"When I wished to sing of love it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow it was transformed for me into love."

Franz Schubert

Art and Culture

Love

Sorrow and Nostalgia

"When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window."

English Proverbs

Love

Richness and Money

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

God and Religion

"Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day."

Albert Camus

Justice

Life and Death

"God helps those who help themselves."

Algernon Sidney

God and Religion

Work and Laziness

"When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice."

Lin Yutang

Freedom and Servitude

Justice

Peace and War

"There are worse things than being fat, and one of them is worrying about it all the time."

Peg Bracken

Health and Alcohol

"If you were the only person on earth, Christ would have still suffered and died for you."

St. Augustine of Hippo

God and Religion

"The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more."

Jonas Salk

Work and Laziness

"Music is something that makes you feel, makes you think, and if you're really lucky, it makes you move."

Peter Gabriel

Art and Culture

"We must always take risks. That is our destiny."

George Eliot

Destiny and Fate

"Success is a consequence and must not be a goal."

Gustave Flaubert "Pensées de Gustave Flaubert"

Success and Fame

"All war represents a failure of diplomacy."

Tony Benn

Peace and War

Politics and Diplomacy

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

T.S. Eliot

Courage and Fear

Various

"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."

Muriel Rukeyser

Human

Nature and Animals

Various

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."

Stephen King

Reality and Imagination

Truth and Falsity

"When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit."

Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged"

Question and Problem

Reality and Imagination

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Don't gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver and gold."

Bob Marley

Wisdom and Stupidity

"A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite."

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Journals"

Human

"When you lose, don't lose the lesson."

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Defeates and Mistakes

Education

"That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

Willa Cather

Happiness

"War is what happens when language fails."

Margaret Atwood

Peace and War

"The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain. Therefore they will suffer if you take away their pleasure by not feeling pain."

Tertullian "De patientia"

Pain and Tears

"Sometimes I know that there is intelligent life on other planets because they haven't tried to contact us."

Click if you know the author

Human

"The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them. "

Saint-Exupery-Antoine-de "Wind, Sand, and Stars"

Nature and Animals

Question and Problem

Science and Technology

"There are some defeats more triumphant than victories."

Michel de Montaigne

Defeates and Mistakes

Peace and War

"No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."

Henry Brooks Adams

Oration and Silence

"The only people to profit from the mistakes of others are biographers."

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Defeates and Mistakes

"We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided."

Alexander Hamilton

Health and Alcohol

Question and Problem

"Some things you don't need until they leave you; they're the things that you miss."

Rob Thomas

Various

"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war."

Erasmus

Justice

Peace and War

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'Thank You', that would suffice."

Meister Eckhart

God and Religion

"Optimists are badly informed pessimists."

Click if you know the author

Optimism and Hope

"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love."

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Love

Pain and Tears

"To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others."

George Orwell "Shooting an Elephant"

Love

"A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one."

Guy de Maupassant

Love

"The path of least resistance is the path of the loser."

Herbert George Wells

Defeates and Mistakes

Work and Laziness

"The girl with a future avoids a man with a past."

Evan Esar

Woman and Man

"Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance."

Ashley-Cooper-Anthony

Truth and Falsity

"Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain, a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs - the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free."

Mark Twain "Letters From the Earth"

Life and Death

"If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."

John Brunner "The Shockwave Rider"

Good and Evil

"It's good to have a short memory because it keeps life fresh."

Mark Bittman

Memory

"The greatest tragedy is when man gives up what he wants most for what he wants now!"

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Dreams and Desires

"The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed."

Albert Schweitzer

Various

"A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world."

Tony Benn

God and Religion

Politics and Diplomacy

"The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet."

Gustave Flaubert "Pensées de Gustave Flaubert"

Health and Alcohol

Love

"Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realising you were the prisoner!"

Max Lucado

Forgiveness

"Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion."

Desmond Tutu

Anger

Health and Alcohol