Truth - Quotes

Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend. - Rabindranath Tagore

Truth could be violent, could strip you of dignity and hope just as quickly as a gun. - Laurel K. Hamilton

Truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom. - Michel Foucault

Truth doesn't always heal a wounded soul. - Maxim Gorky

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. - Abraham Lincoln

Truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but, in the end, there it is. - Sir Winston Churchill

Truth is like a corrosive that will eat its way into the hardest of stone. - Unknown

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away. - Elvis Presley

Truth is like the town whore. Everybody knows her, but nonetheless, it's embarrassing to meet her on the street. - Wolfgang Borchert

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so. - Mark Twain

Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption. - Ambrose Bierce

Truth is not only a man's ornament but his instrument; it is the great man's glory, and the poor man's stock: a man's truth is his livelihood, his recommendation, his letters of credit. - Benjamin Whichcote

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be outraged by silence. - Henri Frederic Amiel

Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie. - Miyamoto Musashi

Truth is only path out of tangled web. - Charlie Chan

Truth is only visible to those who are able to question everything that they have been taught to believe. - Unknown

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. - Mark Twain

Truth is that which does not contaminate you, but empowers you. Therefore, there are degrees of truth, but, generically, truth is that which can do no harm. It cannot harm. - Gary Zukav

Truth is the bread of a noble manhood. - Henry Ward Beecher

Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Truth is the daughter of time. - Aulus Gellius

Truth is the one thing in nature always consistent with itself, and it is the one guide given to us in steering on the ocean of fate. - Arthur Lynch

Life - Quotes

Life is so short. We spend so much time sweating the small stuff; worrying, comparing, wishing, wanting and waiting for something bigger and better instead of focusing on all the simple blessings that surround us everyday. Life is so fragile and all it takes is a simple moment to change everything you take for granted. Focus on what’s important and be grateful. - Melanie Koulouris

The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of life is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give. - Unknown

Life doesn’t always introduce you to the people you want to meet. Sometimes, life puts you in touch with the people you need to meet to help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you, and to gradually strength you into the person you were meant to become. - Unknown

Life will always have a different plan for you. If you don’t give up, you will eventually get to your destination. But towards the end of your life, you may look back and realize that it was never really about the destination; it was the journey that counted. - King Samuel Benson

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement, (to) get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never threat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed. - Abraham Joshua Heschel

More on Life Here, and the book The Mystery of Life - a collection of quotes on and pertaining to life.

Beauty - Quotes

Real beauty is to be true to oneself. - Laetitia Casta

Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty. - Carlos

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful. - Ninon de L'Enclos

The beautiful is always bizarre. – Charles Baudelaire

The beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit. - Thomas Hardy

The beauty of the natural world lies in the details. - Natalie Angier

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. - Francis Bacon

The fairest cheek hath oftentimes a soul leprous as sin itself. - Thomas Dekker

The kind of beauty I want is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within – strength, courage, dignity. - Ruby Dee

The more beautiful the serpent, the more fatal its sting. - William Scott Downey

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely. - Louisa May Alcott

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty. - Fluke Greville

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles. - Unknown

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting. - John Kenneth Galbraith

There is likely to be beauty wherever proportion exists. - Austin O’Malley

There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. - Edgar Allan Poe

There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others. - Mandy Hale

There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty. - Joseph Addison

There's nothing more inspiring than the complexity and beauty of the human heart. - Cynthia Hand

This is the essence of beauty – the possession of a quality which excites the human organism to functioning harmonious with its own nature. - Ethel Puffer Howes

Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. - Rachel Carson

To have beauty is to have only that. But to have goodness is to be beautiful too. - Unknown

To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing, and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty. - Miss Mabel Chiltern

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. - Maya Angelou

What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful. - Scott Westerfeld

Belief - Quotes

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. - Bertrand Russell

Many people have died for their beliefs. The real courage is living and suffering for what you believe. - Christopher Paolini

Maturity of mind is best shown in slow belief. - Baltasar Gracian

Men that believe only what they understand can write their creed on a postage stamp. - Austin O’Malley

Most people are too slow to believe, but once you get them going, they believe too much. - Lewis F. Korns

Never underestimate the power of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe, no matter the conflicting evidence. - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know. - Michel de Montaigne

Oftimes our belief, if in another, we would regard a superstition. - Lewis F. Korns

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests. - John Stuart Mill

Our beliefs about what we are and what we can be precisely determine what we will be. - Anthony Robbins

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false. - Paul Valéry

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world. - Max Born

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favour of its truth. - Bertrand Russell

The investigator should have a robust faith – and yet not believe. - Claude Bernard

The less you know the more you believe. - U2

Art - Quotes

Keep doing what you like to do. That's all [art] is. - Cory Arcangel

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art. - Oscar Wilde

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. - Oscar Wilde

No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist. - Unknown

One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless. - Donald Barthelme

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. - Jackson Pollock

Painting is silent poetry. - Plutarch

Performance art is about joy, about making something that’s so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can’t put into worlds. - Laurie Anderson

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life? - Aldous Huxley

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. - Tom Stoppard

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. - Aristotle

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again. - William Faulkner

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. - Ursula LeGuin

The artist does not really create; he discovers. - Lyman Abbott

The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture. - Lucius Seneca

The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. - Pablo Picasso

That art is best which suggests most. - Austin O’Malley

The artist is justified by his art. - Lewis Foreman Day

The artist is not a man who describes, but a man who feels. - E. E. Cummings

Advertisement - Quotes

The fact is that much of advertising's power comes from this belief that advertising does not affect us. The most effective kind of propaganda is that which is not recognized as propaganda. Because we think advertising is silly and trivial, we are less on guard, less critical, than we might otherwise be. It's all in fun, it's ridiculous. While we're laughing, sometimes sneering, the commercial does its work. - Jean Kilbourne

The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that. - Noam Chomsky

The weakest link in any advertising program is its credibility. An advertising message has little believability with the average person. Advertising is taken for what it is – a biased message paid for by a company with a selfish interest in what the consumer consumes. - Al Ries & Laura Ries

There are huge advertising budgets only when there's no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that's better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid. - Carl Sagan

Too little advertising is like sowing too little seed. A farmer in planting corn puts a number of grains into each hill and is satisfied if one good healthy stalk comes from each planting. It’s the constant advertiser that is bound to attract attention. It’s the succession of bright, catchy advertisements that refuse to be ignored. That time must be allowed for the fruit to grow, ripen and be gathered is as true as that wheat cannot be reaped the day after it is sown. - Bryon W. Orr

When advertising is great advertising, it fastens on the myths, signs, and symbols of our common experience and becomes, quite literally, a benefit of the product.... As a result of great advertising, food tastes better, clothes feel snugger, cars ride smoother. The stuff of semiotics becomes the magic of advertising. - Curt Suplee

mind - Quotes

It is only when the mind is controlled and is kept to the right road of orderly progress that it becomes useful for its possessor and for society. A disorderly mind is a liability both to its owner and to others, all the havoc wrought in the world is wrought by men who have not learned the way of mind control, balance and poise. - K. Sri Dhammananda

The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another’s point of view; to put one’s self in another’s place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one’s own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture. - A. H. R. Fairchild

The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. - James Frazer

Refuse to think in terms of this or that. All pain needs investigation. The mind is nothing else but the self. Assumption obscures reality without destroying it. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false.. Your being a person is due to the illusion of space and time. The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for reality. - Unknown

Your unconscious mind is not a sink of horror and depravity. That's a Victorian notion, and a terrifically destructive one. It crippled most of the best minds of the nineteenth century, and hamstrung psychology all through the first half of the twentieth. Don't be afraid of your unconscious mind! It's not a black pit of nightmares. Nothing of the kind! It is the wellspring of health, imagination, creativity. What we call 'evil' is produced by civilization, its constraints and repressions, deforming the spontaneous, free self-expression of the personality. The aim of psychotherapy is precisely this, to remove these groundless fears and nightmares, to bring up what's unconscious into the light of rational consciousness, examine it objectively, and find that there is nothing to fear. - Ursula K. le Guin

The mind of man is a scene of perpetual instability and commotion, ruffled by every breeze of passion and agitated by every impulse of hope; it floats with giddy security on the ebullitions of fancy, and sinks with precipitation in the cavities of despair; it pursues with avidity the emotions of sense, and listens with rapture to the murmurs of restraint; it hears with pious reverence the counsels of reason, and follows with lucid submission the dictates of pleasure: always fickle and undetermined, it looks for quiet, sometimes in remonstrance, sometimes in acquiescence; it often mixes with confusion, that it may establish peace, and often regulates quietude by turbulent uproar. - Norman MacDonald

The mind, when compelled, by education or other circumstances, to receive irrational doctrines, has yet a power of keeping them, as it were, on its surface, of excluding them from its depths, of refusing to incorporate them with its own being; and when burdened with a mixed and incongruous system, it often discovers a sagacity which reminds us of the instinct of inferior animals, in selecting the healthful and nutritious portions, and in making them its daily food. - William E. Channing

The immortal mind, superior to his fate, amid the outrage of external things, firm as the solid base of this great world, rests on his own foundation. Blow, ye winds! Ye waves! ye thunders! roll your tempests on! Shake, ye old pillars of the marble sky! Till at its orbs and all its worlds of fire be loosen'd from their seats; yet still serene, the unconquer'd mind looks down upon the wreck; and ever stronger as the storms advance, firm through the closing ruin holds is way, when nature calls him to the destin'd goal. - Mark Akenside

Humour

Poverty - Quotes

I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. - Benjamin Franklin

Riches and ease, it is perfectly clear, are not necessary for man's highest culture, else had not the world been so largely indebted in all times to those who have sprung from the humbler ranks. An easy and luxurious existence does not train men to effort or encounter with difficulty; nor does it awaken that consciousness of power which is so necessary for energetic and effective action in life. Indeed, so far from poverty being a misfortune, it may, by vigorous self-help, be converted even into a blessing; rousing a man to that struggle with the world in which, though some may purchase ease by degradation, the right-minded and true-hearted will find strength, confidence, and triumph. - Samuel Smiles

What keeps some persons poor? and what has made some others rich? The true answers to these queries would often make the poor man more proud of his poverty, than the rich man is of his wealth, and the rich man more justly ashamed of his wealth, than the poor man unjustly now is, of his poverty. - Charles Caleb Colton

Whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavourable to the exercise of the higher functions of the mind and soul. The poor man is hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never knows. - William Mathews

Pleasure - Quotes

How much pleasure will you allow yourself? Many people have an invisible quota in their minds for the amount of joy they will permit themselves to experience. They become so busy living life that they view pleasure as a luxury they simply do not have time for. Things like lovemaking or playing take a back-seat to the everyday motions of living. However, your life simply will not work as well when you deny yourself pleasure. The old adage of all work and no play making you dull is quite true; you may find yourself living a rather colorless life if you do not pause every now and then to indulge your senses. Pleasure is like the oil that keeps the machine of your life running smoothly. Without it, the gears stick and you will most likely break down. - Cherie Carter-Scott

Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely and meaningless. - Jiddu Krishnamurti

Pleasure to me is wonder – the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty. - H. P. Lovecraft

The pleasure of any incident, whether it is of a sunset, or sexual, or any sensory pleasure, is recorded and thought over. So thought as pleasure plays a tremendous part in our life. Something happened yesterday which was a most lovely thing, a most happy event, it is recorded; thought comes upon it, chews it and keeps on thinking about it and wants it repeated tomorrow, whether it be sexual or otherwise. So thought gives vitality to an incident that is over. - Jiddu Krishnamurti

The pleasure-pain mechanism in the body of man – and in the bodies of all the living organisms that possess the faculty of consciousness – serves as an automatic guardian of the organism's life. The physical sensation of pleasure is a signal indicating that the organism is pursuing the right course of action. The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body. - Ayn Rand

Your body can be one of the greatest sources of pleasure when you open your five senses fully and experience the physical wonder of being alive. Pleasure can come in the form of sight, like when you see a magnificent sunset, or taste, like when you eat a favourite food. It can come as a glorious musical sound or the soft touch of a lover. The only secret to learning the lesson of pleasure is to make time and space for it in your life. - Cherie Carter-Scott

Peace - Quotes

Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war? - Ronald Reagan

If there is peace in your mind you will find peace with everybody. If your mind is agitated you will find agitation everywhere. So first find peace within and you will see this inner peace reflected everywhere else. You are this peace. You are happiness, find out. Where else will you find peace if not within you? - Papaji

If we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace and happiness with others, even those we love, those who live under the same roof. If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace. - Thich Nhat Hanh

If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won’t have to struggle, we won’t have to pass fruitless idle resolutions. But we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the whole world is hungering. - Mahatma Gandhi

Peace is not simply the absence of war or a "feeling state (usually fleeting) that is marked by the absence of inner turmoil." Rather it is an idealized and probably universal view of human relationships that is seldom, if ever, fully realized in daily affairs. As such, peace is quite different from its semantic opposite, war, which is all too real. - Donald Tuzin

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Optimism - Quotes

Optimism depends on seeing the self as full of the emotional stuff it takes to rise to challenges and weather life's storms. Optimists believe that they are robust, and this perspective in turn allows them to choose to see the glass as half full rather than half empty. How well and smoothly our emotional regulation works will determine how much of our daily lives we spend in this optimistic, comfortable state. The more time we spend in this state, the more we will look like an optimist. But appearing optimistic merely reflects the aggregate, the sum of those little oscillating moments of optimism and pessimism over time, not some stable, enduring, unshakable trait. And that's good news, because it means that even small shifts in our capacity for self-regulation can lead to large differences in how much of our day we spend in a comfortable, peaceful emotional state. - Susan C. Vaughan

The positive outlook that optimists project does not come from ignoring or denying problems. Optimists simply assume that problems are temporary and can be solved, so optimists naturally want more information about problems because then they can get to work and do something. Pessimists are more likely to believe that there is nothing they can do anyway, so what's the point of even thinking about it? - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The world we live in is a world of mingled good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To look at the world in such a way as to emphasize the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it in such a way as to bring out the good, and throw the evil into the background, is the art of optimism. The facts are the same in either case. It is simply a question of perspective and emphasis. - William Dewitt Hyde

Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist. - William Dewitt Hyde

Truth - Quotes

There is no truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world. - Thomas Jefferson

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it. - William James

There is often more truth in the censure of enemies than in the flattery of friends. - Norman MacDonald

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbour figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies. - Philip Roth

There is Truth to be found out there, but the search is best done through doubt rather than conviction. - Unknown

There's many a true word spoken in jest. - James Joyce

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it. - Confucius

Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us. - Samuel Richardson

Thorough truthfulness – truthfulness to others and to ourselves – is a rare virtue; and he who indeed acts upon it is the noblest of all heroes. - E. H.Chapin

Those only who can bear the truth will hear it. - Arthur Helps

Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights. - Eliza Cook

To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be. - Frank Herbert

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth. - Ludwig Wittgenstein

To speak the truth is easy and pleasant. - Mikhail Bulgakov

To take thought, to take truth, and translate them into life – that is the hard, hard battle. - Rueben Thomas

Too much truth is uncouth. - Franklin P. Adams

Truth ... is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it. - Donald Barthelme

Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature. - Francis Bacon

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. - Mahatma Gandhi

Truth and justice are not always wholly compatible. - Brother Cadfael

Truth brings closure. - Gil Grissom

Truth can strike down the spectre of fear. - Unknown

Life - Quotes

Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process! - Anthony Robbins

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments. - Don Delillo

We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done and attained. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Take life like a mathematical puzzle. Difficulties (hardships) make it worth solving (Living). The more challenging the situation, it gets even more interesting. If your logic is clear, you can surpass every problem. - Unknown

Once you realize that the road is goal, and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple. In itself, an ecstasy. - Nisargadatta Maharaj

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells. - Marcus Aurelius

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between her work and her play; her labour and her leisure; her mind and her body; her education and her recreation. She hardly knows which is which. - Francois Rene de Chateaubriand

If you are hurt, whether in mind or body, don’t nurse your bruises. Get up and light-heartedly, courageously, good temperedly get ready for the next encounter. This is the only way to take life – this is also ‘playing’ the game! - Emily Post

More on Life Here, and the book The Mystery of Life - a collection of quotes on and pertaining to life.

Humour

Nature - Quotes

All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world – not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind. - John Lubbock

Nature ... is uniform. There is no sign of accident or caprice, or the arbitrary, fitful interference of a superior power, but the things of nature proceed onward from age to age with a solemn, majestic movement – an august procession that strikes the contemplative beholder with awe, and expands and lifts his soul with indescribable emotions of sublimity and grandeur. - Horace Mann

The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature, – were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature. - Henry Wadsworth Longefellow

The student of nature is like one who goes with a candle into some immense cavern. Presently a little circle becomes clear, the shadows vanish before him, and undefined forms grow distinct. He thinks he is near the end, when, lo! what seemed a solid boundary of rock dissolves and floats away into a depth of darkness, the path opens into an immense void, new shapes of mystery start out, and he learns this much that he did not know before, that instead of being near the end he is only upon the threshold. - E. H. Chapin

There is constant life in [Nature], motion and development; and yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing, and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast; her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Memories - Quotes

I regard memory not as a phenomenon preserving one thing and losing another merely by chance, but as a power that deliberately places events in order or wisely omits them. Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by an inner instinct long ago. - Stefan Zweig

Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe. - George Santayana

Memory may be but a power of coming to the treasury of Fact, a momentary self-desertion, an absence in spirit from the now, an actual coursing hither and thither, by the mind, slipped from its leash, a life, as in the mystery of dreams, spent within the limits of a moment. - Martin Farquhar Tupper

The most important, the longest lasting, the strongest emotional, and the most practiced memories are the ones that are embedded the deepest in the brain, and because we have retrieved them so many times previously, they are the most able to be retrieved. We all hear about people who can remember their youth, their phone number, or street address from 70 years ago, but they cannot recall what they had for breakfast. The memory of this morning's breakfast wasn't rehearsed, and wasn't very important, so it fades away quickly. - Daniel J. Levitin

What is human memory?... It certainly is not a passive recording mechanism, like a digital disc or a tape. It is more like a story-telling machine. Sensory information is broken down into shards of perception, which are broken down again to be stored as memory fragments. And at night, as the body rests, these fragments are brought out from storage, reassembled and replayed. Each run-through etches them deeper into the brain's neural structure. And each time a memory is rehearsed or recalled it is elaborated. We may add a little, lose a little, tinker with the logic, fill in sections that have faded, perhaps even conflate disparate events. - Arthur C. Clarke

Luck - Quotes

Luck, if it mean nothing more than an event of which the cause is not apparent, is a term that may be employed without error; but if it means, as it generally does, an event which has no cause at all, a mere chance, it is a bad word, a heathen term; drop it from your vocabulary; trust nothing to luck, nor expect anything from it; avoid all practical use or dependence upon this or its kindred words, fate, chance, fortune. - John Angell James

Now, if we understand what unlucky persons are, we shall see that they are to be shunned, or that we are to consort with them only out of kindness or from sympathy, but without joining our interests with theirs; for they are persons who are not harmonious with the condition of things around them, and are as much at issue with life as a bird who should try to live in the water, or a fish to float in the air. - James Vila Blake

Stoutly as we may affirm that our disasters and vices are chargeable to luck, we never dream of ascribing our meritorious deeds, in the slightest degree to its agency. In such cases we quite unconsciously blink out of sight the magic power of the latter principle, so wondrous and all-controlling in its influence at other times, and coolly appropriate to ourselves not merely the lion's share, but the whole glory of our position. - William Matthews

The concept of luck is actually quite complex and thus should not be dismissed as simply superstition or sloppy thinking. In a basic sense, luck is synonymous with chance. When individuals presume the workings of luck in their lives, though, they often "spin" the effects of luck to be positive or negative, as in having good luck or bad luck. Furthermore, although the presumption of luck (or chance) implies that events are beyond human control, much of the preoccupation with luck involves performing actions that are hoped to influence (namely improve) luck. - Jason Slone

You can create your own luck just like a cloud can create its own rain. You create your own luck by the way you act, think, feel, and talk. If these ingredients you're using to create your luck are distorted, then what will follow is bad luck all the way, like a thunderstorm. But if you're especially careful to watch how you think, then the sweet aroma of good luck will rain upon you almost everywhere you go. - Mark Benedict

Youth - Quotes

The retrospect on youth is too often like looking back on what was a fair and promising country, but is now desolated by an overwhelming torrent, from which we have just escaped. Or it is like visiting the grave of a friend whom we had injured, and are precluded by his death from the possibility of making him an atonement. - John Foster

The tempests of youth are mingled with days of brilliant sunshine. - Luc de Clappiers

The whims of youth break all the rules. - Homer

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity. - Benjamin Disraeli

There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to youth – are something better than youth. - George Eliot

There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. - H. P. Lovecraft

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. - Sophia Loren

There may be no fool like an old fool, but our observation has been that the young fool runs him a pretty close second. - Robert Elliott

When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck. - Haruki Murakami

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. - Lord Cheserfield

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them – the one, in fact, which is not a mask. - W. H. Auden

Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure. - Lewis H. Lapham

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young. - J. K. Rowling

Youth is not a time of life – it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigour of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals. - Samuel Ullman

Youth is the golden period of life, and every well-spent moment will be like good seed planted in an auspicious season. - Eliza Cook

Youth is the season of hope, enterprise, and energy, to a nation as well as an individual. - William R. Williams

Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief. - Nicholas Sparks

Youth, enthusiasm, and tenderness, are like the days of spring; instead of complaining of their brevity try to enjoy them. - Ruckert

Mind - Quotes

A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. - James Allen

Control of the mind is the key to happiness. It is the kind of virtue and the force behind all true achievement. It is owing to lack of control that various conflicts arise in man’s mind. If he is to control them, he must learn not to give free rein to his longings and inclinations and should try to live a self-governed, pure and calm life. - K. Sri Dhammananda

People get stuck as they get older. Our minds are sort of electrochemical computers. Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. - Steve Jobs

There are minds constructed like the eyes of certain insects, which discern, with admirable distinctness, the most delicate lineaments and finest veins of the leaf which bears them, but are totally unable to take in the ensemble of the plant or shrub. When error has effected an entrance into such minds, it remains there impregnable, because no general view assists them in throwing off the chance impression of the moment. - Madame Swetchine

There are tumults of the mind, when, like the great convulsions of Nature, all seems anarchy and returning chaos; yet often, in those moments of vast disturbance, as in the strife of Nature itself, some new principle of order, or some new impulse of conduct, develops itself, and controls, and regulates, and brings to a harmonious consequence, passions and elements which seem only to threaten despair and subversion. - William Gibson

What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul. - Logan Pearsall Smith

When mind is weak, the situation becomes a problem. When mind is balanced, the situation becomes a challenge. When mind is balanced, the situation becomes a challenge. When mind is strong, the situation becomes an opportunity. It’s all mind game. - Unknown

It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or to travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts. - Luc de Clapiers

Life - Quotes

Life is too short for drama or petty things, so laugh hard, love truly and forgive quickly. Live while you are alive. Forgive now those who made you cry. You might not get a second time. - Unknown

Life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves. - Irvin D. Yalom

Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he who has no reverence for the fact wanders afar. - Jack London

If you always do the easy and comfortable thing, life ends up being difficult and uncomfortable. If you do the difficult and uncomfortable thing, however, life ends up being easy and comfortable. - Ernie J. Zelinski

In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is everywhere. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with Life; every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle. - George Henry Lewes

Life is like a puzzle. The more you try to figure it out the more you’ll get trapped in its mystery. So, let life lead the way and teach you its lessons in every phase. Everything will fall into place as it should. - Unknown

The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be. - Eckhart Tolle

More on Life Here, and the book The Mystery of Life - a collection of quotes on and pertaining to life.

Humour / Meme

Writers - Quotes

Everybody wants to feel that you're writing to a certain demographic because that's good business, but I've never done that ... I tried to write stories that would interest me. I'd say, what would I like to read?... I don't think you can do your best work if you're writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants. - Stan Lee

Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Everything you look at can be turned into a story ... you can make a tale of everything you touch. - Hans Christian Andersen

Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through. - Markus Zusak

Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it. - Hunter S. Thompson

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life. - Martin Amis

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure. - Eudora Welty

Fine writing is generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a laboured style. - William Shenstone

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. - Octavia E. Butler

For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you just reach up and pick it. - Ursula K. le Guin

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed. - Ernest Hemingway

For those who do not write and who never have been stirred by the creative urge, talk of muses seems a figure of speech, a quaint concept, but for those of us who live by the Word, our muses are as real and necessary as the soft clay of language which they help to sculpt. - Dan Simmons

Worry - Quotes

Worry comes from the belief you are powerless. - Robert Anthony

Worry ducks when purpose flies overhead. - Terri Guillemets

Worry in the dark can make it even darker. - Camron Wright

Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. - Arthur Somers Roche

Worry is an unproductive, useless form of fear, and that makes it, by definition, unhealthy. - Maxie Maultsby

Worry is common. Everybody worries once in a while when they're faced with a serious problem and aren't too sure of a solution. Worry itself becomes a problem if you worry constantly or if the worry causes more distress than resolution. - Holly Hazlett-Stevens

Worry is different from fear. If fear is like a raging fever, worry is a low-grade temperature. It nags at us, simmers in our souls, hovers in the back of our minds like a faint memory. We may fear certain realities, like death; we worry about vague possibilities. Worry distracts us more than paralyzes us. It is like a leaky faucet we never get around to fixing. - Gerald Lawson Sittser

Worry is half impatience and half ignorance. - Austin O’Malley

Worry is like a squatter: it sneaks in and tries to stay without paying rent! Serve it eviction papers! - Evinda Lepins

Worry is like a stream of fear trickling through man's mind, which if not controlled will flood and drown all other thoughts in the mind and overtakes the mind entirely. - Pano George Karkanis

Worry is nothing but the bad habit of thinking about what you DON'T want to happen. It's a misuse of your most precious power – the imagination. - Dan Zadra

Worry is rust upon the blade. - Henry Ward Beecher

Worry is spiritual near-sightedness, a fumbling way of looking at little things, and of magnifying their value. - Anna Robertson Brown

Worry is the child of Fear – if you kill out Fear, worry will die for want of nourishment. - William Walker Atkinson

Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe. - Keith Caserta

Worry is the most popular form of suicide. Worry impairs appetite, disturbs sleep, makes respiration irregular, spoils digestion, irritates disposition, warps character, weakens mind, stimulates disease, and saps bodily health. It is the real cause of death in thousands of instances where some other disease is named on the death certificate. - William George Jordan

Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss. We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends. It is laughter. - Vera Nazarian

Worry is wasting today's time to clutter up tomorrow's opportunities with yesterday's trouble. - Unknown

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow. - Swedish Proverb

Worrying is a vicious circle, as it just makes us feel more wound up and anxious. It puts us in a bad mood and drains us of energy. Most of the things we worry about never happen, or are not as bad as we thought they would be. Even when things turn out for the worst, worrying has rarely helped to achieve anything, and may even leave us feeling less able to cope when it happens. - Sarah McNamara

Worrying is a waste of our time. Period. If we are worrying, then we are not doing anything about anything. - Janice Corsano

Worrying is exactly how you manifest what you don't want. - Jafree Ozwald

Worrying is holding on to problems without seeking help. - Melvin R. Hall

Worrying is like walking around with an umbrella waiting for it to rain. - Unknown

Worrying is not fun; worrying is very draining. Ever notice how during and after you've worried over something, how very drained you feel both mentally and physically? Worrying is very detrimental to the human body. This is called stress, and stress will either mutate or kill the very cells of your physical body. - Nathan Whiting

Worrying is not looking for a solution, but just reviewing the "problem" over and over. - Melvin R. Hall

Worrying is only useful if it makes us aware of something that needs to be remedied, allows us to resolve the situation and move on. It is bad for us when it constantly fills our mind and we take no action or remain preoccupied. It wastes time and energy. - Sarah McNamara

You're worried about what-ifs. Well, what if you stopped worrying? - Shannon Celebi

Work - Quotes

A man is seen in his works. - Clement Metezeau

A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby.... The man is now a man. - Thomas Carlyle

A man succeeds in completing a work only when his qualities transcend that work. - Cesare Pavese

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune's inequality exhibits under this sun. - Thomas Carlyle

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labour and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. - L. P. Jacks

A work well begun is half ended. - Plato

After forty years of close acquaintance with it, I've found that work is kind to its friends and harsh to its enemies. It pays the fellow who dislikes it his exact wages, and they're generally pretty small; but it gives the man who shines up to it all the money he wants and throws in a heap of fun and satisfaction for good measure. - George Horace Lorimer

All work is empty save when there is love. - Kahlil Gibran

Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations. - Henry Ward Beecher

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. - Thomas Carlyle

Call no work low that is honest; honest toil never degrades. - Martha Lavinia Hoffman

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed – there’s so little competition. - Elbert Hubbard

Each man delights in the work that suits him best. - Horace

Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky. - Henry Ford

Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else is always a portrait of himself. - Samuel Butler

Everyone should find something they love doing. Then work isn't work. It's a part of themselves. Of who they are. - Paul McAuley

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. - Theodore Roosevelt

Fewer people are bent from hard work than are crooked from avoiding it. - Zig Ziglar

Formerly when a man worked ten hours a day, it was called economic slavery; nowadays it is called moonlighting. - Evan Esar

Hard work cheerfully done is easy work, while light work unwillingly done is mere drudgery. - E. P. Day

He must put his whole life into his work, who would do it well, and make it potential to influence other lives. - Christian Nestell Bovee

Honest labour bears a lovely face. - Thomas Dekker

How hard you work matters more than how much you make. - Michelle Obama

How strange it is that so many people have the belief that work is a burden and that idleness means happiness. Many are longing for the day that they will possess sufficient to quit work and take the world easy. They imagine that when that time comes their happiness will be complete. Alas, how many have reached this period of life to find themselves greatly disappointed! Idleness fails to give the happiness they expected and time drags more heavily than ever. The hardest job we ever tried was that of doing nothing. - Nicias Ballard Cooksey

I am no stranger to working hard. I have done it all my life. As a result I have become accustomed to expecting success in everything I do. Some people call me lucky, but I know better. - Donald Trump

I am not sure that life, to any one, a fuller measure of contentment brings, with all its gifts, than in the draught which springs, from honest work, well plann'd, and bravely done. - William Wilsey Martin

I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work. Work organizes life. It gives structure and discipline to life. - Bill Clinton

I don't like work – no man does – but I like what is in work – the chance to find yourself. - Joseph Conrad

If a man does not go about his work with enthusiasm, it means that he has not yet found a work that he likes. Every mortal is a busy bee when he comes to the task that Destiny has set aside for him. - George Ade

If one man has a dollar he didn't work for, some other man worked for a dollar he didn't get. - Bill Haywood

Words - Quotes

Nice words are free, so choose ones that please another's ears. - Vietnamese Proverb

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. - Henry Adams

Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them. - Marcel Proust

Stealing someone else’s words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own. - Peter Anderson

Stones decay, words last. - Samoan Proverb

Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. - Horace

The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought. - Andre Maurois

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion. - Frank Herbert

The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action. - George Eliot

The same words come from each mouth differently. - Jane Hirshfield

The word ‘meaningful’ when used today is nearly always meaningless. - Paul Johnson

The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. - Albert Einstein

The written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification. - George Henry Lewes

There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less. - William Faulkner

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. - Thomas Reid

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another. - Napoleon Hill

Through words we come to know the other person – and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice. - Harriet Lerner

To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights. - Andre Maurois

Too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech. - Patricia Briggs

We allow words to obscure the interpretation of the deeper meaning. - Stephen Young

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out. - Winston Churchill

Weigh words, don't count 'em. - Ken Alstad

What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband. - Julius Charles Hare

When the first emperor wanted to unify the country, one of the major policies was to create one system of written signs. By force, brutal force, he eliminated all the other scripts. One script became the official script. All the others were banned. And those who used other scripts were punished severely. And then the meanings of all the characters, over the centuries, had to be kept uniform as a part of the political apparatus. So from the very beginning the written word was a powerful political tool. - Ha Jin

When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge: love simple ones, as you would native roses on your cheeks. - Julius Charles Hare

When ideas fail, words come in handy. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds. - Samuel Richardson

With words, I could build a world I could live in. I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation. - Mary Oliver

Word – that invisible dagger. - Emil Cioran

Words are but the shining garments of Thought. - Edwin Leibfreed

Words are like keys. If you choose them right, they can open any heart and shut any mouth. - Unknown

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think. - Sartre

Love - Quotes

You can explore the universe looking for somebody who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and you will not find that person anywhere. - Unknown

I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say. - Sarah Dessen

No fruit has a more precise marked period of maturity, than love; if neglected to be gathered at that time, it will certainly fall to the ground and die away. - Fulke Greville

Love was the flower of life, and blossomed unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it was found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration. - D. H Lawrence

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices. - Charles Caleb Colton

Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now. - Fred Rogers

Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder; love is a poignant and accustomed pain. It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder; it is a linnet's fluting after rain. - Joyce Kilmer

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. - Honore de Balzac

Everyone has a right to love and be loved, and nobody on this earth has the right to tell anyone that their love for another human being is morally wrong. - Barbra Streisand

True love doesn’t happen right away; it’s an ever-growing process. It develops after you’ve gone through many ups and downs, when you’ve suffered together, cried together, laughed together. - Ricardo Montalban

More on Love Here, and the book The Light of Love

LIfe - Quotes

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent. - Barbara Bush

It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters. - Amit Ray

It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. - Donald Miller

To truly fail in life is to never try. When you fall on your face, it is an opportunity for you to find the road again. It may remind you how hard the road is, but you will never forget its presence once you make contact. - H. L. Stephens

She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That’s life. It hurts, it’s dirty, and it feels very, very good. - Orson Scott Card

My theory on life is that life is beautiful. Life doesn’t change. You have a day, and a night, and a month, and a year. We people change – we can be miserable or we can be happy. It’s what you make of your life. - Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So, when you are riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live! - Bob Marley

Each one of us has our own evolution of life, and each one of us goes through different tests which are unique and challenging. But certain things are common. And we do learn things from each other’s experience. - A. R. Rahman

More on Life Here, and the book The Mystery of Life - a collection of quotes on and pertaining to life.

Humour / Meme