"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

Thomas Jefferson

Oration and Silence

Talent and Genius

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

Carl Sagan

Knowledge, Ignorance

Science and Technology

"Become the change you want to see."

Oprah Winfrey

Dreams and Desires

Reality and Imagination

"There are strange flowers of reason to match each error of the senses."

Louis Aragon

Intellect, Judgement

"Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures."

Chamfort "Maxims and Considerations"

Science and Technology

Various

"When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them."

Martin Buber

God and Religion

"Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones."

Chamfort "Maxims and Considerations"

Richness and Money

"There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers."

Saint Teresa of Avila (Teresa de Jesús)

God and Religion

Pain and Tears

"People will listen a great deal more patiently while you explain your mistakes than when you explain your successes."

Wilbur N. Nesbit

Defeates and Mistakes

Success and Fame

"If women were good, God would have one."

Sacha Guitry

Marriage

Woman and Man

"Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?"

Ashleigh Brilliant

Time and Passing

"An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before."

Mark Twain

History and Nations

"People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."

St. Augustine of Hippo

Human

"Imagination at wit's end spreads its sad wings."

Samuel Beckett "Ill Seen Ill Said"

Reality and Imagination

Wit and Humor

"What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?"

Evelyn Waugh

Youth and Age

"If it is art, it is not for the masses."

Arnold Schoenberg

Art and Culture

"The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton "The Father Brown Mystery Series"

Reality and Imagination

"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."

Frank Zappa "The Real Frank Zappa Book"

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us."

P.J. O`Rourke "Parliament of Whores"

Authority, Government

"Advice, n. The smallest current coin."

Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary"

Various

"An illiterate king is a crowned ass."

English Proverbs

Authority, Government

Education

"The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen."

Walter Bagehot "Physics and Politics"

Art and Culture

History and Nations

"The hardest thing to understand is why we can understand anything at all."

Albert Einstein

Intellect, Judgement

"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get."

George Bernard Shaw "Man and Superman"

Various

"A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love."

Stendhal

Love

Optimism and Hope

"Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true."

Elias Canetti "The Secret Heart Of The Clock"

Truth and Falsity

"The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt."

Karl Kraus "Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths"

Art and Culture

"The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused."

Hermann Göring

Law and Crime

Peace and War

"Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art and Culture

"It is better to stay silent and let people think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Abraham Lincoln

Oration and Silence

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Never go to a doctor who's office plants have died."

Lazarus Long

Health and Alcohol

Trust

"Beauty is quite different from charm, beauty is what you notice in a woman, charm is when a woman notices you."

Click if you know the author

Beauty and Ugliness

"All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl."

Godard-Jean-Luc

Art and Culture

"A wise man sees as much as he should, not as much as he can."

Click if you know the author

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think."

Chinese Proverbs

Life and Death

Time and Passing

"One generation plants trees, another gets the shade."

Chinese Proverbs

Time and Passing

Work and Laziness

"Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family - but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything."

Willa Cather "Shadows on the Rock"

Family and Loneliness

Friendship and Hostility

"The poet's scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death."

Edmund Spenser "The Shepherd's Calendar"

Memory

Talent and Genius

"Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding."

Mahatma Gandhi

Anger

Various

"Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything."

Don Marquis "The Rare Don Marquis"

Various

"What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth."

Benjamin Disraeli

Defeates and Mistakes

Truth and Falsity

"He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies."

William Hazlitt

Friendship and Hostility

"That woman speaks eighteen languages and can't say No in any of them."

Dorothy Parker

Woman and Man

"There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit."

Napoleon Bonaparte

Power and Weakness

Various

"Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients."

Karl Kraus "Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths"

Art and Culture

Health and Alcohol

"Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers."

François de La Rochefoucauld

Egoism

"Life is one long process of getting tired."

Samuel Butler "Notebooks"

Life and Death

"Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins."

Jim Rohn

Education

Science and Technology