"Hope is a pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible."

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Optimism and Hope

Reality and Imagination

"Faith is not faith until it's all you're holding on to."

Click if you know the author

God and Religion

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."

Bertrand Russell "What I Believe"

Good and Evil

Knowledge, Ignorance

Love

"A rose must remain with the sun and the rain or its lovely promise won't come true."

Ray Evans "To Each His Own"

Beauty and Ugliness

Nature and Animals

"When we can't dream any longer we die."

Emma Goldman

Dreams and Desires

Life and Death

"We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance."

Paul Boese

Life and Death

"Offer forgiveness not for their sake, but for your own health."

Tristan J. Loo

Forgiveness

"Five out of four people have problems with fractions."

Click if you know the author

Education

Question and Problem

Science and Technology

"If I die, I forgive you; If I live, we shall see."

Spanish Proverbs

Egoism

Forgiveness

"Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another."

Anatol France "The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard"

Work and Laziness

"Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination."

Bertrand Russell

Knowledge, Ignorance

Reality and Imagination

Science and Technology

"Of the three prerequisites of genius; the first is soul; the second is soul; and the third is soul."

Edwin Whipple

Talent and Genius

"A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."

Franz Kafka

Art and Culture

"Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain."

Fawn M. Brodie

Education

Work and Laziness

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."

Ernest Rutherford

Science and Technology

"To learn from our enemies is the best pathway to loving them: for it makes us grateful to them."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Friendship and Hostility

"Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in giving himself up to what is greater than himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God."

Rabindranath Tagore

Happiness

Human

"One good thing about my computer: it never asks why."

Ashleigh Brilliant

Question and Problem

Science and Technology

"Time misspent in youth is sometimes all the freedom one ever has."

Anita Brookner "The Misalliance"

Defeates and Mistakes

Time and Passing

Youth and Age

"I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal."

Groucho Marx

Reality and Imagination

"Truth is no road to fortune."

Rousseau-Jean-Jacques

Richness and Money

Truth and Falsity

"Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it."

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Success and Fame

"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier."

Henry Louis Mencken "A Mencken Chrestomathy"

Knowledge, Ignorance

Various

"We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well."

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Education

Life and Death

"The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us."

Robert Louis Stevenson

Human

Love

"Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties."

Aesop "The Fox and the Goat"

Trust

"Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; but they are the instruments of the wise."

Samuel Lover

Power and Weakness

Wisdom and Stupidity

"One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you."

Larry Gelbart

Wit and Humor

"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."

Graham Greene

Youth and Age

"The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce."

John Kenneth Galbraith

Happiness

Marriage

"The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor."

Hubert Humphrey

Authority, Government

Friendship and Hostility

"Look at the photo, but paint from life: you're an artist not a camera."

Samantha Jordaan

Art and Culture

"Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake."

Victor Frankl

Good and Evil

Human

"My only regret in the theatre is that I could never sit out front and watch me."

John Barrymore

Art and Culture

"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."

Roger Federer

Manners and Ethics

"The future is a better key to the present than the past."

James Graham Ballard

Time and Passing

"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it."

Mark Twain

Nature and Animals

Pain and Tears

"When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die."

Sartre-Jean-Paul "The Devil and the Good Lord"

Peace and War

Richness and Money

"The only way to win is to fight on the side of your adversaries."

Francis Picabia "Who Knows: Poems and Aphorisms"

Defeates and Mistakes

Success and Fame

"Focus 90% of your time on solutions and only 10% of your time on problems."

Anthony J. D`Angelo "The College Blue Book"

Question and Problem

Work and Laziness

"So many men so many questions."

Terence

Human

Question and Problem

"Only small minds are impressed by large numbers."

Arthur C. Clarke

Intellect, Judgement

Science and Technology

"Humour is by far the most significant activity of the human brain."

Edward de Bono

Wit and Humor

"More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth."

Napoleon Hill

Intellect, Judgement

Richness and Money

"It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture."

Tom Stoppard

Art and Culture

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me."

Blaise Pascal "Pensées"

Courage and Fear

Time and Passing

"In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest."

Aesop

Power and Weakness

"In America nothing dies easier than tradition."

Russell Baker

History and Nations