"Interpretation is revenge of the intellect upon art."

Susan Sontag "Evergreen Interpretation"

Art and Culture

Intellect, Judgement

"God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails."

St. Augustine of Hippo

Work and Laziness

"If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees."

Khalil Gibran

Loyalty and Betrayal

Various

"The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve."

Dean Gooderham Acheson

Politics and Diplomacy

"I hate writing. But I love having written."

Dorothy Parker

Art and Culture

"Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy."

Peter Ustinov

Politics and Diplomacy

"To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking."

William James "The Letters of William James"

Science and Technology

Various

"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."

Fran Lebowitz "Social Studies"

Oration and Silence

"History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."

Edward Gibbon

History and Nations

Human

"History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been."

Joseph Stalin

Peace and War

"There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action."

Clarence Darrow

Law and Crime

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty."

Henry Ford

Education

Youth and Age

"Peace begins with a smile."

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Peace and War

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, and the most patient of teachers."

Click if you know the author

Art and Culture

Friendship and Hostility

"A smile is a curve that sets things straight."

Click if you know the author

Joy and Sadness

Various

"Danger is next neighbour to security."

English Proverbs

Courage and Fear

Various

"It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort; it's not the sort of comfort they supply there."

Clive Staples Lewis "Letters of C. S. Lewis"

Happiness

Joy and Sadness

"Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right."

Mark Twain

Health and Alcohol

"No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers."

Horace "Epistles"

Art and Culture

Health and Alcohol

"My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me."

Benjamin Disraeli

Egoism

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Click if you know the author

Manners and Ethics

Wisdom and Stupidity

"The truth is not always the same as the majority decision."

John Paul II

Truth and Falsity

"If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world."

Blaise Pascal

Friendship and Hostility

Oration and Silence

"Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life."

Truman Capote

Love

Nature and Animals

"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."

Logan Pearsall Smith "Afterthoughts"

Joy and Sadness

Life and Death

"Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them."

Lewis Mumford

Wit and Humor

"Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable."

Francis Bacon

Life and Death

Work and Laziness

"Man is designed as a perfect device. However, some copies behave as if the manufacturer has forgotten to connect them with all the circuits."

Kazimierz Matan

Defeates and Mistakes

Human

"Time spent with cats is never wasted."

Chateaubriand-Francois-Rene-de

Nature and Animals

Time and Passing

"The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent."

Alfred Brendel

Oration and Silence

"The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination."

Tommy Lasorda

Dreams and Desires

Optimism and Hope

Success and Fame

"There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know."

Ambrose Bierce

Knowledge, Ignorance

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Courage is grace under pressure."

Ernest Hemingway

Courage and Fear

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."

Oscar Wilde "Lady Windermere's Fan"

Friendship and Hostility

Woman and Man

"The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be."

Raymond Chandler "The Long Goodbye"

Justice

Law and Crime

"A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth."

Michael Kinsley

Manners and Ethics

Politics and Diplomacy

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."

Mignon McLaughin "The Neurotic's Notebook"

Manners and Ethics

Various

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it."

Rabindranath Tagore

Intellect, Judgement

"Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry."

Sartre-Jean-Paul "Black Orpheus"

Art and Culture

"If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness."

Voltaire "Letters on England"

God and Religion

History and Nations

"Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him."

Romain Gary

Wit and Humor

"Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked."

Peter De Vries

Friendship and Hostility

"It is said that the present is pregnant with the future."

Voltaire

Time and Passing

"Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it."

Andrew Young

Law and Crime

Richness and Money

"Those who fled will fight another time."

Tertullian "De fuga in persecutione"

Courage and Fear

"The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end."

Benjamin Disraeli "Henrieta Temple"

Knowledge, Ignorance

Love

"The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven."

Benjamin Disraeli "Tancred"

History and Nations

"Circumstances define us; they force us onto one road or another, and then they punish us for it."

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Human

Life and Death