"The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children."

Clarence Darrow

Family and Loneliness

Life and Death

"In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine."

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Life and Death

"The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their forgetfulness."

Marguerite Yourcenar "Memoirs of Hadrian"

Memory

"Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence."

Laurence J. Peter "The Peter Principle"

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Life for me has been exactly what I thought it would be - a cake, which I have eaten and had too."

Margaret Anderson "The Fiery Fountains"

Life and Death

"Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors."

Eugene O`Neill "Lazarus Laughed"

Family and Loneliness

Life and Death

"Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors."

François de La Rochefoucauld

Optimism and Hope

Various

"Injections ... are the best thing ever invented for feeding doctors."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez "In Evil Hour"

Health and Alcohol

"My greatest weapon is mute prayer."

Mahatma Gandhi

God and Religion

Oration and Silence

Power and Weakness

"The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now."

Lech Walesa

Oration and Silence

Various

"Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."

Mao Zedong

Peace and War

Politics and Diplomacy

"You'll catch a liar before you'll catch a cripple."

Catalan Proverbs

Truth and Falsity

"Eat and drink with your relatives; do business with strangers."

Greek Proverbs

Family and Loneliness

"Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful."

Ann Landers

Nature and Animals

"Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness."

Georges Simenon

Art and Culture

Happiness

"The memory of bad quality lasts longer than the shock of high prices."

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Richness and Money

Various

"Never apologize for showing feeling...When you do so, you apologize for truth."

Benjamin Disraeli

Truth and Falsity

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer

Truth and Falsity

"The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it."

J. D. Salinger

Art and Culture

"Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer."

Charles Louis de Montesquieu

Love

"God heals, and the Doctor takes the Fee."

Benjamin Franklin

Health and Alcohol

"Only he can understand what a farm is, what a country is, who shall have sacrificed part of himself to his farm or country, fought to save it, struggled to make it beautiful. Only then will the love of farm or country fill his heart."

Saint-Exupery-Antoine-de "Flight to Arras"

Patriotism

"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths."

Aleksandr Pushkin

Reality and Imagination

Truth and Falsity

"Perfection is a road, not a destination."

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Various

"Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician."

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Beauty and Ugliness

Time and Passing

"Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride."

Claude Bernard

Science and Technology

"Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group."

Robert A. Heinlein

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at."

Josh Billings

Sin and Conscience

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

Robert A. Heinlein

Freedom and Servitude

Peace and War

"A friend is, as it were, a second self."

Marcus Tullius Cicero "De Amicitia"

Friendship and Hostility

"Erudition, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull."

Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary"

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Hope is patience with the lamp lit."

Tertullian

Optimism and Hope

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

Eleanor Roosevelt

Dreams and Desires

Time and Passing

"A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it."

Aldous Huxley "Do What You Will"

Optimism and Hope

"Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."

Edmund Burke

Education

Human

"Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem."

John Braine

Art and Culture

"To secure peace is to prepare for war."

Carl von Clausewitz

Peace and War

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."

George Orwell "Shooting an Elephant"

Defeates and Mistakes

Peace and War

"Justice is simply the advantage of the stronger."

Thrasymachus

Justice

Power and Weakness

"A Democrat -- too poor to be a capitalist, too rich to be a Communist."

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Politics and Diplomacy

"Lovers' quarrels are the renewal of love."

Terence "Andria"

Love

"We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves."

Gwendolyn Brooks

Human

Nature and Animals

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans."

John Lennon

Life and Death

"Morality and expediency coincide more than the cynics allow."

Roy Hattersley

Manners and Ethics

Various

"Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead."

gen. Omar Bradley

Justice

Peace and War

"There are people who are so full of common sense that they haven't the slightest cranny left for their own sense."

Miguel de Unamuno

Intellect, Judgement

"Physical prowess is for cowards; a little pain builds character."

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Pain and Tears

"Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all."

Thomas Mann "The Magic Mountain"

Art and Culture

Intellect, Judgement