"America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there."

Laurence J. Peter

History and Nations

"It requires more courage to suffer than to die."

Napoleon Bonaparte

Courage and Fear

Life and Death

Pain and Tears

"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."

Georges Clemenceau

Justice

"Here's to your coffins: May they be made of hundred-year-old oaks, which we shall plant tomorrow."

(a toast)

Health and Alcohol

Life and Death

Wit and Humor

"If you have an apple and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, we both still only have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, we each now have two ideas."

George Bernard Shaw

Intellect, Judgement

Various

"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. "

Clive Staples Lewis

Time and Passing

"Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem."

Lindsay Anderson

Art and Culture

Question and Problem

"If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger."

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Various

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment."

Carl Sandburg

Art and Culture

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."

Martin Farquhar Tupper "Proverbial Philosophy"

Oration and Silence

"If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars."

Rabindranath Tagore

Pain and Tears

"Experience is what you get while looking for something else."

Federico Fellini

Education

"Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness."

Immanuel Kant

Manners and Ethics

"Even before the music begins there is that bored look on people's faces. A polite form of self-imposed torture, the concert."

Henry Miller "Tropic of Cancer"

Art and Culture

"Error is the price we pay for progress."

Alfred North Whitehead

Defeates and Mistakes

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Conscience -- the only incorruptible thing about us."

Henry Fielding

Sin and Conscience

"It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it."

Joseph Joubert

Happiness

"Space is to place as eternity is to time."

Joseph Joubert

Time and Passing

Various

"Variety is the mother of Enjoyment."

Benjamin Disraeli "Vivian Grey"

Joy and Sadness

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

John Steinbeck

Intellect, Judgement

Question and Problem

Various

"Fall down seven times. Stand up eight."

Japanese Proverbs

Defeates and Mistakes

Sin and Conscience

"To make a man perfectly happy tell him he works too hard, that he spends too much money, that he is "misunderstood" or that he is "different"; none of this is necessarily complimentary, but it will flatter him infinitely more that merely telling him that he is brilliant, or noble, or wise, or good."

Helen Rowland "A Guide to Men"

Happiness

Woman and Man

"Miss, n.: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market."

Ambrose Bierce

Woman and Man

"If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way."

Napoleon Hill

Success and Fame

Various

"A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God."

Donald Knuth

Science and Technology

"A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again."

Carl Van Doren

Art and Culture

"Cause and effect, the chancellors of God."

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Essays"

Destiny and Fate

"America is a young country with an old mentality."

George Santayana "Winds of Doctrine"

History and Nations

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought."

Emma Goldman

Manners and Ethics

Sin and Conscience

"Conscience is a man's compass."

Vincent Van Gogh

Sin and Conscience

"The law of love could be best understood and learned through little children."

Mahatma Gandhi

Love

Youth and Age

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do."

Andrew Carnegie

Manners and Ethics

Youth and Age

"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get all dirty, and the pig likes it."

Click if you know the author

Various

"I know too much to be a sceptic and too little to be a dogmatist."

Pierre Bayle "Historical and Critical Dictionary"

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Truth and Falsity

"Gravity always wins."

Dolly Parton

Various

"The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just."

Anita Brookner

Justice

Life and Death

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion."

Richard John Neuhaus

God and Religion

"Find purpose, the means will follow."

Mahatma Gandhi

Dreams and Desires

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."

Bertrand Russell "Unpopular Essays"

Courage and Fear

"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception."

George Orwell "Collected Essays"

Patriotism

Politics and Diplomacy

"The increase in wisdom can be measured precisely by the decrease in bile."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Wisdom and Stupidity

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."

Marcel Proust

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Biography should be written by an acute enemy."

Arthur Balfour

Friendship and Hostility

Various

"The future is much like the present, only longer."

Dan Quisenberry

Time and Passing

"One enemy is too much."

George Herbert

Friendship and Hostility

"True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about but few have seen."

François de La Rochefoucauld

Love

"We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners."

George Bernard Shaw

Manners and Ethics