"History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the the movements of the world gave a chance for it."

Walter Bagehot "Physics and Politics"

History and Nations

"Being natural is one of the most irritating poses I know in people."

Alexander Theroux "An Adultery"

Manners and Ethics

"Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need."

Gaston Bachelard

Dreams and Desires

Human

"Knowledge is the most democratic source of power."

Alvin Toffler "The Democratic Difference"

Knowledge, Ignorance

Power and Weakness

"If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?"

Vince Lombardi

Success and Fame

"Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been."

Mark Twain "Following the Equator"

Joy and Sadness

"Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit."

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg "Aphorisms"

Education

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."

William Shakespeare "The Tempest"

Destiny and Fate

Various

"Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity."

Robert G. Ingersoll

Optimism and Hope

Truth and Falsity

"If married couples did not live together good marriages would be more common."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Marriage

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

Jane Austen "Pride and Prejudice"

Manners and Ethics

"Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual."

Angela Carter

Various

"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations."

David Friedman

Peace and War

Politics and Diplomacy

Power and Weakness

"The British tourist is always happy abroad as long as the natives are waiters."

Robert Morley

History and Nations

"The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby."

Natalie Wood

Woman and Man

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

Clive Staples Lewis

Courage and Fear

"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else."

Ogden Nash

Memory

Youth and Age

"There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist."

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg "Aphorisms"

God and Religion

Manners and Ethics

"Words express neither objects nor ourselves."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Sayings in Prose"

Oration and Silence

Reality and Imagination

"Man is not man, but a wolf to those he does not know."

Titus Maccius Plautus "The Comedy of Asses"

Egoism

Manners and Ethics

"What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike."

Alfred North Whitehead

Manners and Ethics

"Joy goes as deep as sorrow, but leaves less of itself behind."

Mason Cooley "City Aphorisms"

Joy and Sadness

Sorrow and Nostalgia

"Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men."

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Happiness

Marriage

"Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution."

Gustave Flaubert letter to Louise Colet

Happiness

"Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life.... The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis."

Marlon Brando

Art and Culture

Health and Alcohol

"Smile! It is easier than explaining why you are sad."

Click if you know the author

Joy and Sadness

"Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address."

Lane Olinghouse

Sin and Conscience

"You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself."

Sam Levenson

Defeates and Mistakes

Education

"All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life."

M. C. Richards

Art and Culture

Life and Death

"Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God."

Samuel Johnson

Courage and Fear

God and Religion

Sin and Conscience

"Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's."

Billy Wilder

Defeates and Mistakes

Intellect, Judgement

"Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less."

Robert E. Lee

Manners and Ethics

Work and Laziness

"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."

Ambrose Bierce

Anger

"Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know."

Joseph Roux "Meditations of a Parish Priest"

Art and Culture

Science and Technology

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."

Eleanor Roosevelt

Dreams and Desires

"When a man is willing and eager, the gods join in."

Aeschylus

Dreams and Desires

Success and Fame

"No rules for success will work if you don't."

Click if you know the author

Success and Fame

Work and Laziness

"Relativity applies to physics, not ethics."

Albert Einstein

Manners and Ethics