusement parks, our direction is often determined through collisions. -Yahia Lababidi, author (b. 1973)
A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains. -Hippolyte Taine, critic and historian (1828-1893)
Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon which, though far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that restless world of waters. -Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)
I once met a man who had forgiven an injury. I hope some day to meet the man who has forgiven an insult. -Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician (1823-1871)
How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success. -Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine, mystic (1782-1857)
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