A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. -- Mark Twain

Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.  -- Mark Twain

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself  ~ Mark Twain

I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places  ~ Mark Twain

Prosperity is the best protector of principle  ~ Mark Twain

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen ~ Ernest Hemingway

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them ~ Ralph Nichols

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today ~ Robert McKee

If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story ~ Barbara Greene

I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I've become. If I had, I'd have done it a lot earlier ~ Oprah Winfrey

Authenticity is the alignment of head, mouth, heart, and feet - thinking, saying, feeling, and doing the same thing - consistently. This builds trust, and followers love leaders they can trust ~ Lance Secretan

As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth ~ John Whittier

There is no persuasiveness more effectual than the transparency of a single heart, of a sincere life ~ Joseph Berber Lightfoot

Individuals play the game, but teams beat the odds ~ SEAL Team Saying

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much ~ Helen Keller

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it ~ Charles Swindoll

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning ~ Bill Gates

When you're finished changing, you're finished ~ Ben Franklin

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change ~ Charles Darwin

The only way to do great work is to love the work you do ~ Steve Jobs

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious ~ Albert Einstein

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless ~ Charles de Gaulle

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us ~ Boris Pasternak

Less isn't more; just enough is more ~ Milton Glaser

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication ~ Leonardo daVinci

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder ~ Gilbert K Chesterton

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things ~ Peter F. Drucker

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader ~ John Quincy Adams

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other ~ John F. Kennedy

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great ~ Mark Twain

The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth ~ G.C. Lichtenberg

There is nothing unequal as the equal treatment of unequals ~ Aristotle

Wisdom begins with wonder ~ Socrates

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand ~ Confucius

Fair is foul and foul is fair ~ Shakespeare, Macbeth

I wasted time and now doth time waste me ~ William Shakespeare

What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here ~ NSA Oak Ridge facility.

Better an end with horror, than a horror without end ~ German proverb

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed ~ Albert Einstein

Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.

Small things make base men proud ~ William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has to really want to change.

All generalizations are false, including this one ~ Mark Twain

O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive ~ Sir Walter Scott, "Marmion"

Just because the message may never be received does not mean it is not worth sending.

You need more time; and you probably always will.

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first ~ Blaise Pascal

Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you.

Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. I wasted time and now doth time waste me ~ William Shakespeare

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.

This is the principal difference between a dog and a man ~ Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

The ripest fruit falls first ~ William Shakespeare, "Richard II"

There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty.

When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend ~ Mark Twain

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech ~ Mark Twain

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

This was the most unkindest cut of all ~ William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"

Lady Luck brings added income today. Lady friend takes it away tonight.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction ~ John F. Kennedy

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on ~ John F. Kennedy

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear ~ George Orwell

Omission is the most powerful form of lie ~ George Orwell

For each of the ways things might have been but are not, there is a world at which they are that way ~ David Lewis

You should be very kind to the people you meet on your way up because you might have to meet them again on your way down ~ Henry Kissinger

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. -- Benjamin Franklin

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. -- Winston Churchill

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. -- Thomas Jefferson

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. -- George Washington

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you can dream it, you can do it. -- Walt Disney

The quality of person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. -- Vince Lombardi

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon looses both. -- Dwight Eisenhower

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. -- Albert Einstein

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. -- Henry Ford

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. -- Theodore Roosevelt

Nietzsche's riddle: "Is Man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of Man's?"

One can pass on responsibility, but not the discretion that goes with it. -- Benvenuto Cellini

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. -- Sir Winston Churchill

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems ~ Paul Erdos

Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back ~ Paul Erdos

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it ~ George Bernard Shaw 

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego' ~ Friedrich Nietzsche 

Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger 

I have nothing to declare except my genius ~ Oscar Wilde, upon arriving at U.S. customs 1882

Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship ~ Sharon Stone

He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how' ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death ~ H. H. Munro (Saki)

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth ~ Sherlock Holmes; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher ~ Ambrose Bierce

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens ~ Jimi Hendrix

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours ~ Richard Bach

A witty saying proves nothing ~ Voltaire

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault ~ Henry Kissinger

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance ~ Will Durant

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence ~ Xenocrates

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread ~ Mahatma Gandhi

God, please save me from your followers! ~ Bumper Sticker

Wit is educated insolence ~ Aristotle

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains ~ Sir Winston Churchill

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin ~ John von Neumann

Grove giveth and Gates taketh away ~ Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation ~ H. H. Munro (Saki)

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech ~ Martin Fraquhar Tupper

I am not young enough to know everything ~ Oscar Wilde

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his ~ General George Patton 

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure ~ Oliver Herford

Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century ~ Lewis Perelman

Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy ~ Ambrose Bierce

Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies ~ Voltaire, on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.

In God we trust, all others we virus scan.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it ~ Sam Levenson

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 ~ Abigail Van Buren

The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a person's life ~ William Wordsworth

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage ~ Ambrose Bierce

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century ~ Mark Twain

My advice to you is to get married. If you find a good wife, you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher ~ Socrates

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes ~ Gandhi

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err ~ Gandhi

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas ~ Albert Einstein

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion ~ Albert Einstein

Information is not knowledge.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love ~ Charles Peguy

'Contrariwise' , continued Tweedledee, 'If it was so, it might be; and if it is, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.' ~ Lewis Carroll

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need ~ Karl Marx

You prefer the company of the opposite sex, but are well liked by your own.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all ~ Shakespeare

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.

This is the principal difference between a dog and a man ~ Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable and trustworthy. A pity that it's totally undeserved.

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve ~ J. R. R. Tolkien

Kiss: Something made of nothing, tasting very sweet

A most delicious compound, with ingredients complete.

But if, as on occasion, the heart and mind are sour; it has no great significance, and loses half its power.

Romance should never begin with sentiment, it should begin with science, and end with a settlement ~ Oscar Wilde

Language is the root of all identity; to tamper with that is either poetry or treason ~ Terry Eagleton

Don't gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold ~ Bob Marley

If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs? ~ Marvin Kitman

Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes ~ Oscar Wilde

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes ~ Benjamin Disraeli

All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy ~ Spike Milligan

And I gave that man directions, even though I didn't know the way, because that's the kind of guy I am this week ~ Homer J. Simpson

We know what we are, but know not what we may be ~ William Shakespeare

Justice Louis Brandeis

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

If we would guide by the light of reason we must let our minds be bold.

If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

Men long for an afterlife in which there apparently is nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.

Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.

Organization can never be a substitute for initiative and for judgment.

Our government ... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities.

The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.

There are no shortcuts in evolution.

Those who won our independence ... valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.

Blaise Pascal

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Law, without force, is impotent.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Our nature consist in motion; complete rest is death.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

The war existing between the senses and reason.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

Vanity is but the surface.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.

You always admire what you really don't understand. 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

A person hears only what they understand.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

A purpose you impart is no longer your own.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

A useless life is an early death.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

All things are only transitory.

An unused life is an early death.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Everyone hears only what he understands.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

He who is plenteously provided for from within, needs but little from without.

I call architecture frozen music.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

I will listen to anyone's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

If I love you, what does that matter to you!

If I say to the moment: 'Stay now! You are so beautiful'!

If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

In art the best is good enough.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.

It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

It is the strange fate of man, that even in the greatest of evils the fear of the worst continues to haunt him.

It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

Live dangerously and you live right.

Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.

Love can do much, but duty more.

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

My poor head is in such a whirl, my mind is all in bits.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.

Nothing is worth more than this day.

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.

On all the peaks lies peace.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Personality is everything in art and poetry.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

Precaution is better than cure.

Science arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

Sowing is not as difficult as reaping.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

The coward only threatens when he is safe.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

The deed is everything, the glory naught.

The formation of one's character ought to be everyone's chief aim.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

The human mind will not be confined to any limits.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

The little man is still a man.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

The world remains ever the same.

There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From its springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.

They travel with a constant companion, autumn.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

Three may keep counsel, if two are away.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

To create something you must be something.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants.

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives.

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.