Truth - Quotes

We can, in general, be much less sure of the truth of a thing, than of the falsehood; because though every part we have seen may agree, yet we cannot tell how many may be behind, and one failure of connection will be sufficient to falsify the whole. - Fluke Greville

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive fights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. - Thomas Jeffeson

When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself. - Luc de Clapiers

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute. - Walter Lippmann

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place – and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all – so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time. - Iain M. Banks

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. - Anais Nin

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice. - Arthur Schopenhauer

The excellence and inspiration of truth is in the pursuit, not in the mere having of it. The pursuit of all truth is a kind of gymnastics; a man swings from one truth with higher strength to gain another. The continual glory is the possibility opening before us. - E. H. Chapin

Humorous Quotes

If one door closes and another one opens, your house is haunted and you need to run. - Unknown

I got so drunk last night I walked across the dance floor to get another drink and won the dance contest. - Unknown

A note to the people who didn’t like me: I wasn’t trying to impress you anyway. - Unknown

I love it when people think they’re going to punish me by not talking to me. - Unknown

Following the “five-second rule” for food that fell to the floor is tough when you’ve got a two-second dog. - Unknown

I am at that age where my mind still thinks I am 29, my humour suggests I am 12 while my body mostly keeps asking if I am sure I am not dead yet. - Unknown

How to avoid stress at work? Don’t go to work. - Unknown

I’ve cut down on my drinking, and now only have one vodka before going to bed. Last night I went to bed eight times. - Unknown

Life is like diarrhoea. No matter how hard you try and stop it, the shit just keeps coming. - Unknown

I wish I was still a kid so I could just take a long nap and everyone would be proud of me. - Unknown

Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer. - Tom Robbins

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted. - Groucho Marx

Click Here for more humorous quotes, or Here for the book ‘Of Wit ‘n’ Humour’

You / Yourself - Quotes

If you work long enough and hard enough to understand yourself, you will come to discover that this vast part of your mind, of which you now have little awareness, contains riches beyond imagination. - M. Scott Peck

Stop trying so hard to make others like you. You weren’t designed to fit a mold that someone else has made for you. - Elle Sommer

No matter what you do, someone will always talk about you. Someone will always question your judgment. Someone will always doubt you. So just smile and make the choice you can live with. - Unknown

Go easy on yourself. Whatever you do today, let it be enough. - Unknown

You can rise up from anything. You can completely recreate yourself. Nothing is permanent. You’re not stuck. You have choices. You can think new thoughts. You can learn something new. You can create new habits. All that matters is that you decide today and never look back. - Unknown

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming. - Robert Tew

You can’t let people scare you. You can’t go your whole life trying to please everyone else. You can’t go through life worried about what everyone else is going to think. Whether it’s your hair, clothes, what you have to say, how you feel, what you believe and what you have. You can’t let the judgment of others stop you form being you. Because if you do, you’re no longer you. you’re someone every else wants you to be. - Unknown

Finding yourself is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that become your beliefs about who you are. “Find yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you. - Emily McDowell

More On...

These will be added to the relevant topics under ZQuotes later.

Achievement

To achieve the impossible; it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. - Tom Robbins

Artists

The function of the artist is to provide what life does not. - Tom Robbins

Believe

Don’t believe everything you hear. There are always three sides to a story – yours, theirs, and the truth. - Unknown

Blame

He who blame others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived. - Chinese Proverb

Common sense

Remember. Just because you went to college doesn’t make you smarter than anyone else. Common sense doesn’t come with a degree. - Unknown

Curiosity

Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions. - Tom Robbins

Courage

Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink you thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one’s cliches. - Tom Robbins

Criticism

Criticism is easier to take when you realize that the only people who aren't criticized are those who don't take risks. - Donald Trump

Depression

All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously. - Tom Robbins

Discipline Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems. - M. Scott Peck

Entrepreneur

As an entrepreneur, I choose my teachers carefully, very carefully. I am extremely cautious of the people with whom I spend my time and to whom I listen. - Donald Trump

Entrepreneurs are always taking feedback, especially from their customers, bankers, workers, and sales force. Without straightforward feedback, entrepreneurs cannot make sound decisions. - Donald Trump

Writing - Quotes

One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines. - Emile Zola

Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion. - Dan Simmons

Read heavily in the area where you want to write. Be aware of what's selling and what's doing well but don't try to write to market trends; they are fleeting. - Jeff Abbott

Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage. - Octavia E. Butler

Remember that in today's market, distribution and promotion are as important as craft. But don't forget what made you want to write fiction. If it was for the money, you're in the wrong business! - Elizabeth Zelvin

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft. - Tobsha Learner

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible. - Ray Bradbury

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it. - Harold Acton

Some people talk to themselves, and some people write, and somehow society has decided that one gets committed and one gets a paycheck. - Bob Lonsberry

That writer who aspires to immortality, should imitate the sculptor, if he would make the labours of the pen as durable as those of the chisel. Like the sculptor, he should arrive at ultimate perfection, not by what he adds, but by what he takes away. - Charles Caleb Colton

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. - Norbet Platt

The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind. - George Henry Lewes

The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of history. - John Dos Passos

The chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones, seems owing to simplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expressed by the former in the natural manner; in word and phrase, simple, perspicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers but affectation, witticism, and conceit? - William Shenstone

Life - Quotes

We are human. We are not perfect. We are alive. We try things. We make mistakes. We stumble. We fall. We get hurt. We rise again. We try again. We keep learning. We keep growing. And we are thankful for this priceless opportunity called life. - Unknown

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; so, on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Life is like a cocktail, made up for the most part of sweet things, and tinged with a dash of bitters. We must drain it to the dregs to get at the cherry, just as we must live a full and rounded life to know all its pleasures. - Edgar Guest

The bright side of life's unpredictability is that it's not over until it's over. As dark as the passages and confusing as the cul-de-sacs that you find yourself in are, progress is nevertheless being made. Something is unfolding. You are becoming. - Marion Winik

What is the meaning of life?... A simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. - Virginia Woolf

When people say that they are happy with their lives, they do not usually mean that they are literally joyful, or experiencing pleasure, all the time. They mean that, upon reflection on the balance sheet of pleasures and pains, they feel the balance to be reasonably positive over the long term. - Daniel Nettle

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

Food For Thought

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. - M. Scott Peck

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously. - Tom Robbins

If you see someone being interrupted in a conversation, acknowledge them, don’t let them be pushed to the side. If you see someone lagging behind, walk beside them. If someone is being ignored, include them. Always remind people of their worth, a small gesture can mean a lot. - Unknown

More Food for Thought Here and the book Food for Thought

Fear - Quotes

The most dangerous kind of person ... is one who is afraid of his own shadow. - Philip K. Dick

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. - H. P. Lovecraft

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. - Henry Louis Mencken

The only honourable, desirable kind of fear that shouldn’t be feared is the fear of harm on a loved one. It’s the kind of fear that leads to self-sacrifice and the kind of fear where you would truly jump in front of a bus to save another. - Criss Jami

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. - Aung San Suu Kyi

The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out ... and do it. - Susan J. Jeffers

The understanding of fear cures fear. - Robert Anthony

There is a time when fear is good and ought to remain seated as a guardian of the heart. - Aeschylus

Throughout evolutionary history, anxiety and fear have helped every species to be wary and to survive. Fear can signal us to act, or, alternatively, to resist the impulse to act. It can help us to make wise, self-protective choices in and out of relationships where we might otherwise sail mindlessly along, ignoring signs of trouble. - Harriet Lerner

We must control fear or it will control us. - Walter Matthews

We often suffer more from our fears, than from the dangers of our situation. - Norman MacDonald

When a man is afraid and accedes to fear, he will always find arguments to justify his own surrender. - Natan Sharansky

Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be. - Lactanius

Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear. - Isa Upanishad

Without fear, we are able to see more clearly our connections to others. Without fear, we have more room for understanding and compassion. Without fear, we are truly free. - Thich Nhat Hanh

You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that’s only because you’re afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear. - Mick Farren

You can’t stop being afraid just by pretending everything that scares you isn’t there. - Michael Marshall

Ideas - Quotes

The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

The people who oppose your ideas the most are those who represent the establishment that your ideas will upset. - Anthony J. D’Angelo

There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and colour. - Scott Adams

To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can. - Richard P. Feynman

To have ideas is to gather flowers. To think is to weave them into garlands. - Madame Swetchine

Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas. - Henry Ward Beecher

Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity. - Walter Lippmann

We are apt to think that our ideas are the creation of our own wisdom but the truth is that they are the result of the experience through outside contact. - Konosuke Matsushita

We are far more the creatures of our ideas than of our circumstances. - Christian Nestell Bovee

We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane. - Kurt Vonnegut

We must have the courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. - Maxwell Maltz

When the idea is new its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. - Alfred North Whitehead

Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity. - Dan Brown

You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea: you cannot put an idea up against a barracks-square wall and riddle it with bullets: you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell that your slaves could ever build. - Sean O’Casey

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it. - Neil Gaiman

Art - Quotes

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. - H. L. Mencken

The human body is the best work of art. - Jess C. Scott

The mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent…there must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed. - Virginia Woolf

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. - Vincent van Gogh

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - Albert Einstein

The noblest art is that of making others happy. - P. T. Barnum

The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment. - Tennessee Williams

The painting rises from the brush strokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later. - Joan Miro

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. - Pablo Picasso

The real artist’s work is a surprise to himself. - Robert Henri

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication. - Cyril Connolly

The scope of art is practically boundless; it does not begin and end with the painting of pictures and the modelling of statues; where there is room for workmanship there is room for it. - Lewis Foreman Day

The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence. - George Henry Lewes

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple – to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it. - Craig Raine

The way to art was not to think too clearly, not to plan things out, but to follow where your heart and emotions led. - Paul Park

The work of art is above all a process of creation. - Paul Klee

The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes. - Leonardo da Vinci

The act of painting is not a duplication of experience but the extension of experience on the plane of formal invention. - Stuart Davis

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards, you can remove all traces of reality. - Pablo Picasso

To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist. - Robert Schumann

Work - Quotes

Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No man ever did or can do a great work alone. - Elbert Hubbard

No matter how humble your work may seem, do it in the spirit of an artist, of a master. In this way you lift it out of commonness and rob it of what would otherwise be drudgery. - Orison Swett Marden

None but those who work are entitled to eat. - Aesop

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. - J. M. Barrie

Nothing will work unless you do. - Maya Angelou

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community. - Albert Einstein

Our salvation is in work, but let us also take delight in that work. - Maxim Gorky

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. - Aristotle

Remember, work, well done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man. - George S. Clason

Slow work produces fine goods. - Chinese Proverb

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. - Peter Drucker

Some people were born to work for others. Not in a mindless, servile-way – rather they simply work better in a set regimen of daily tasks and functions. Others were born of the entrepreneurial spirit and enjoy the demands of self-determination and the roll of the dice. - Richard Paul Evans

Time - Quotes

Time ripens the substance of a life as the seasons mellow and perfect its fruits. The best apples fall latest and keep longest. - Amos Bronson Alcott

Time will explain. - Jane Austen

Time will reveal everything. It is a babbler, and speaks even when not asked. - Euripedes

Time will tell... it always does. - Unknown

Time wounds all heals. - Tracy Letts

Time, place and space are illusions, having no existence save in the mind of man which must set limits and bounds in order to understand. - Robert E. Howard

Time. Like a petal in the wind, flows softly by. As old lives are taken, new ones begin. A continual chain, which lasts throughout eternity. Every life but a minute in time, but each of equal importance. - Cindy Cheney

To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom. - Bertrand Russell

To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever. - Bruce Lee

Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life. - Michael Leboeuf

We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams. - Jeremy Irons

We give our time away all day long, to emotions that gain us no advantages, to people who do not value our time, to inefficient habits. If you want to take back this time, you need to cut to the chase. - Stuart R. Levine

Well, we think that time "passes," flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers. - Ursula K. la Guin

When things don't please you, the best medicine is to swallow a little tincture of time. - Ken Alstad

Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got. - Art Buchwald

While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back. - Alan Lightman With time even a bear can learn to dance. - Yiddish Proverb

On Love

Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old’s fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn’t. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn’t. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn’t like his friends; he doesn’t like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other’s. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving. - M. Scott Peck

When a person falls in love what he or she certainly feels is ‘I love him’ or ‘I love her.’ But two problems are immediately apparent. The first is that the experience of falling in love is specifically a sex-linked erotic experience. We do not fall in love with our children even though we may love them very deeply. We do not fall in love with our friends of the same sex – unless we are homosexually oriented – even though we may care for them greatly. We fall in love only when we are consciously or unconsciously sexually motivated. The second problem is that the experience of falling in love is invariably temporary. No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough. This is not to say that we invariably cease loving the person with whom we fell in love. But it is to say that the feeling of ecstatic lovingness that characterizes the experience of falling in love always passes. The honeymoon always ends. The bloom of romance always fades. - M. Scott Peck

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

Quote Worthy

As an entrepreneur, I choose my teachers carefully, very carefully. I am extremely cautious of the people with whom I spend my time and to whom I listen. - Donald Trump

Entrepreneurs are always taking feedback, especially from their customers, bankers, workers, and sales force. Without straightforward feedback, entrepreneurs cannot make sound decisions. - Donald Trump

But the fact of the matter is that everyone has an explicit or implicit set of ideas and beliefs as to the essential nature of the world. - M. Scott Peck

Don't get sidetracked. If you do get sidetracked, get back on track as soon as possible. Ultimately sidetracking kills you. - Donald Trump

We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them. - M. Scott Peck

Whatever action we take may influence the course of civilization. - M. Scott Peck

Never ignore a person who cares for you. Because someday you’ll realize you’ve lost a diamond, while you were busy collection stones. - Unknown

Every single person on the planet has a story. Don’t judge people before you truly know them. The truth might surprise you. - Unknown

The same people who are candy to our eyes can be poison to our hearts. Study their ingredients before feeding them to your soul. - Unknown

Sometimes, you need to know your place in someone’s life because you might get hurt if you expect too much. - Unknown

If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you. - Unknown

Sometimes, you just need to forget what is gone, appreciate what still remains, and look forward to what’s coming next. - Unknown

More Quotes Here - And the book Quote Worthy

Words - Quotes

Words never can express the whole that we feel: they give but an outline. - Eliza Cook

Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean. - Theodor W. Adorno

Words should be weighed not counted. - Yiddish Proverb

Words rich in meaning can be cheap in sound effects. - Dejan Stojanovic

Words spoken are like eggs broken. - Sheri Glewen

Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through. - Douglas Adams

Words were too clumsy, sometimes; treacherous, too, always trying to twist around and mean something slightly different. - K. J. Parker

Words which enlighten some darken others. - Edward Counsel

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism. - Herbert Hoover

Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Words. So powerful. They can crush a heart, or heal it. They can shame a soul, or liberate it. They can shatter dreams, or energize them. They can obstruct connection, or invite it. They can create defences or melt them. We have to use words wisely. - Unknown

Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want. - Doris Lessing

Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order. - Bertrand Russell

Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts. - Robert Fulghum

You can stroke people with words. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

You gave yourself away, word by word, every time you opened your trap to speak. - Don Delillo

You know, without my telling you, how sometimes a word or name eludes you, and you seek it through running ghosts of shadow – leaping at it, lying in wait for it to spring upon it, spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, you hear it, see it flash among the branches, and scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it. - Conrad Aiken

Your words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one. - Unknown

Writers - Quotes

Writer's block is only a failure of the ego. - Norman Mailer

Writers in this country, particularly novelists, are likely to come to the medium through some back door. Nearly every writer I know was going to be something else, and then found himself writing by a kind of passionate default. - John Barth

Writers kid themselves – about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work – there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes – it's still just work. - Sinclair Lewis

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind. - Edmund Burke

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. - George Orwell

Writing a killer first line to a novel is an art form in which there are a few masters and a great many apprentices. - Chuck Wendig

Writing can't be a way of life – the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it. - Doris Lessing

Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. - Don Delilllo

Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted. - Gerald Asher

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation. - Graham Greene

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon. - Ann Patchett

Writing is a profession you can practice while upside down and experiencing total blackout in a cave. You just use the mental recorder instead of pen and paper ... or portable ... and hope you find a use for the experience. - C. J. Cherryh

Writing is always a rough translation from wordlessness into words. - Charles Simic

Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big.... This is a trophy brought back from the further realm, the kingdom of perpetual glistening night where we know ourselves absolutely. This one goes on the wall. - Kate Braverman

Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it. - John Green

Writing is the dancing of words, sometimes it is beautiful and meaningful, sometimes it is not. - Debasish Mridha

Teachers - Quotes

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges. - Joyce Meyer

Teachers should guide without dictating, and participate without dominating. - C.B. Neblette

Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care. - Horace Mann

Teachers who inspire know that teaching is like cultivating a garden, and those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers. - Unknown

Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the earth. - Helen Caldicott

Teachers, who are really good create that environment where you can be very satisfied by the process of learning. If you do something and you find it a very satisfying experience then you want to do more of it. The great teachers somehow convey in their very attitude and their words and their actions and everything they do that this is an important thing you're learning. You end up wanting to do more of it and more of it and more of it. That's a real talent some people have to convey the importance of that and to reflect it back to the students. - Jeff Bezos

Teaching is a calling too. And I’ve always thought that teachers in their way are holy – angels leading their flocks out of the darkness. - Jeannette Walls

Teaching is an art, not a science, principally because it involves human beings, their emotions and their values. - Gilbert Highet

Teaching is arousing and using the pupil's mind to form in it a desired conception of thought. - John Milton Gregory

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. - Jacques Barzun

Teaching is often thought of as something that comes rather naturally to people who know their subject. In general, it is thought that it is a simple process that produces simple outcomes, but ... it takes place in a complicated social institution, which is filled with diverse people. It is a fluid interplay of events. One cannot just know the subject and teach it, because the subjects themselves are ever changing. - M. H. Siddiqui

Teaching is one of the noblest of professions. It requires an adequate preparation and training, patience, devotion, and a deep sense of responsibility. Those who mould the human mind have wrought not for time, but for eternity. - Calvin Coolidge

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ‘naturals,’ the ones who somehow know how to teach. - Peter Drucker

Ideas - Quotes

New ideas can be good and bad, just the same as old ones. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye. - Winston Churchill

Nobody ever arrives at a very big idea through a conscious, rational thought process. It comes from your unconscious. - David Ogilvy

One who accepts the general ideas of his time gets along smoothest, but he does the least for progress. - Lewis F. Korns

Our ancestors who changed the world did so through new ideas which came to them as they acted. - Raymond Charles Barker

Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings. - Walt Disney

Our ideas ... must first acquire a certain strength, before we can proceed efficiently to act upon them. They have their periods of immaturity and maturity. First comes the germ of the idea; then its growth; then an enlargement of that growth; then an expansion of that enlargement; until finally the idea takes its ultimate form as a picture, a book, or a revolution. - Christian Nestell Bovee

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature. - Saul Bellow

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf. - Ezra Pound

People must know that their ideas will be listened to and, if they have merit, acted upon. If they do, it is possible to mobilize individual creativity on a very broad scale. - James Champy

Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link. - Friedrich von Schiller

Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding. - John Locke

Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress. - Lisa Randall

Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. - Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. - Swami Vivekananda

Children - Quotes

The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice. - Peggy O'Mara This is one thing they forget to mention in most child-rearing books, that at times you will just lose your mind. Period. - Anne Lamott

This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own. - Aristotle

Those who educate children well are more to be honoured than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well. - Aristotle

Thus parents, by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poison'd the fountain. - John Locke

To lose a child ... was something that could end one's world. One could never get back to how it was before. The stars went out. The moon disappeared. The birds became silent. - Alexader McCall Smith

Toddlers who don’t learn gradually about disappointment lose their resilience through lack of practice in give-and-take with other people’s needs. They can become self-centred, demanding, and difficult to like or to be with. - Alicia F. Lieberman

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. - Roger Lewin

We know that the outcasts and misfits are the children most likely to become violent, so it only follows that we must pull them into the arms of love and/or acceptance, and find a place where they fit. If our system doesn't have a place where a child fits, there's something wrong with the system, not the child. - William G. Defoore

We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do. - Brigham Young

What children say, they have heard at home. - West African Proverb

What we instil in our children will be the foundation upon which they build their future. - Steve Maraboli

While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about. - Angela Schwindt

You can do anything with children if only you play with them. - German Proverb

Your children need your presence more than your presents. - Jesse Jackson

Truth - Quotes

We all seek to know the truth about everything around us except ourselves; because it hurts to know about one’s own limitations and to admit them. - Unknown

We cannot change the truth, no matter how much we dislike it. - Raven

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us forever. - Marcel Proust

We shall find some things that are true, and some that are new, but very few things that are both true and new. - Charles Caleb Colton

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. - Denis Diderot

What people believe prevails over the truth. - Sophocles

What shortens the life-span of the existing truth is the volume of hypotheses offered to replace it; the more the hypotheses, the shorter the time span of the truth. - Robert M. Pirsig

When in doubt, tell the truth. - Mark Twain

When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. - Anais Nin

When the love of truth rules in the heart, the light of truth will guide the practice. - Benjamin Whichcote

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable, must be the truth. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

When you open your mind to the impossible, sometimes you find the truth. - Dr. Walter Bishop

When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback. - Bill Copeland

While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it. - Marcus Fabius Quintilian

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. - Albert Einstein

With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note. - Aristotle

You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it. - George Harrison

You can’t change the truth, but the truth can change you. - Unknown

You cannot gather much truth by searching the fields; you must sink shafts. - Austin O’Malley

You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too. - Anne Lamott

You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all. But let all you tell be truth. - Horace Mann

Humour / memes

Be around people who make you laugh. Laughter is not only the shortest distance between two people, laughter between two is sometimes a closer act of love than any other. And it doesn’t matter if you revel in the coarsest puns or the raunchiest jokes.

Beliefs - Quotes

The more a man dreams, the less he believes. - H. L. Mencken

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. - H. L. Mencken

The thing you really believe in always happens. And the belief in a thing makes it happen. - Frank Lloyd Wright

There can be no merit in believing something which you can neither explain nor understand. - John Lubbock

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death. - Isaac Asimov

They conquer who believe they can. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though my sight be lost, I do not yet lose my faith: when I can no longer see, I can still believe. - Ivan Panin

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. - Henri Poincare

We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving, and we all have the power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing. - Louisa May Alcott

Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. - Gene Wolfe

What ardently we wish, we soon believe. - Edward Young

Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us. - Susan L. Taylor

Whatever you do, you must remain nimble in your thinking. Do not become so attached to any one belief that you cannot see past it to another possibility. - Christopher Paolini

Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty. - Isaac Asimov

Whether your beliefs are true or totally insane, if you accept them, then that's what your life will be about. - Robert Anthony

Artist - Quotes

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it.... It's a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are a spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be an artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see. - Ann Patchett

The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist. - Eric Gill

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. - Emile Zola

The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation. - Auguste Rodin

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run downhill. - W. Somerset Maugham

The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes. - Andre Gide

The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation. - Michelle Obama

The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do documents themselves. - Theodor W. Adorno

The good thing about being an artist, is it's a legitimate way of looking at things cross-eyed. - John Chamberlain

The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own. - Ernest Hemingway

Writers / Writing - Qutoes

In order to write the novel I'm committed to, I have to pretend that it's not only separate from everything I've written before, but also separate from anything anyone in the history of the universe has written. This is a grotesque delusion and a crass vanity, but also a creative necessity. - Julian Barnes

In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer. - Christian Nestell Bovee

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream. - Doris Lessing

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. - John Steinbeck

In writing ... remember that the biggest stories are not written about wars, or about politics, or even murders. The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together. - Susan Glaspell

It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. - Ernest Hemingway

It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard. - Elizabeth Strout

It's very unlikely that a writer is going to make a living by writing. So then the question is: how do you balance work, life, and writing? - Kelly Link

Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today – all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going – and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success. - Jeff Abbott

Learn to write well, or not to write at all. - John Dryden

My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give. - China Mieville

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. - George Bernard Shaw

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip. - Elmore Leonard

No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Thoughts - Quotes

The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal. - Walter Lippmann

The thoughts that come often unsought and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have. - John Locke

There are little thoughts in your head that can grow until they eat your entire mind. Just tiny little thoughts – they are like a cancer, there is no telling what triggers the spread, or who will be struck, and why some get it and others are spared. - Anne Enright

There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything. - Henri Poincaré

Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had, and ever will have is creative. The energy of your thought never ever dies. Ever. It leaves your being and heads out into the universe, extending forever. A thought is forever. - Neale Donald Walsch

Thought is what makes humans human ... It's the luminous spark of reason that grants us lordship over the animals, endows us with cell phones, and offers hope, even in our darkest hours, that our species will somehow calculate the way forward to a brighter tomorrow. - Bruno Maddox

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thoughts are as the sands of the seashore – infinite. - Edward Counsel

Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain. - Alan Lightman

Thoughts have power; thoughts are energy. And you can make your world or break it by your own thinking. - Susan L. Taylor

Thoughts shut up want air, and spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun. - Edward Young

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves. - Buddha

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far. - Swami Vivekananda

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind. - Buddha

When thoughts cannot find vent and utterance in action, the mind ceases to think. It will not continue to produce its mighty births of power and beauty, to see them fall dead-born into the world, or to be strangled in embryo. - Horace Mann

Whether thoughts and ideas manifest in a material outcome depends on our transmission of them into perceived reality. - Ly de Angeles

You are the thinker of your thoughts and as such you are the maker of yourself and condition. Thought is causal and creative, and appears in your character and life in the form of results. There are no accidents in your life. Both its harmonies and antagonisms are the responsive chords of your thoughts. A man thinks, and his life appears. - James Allen

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. - James Allen

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions. - Elizabeth Gilbert

You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you. - Dan Millman

Knowledge - Quotes

That is the beginning of knowledge – the discovery of something we do not understand. - Frank Herbert

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge; which is the only Guardian of true liberty. - James Madison

The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him. - Robert Penn Warren

The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance. - Confucius

The function of knowledge is to transcend earthly experience, not to wallow in it. - Susan Hubbard

The further knowledge advances, the nearer we come to the unfathomable. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. - Stephen Hawking

The gulf between knowledge and truth is infinite. - Henry Miller

The heavens and the earth, the woods and the wayside, teem with instruction and knowledge to the curious and thoughtful. - Hosea Ballou

The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet. - Philip Dormer Stanhope

The knowledge of useful things is a purse seldom lost. - Edward Counsel

The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need. - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The misapplication of our knowledge is, in general, more injurious to our happiness and interest, than either the privations of ignorance, or the disqualifications of inexperience. - Norman MacDonald

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it. - John Locke

Life - Quotes

At the end of life, what really matters is not what we bought, but what we built; not what we got but what we shared; not competence but our character; and not our success but our significance. Live a life that matters. Live a life of Love. - Unknown

Life asks for a preparation as complete as we can afford; the great contest should be fought with spirit but with good temper always; we should never think the game lost while it is still going; and finally, we should have the satisfaction of quitting the field able to say: I did my best. - Arthur Lynch

Life is a voyage, and we are all sailing under sealed orders. We plan, plot, scheme and arrange, and some fine day Fate steps in and our dreams are tossed into the yeasty deep. We grin and bear it – anyway we bear it: it is the only thing to do. - Elbert Hubbard

Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end. - Saul Alinsky

Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It’s passing, yet I’m the one who’s doing all the moving. I’m not the station, I’m not the stop: I’m the train. - Martin Amis

The fabric of our life is formed of necessity and chance: the reason of man takes its station between them, and may rule them both; it treats the necessary as the groundwork of its being; the accidental it can direct and guide, and employ for its own purposes. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

Jokes

Honesty - Quotes

The plain truth is that honesty is critical to the moral fibre of every individual. Experts agree that people who are honest feel better about themselves. They are able to enjoy stronger friendships, are more successful in school and in other pursuits and, in the long run, have deeper, happier marriages. It is from honesty that so many other desirable traits spring forth. - Betsy Brown Braun

There is one way to find out if a man is honest. Ask him! If he says yes, you know he's crooked. - Groucho Marx

To be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. - William Shakespeare

We have to stand up for what we believe in, even when we might not be popular for it. Honesty starts with being ourselves, authentic and true to who we are and what we believe in, and that may not always be popular, but it will always let you follow your dreams and your heart. - Tabatha Coffey

When we are not honest, we are cut off from a significant resource of ourselves, a vital dimension that is necessary for unity and wholeness. - Clark Moustakas

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. - Richard Bach

An honest man is like a plain coat, which, without welt or guard, keepeth the body from wind and weather, and being well made, fits him best that wears it; and where the stuff is more regarded than the fashion, there is not much ado in the putting of it on. So, the mind of an honest man, without trick or compliments, keeps the credit of a good conscience from the scandal of the world and the worm of iniquity, which, being wrought by the workman of heaven, fits him best that wears it to his service; and where virtue is more esteemed than vanity, it is put on and worn with that ease that shows the excellency of the workman. His study is virtue, his word truth, his life the passage of patience, and his death the rest of his spirit. His travail is a pilgrimage, his way is plainness, his pleasure peace, and his delight is love. His care is his conscience, his wealth is his credit, his charge is his charity, and his content is his kingdom. In sum, he is a diamond among jewels, a phoenix among birds, an unicorn among beasts, and a saint among men. - Nicholas Breton

Honest manhood cannot be attained. It is. If a man is small, as an honest man he stands up and acknowledges he is small and only tries to do what a small man can do – and HE DOES IT. If an honest man is a blacksmith, he merely says he is a blacksmith and he tries to do what a blacksmith can do – and HE DOES IT. In all lines of life an honest man only holds himself out as being just what he is and tries to do the tasks he is able to do – and ALWAYS DOES THEM. An honest man cannot fail. - Honor L. Wilhelm

Honesty is a person's most valuable asset. His or her good name, good reputation, and good word depend on the individual's quality of honesty. A business that operates under the principles of profound honesty is elevated within the community. It is respected and treasured. The absence of honesty is a liability to an individual or business. - James H. Merkel & Abdul Wahad Al-Falaij

Fear - Quotes

He who fears not, is to be feared. - Eliza Cook

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. - Rosa Parks

I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. - John Steinbeck

If there is one thing which I would banish from the earth it is fear. - Henry Ford

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living. - Seneca

In regard to the great mass of men, anything that breaks the realm of fear is not salutary, but dangerous; because it takes off one of the hoops that hold the barrel together in which the evil spirits are confined. - Henry Ward Beecher

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more. - J. K. Rowling

Living fearlessly is not the same thing as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher. - Michael Ignatieff

Man’s fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness. - Max Leopold Ernst

Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. - Brendan Francis

Not to fear where there is occasion, is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, without reason.... Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. - Henry Ward Beecher

Nothing like fear to wash your mind clean. - Laurel K. Hamilton

Of all the mental and physical polluters of life, nothing exercises such a poisonous effect as fear. - Elbert Hubbard

Once you have explored a fear, it becomes less terrifying. Part of courage comes from extending our knowledge. - Brian Herbert & Keven J. Anderson

Our fears always outnumber our dangers. - Latin Proverb

Real fear is like intense pain. It's there to warn you something's truly wrong. - Tim Lebbon

Social control is best managed through fear. - Michael Crichton

Sometimes fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying, “Go no further.” - Anne Rice

Sometimes fear is wholesome and rational; it is well to swing fear as a mighty battle-axe over men's heads when no other motive will move them. - Henry Ward Beecher

The conquest of fear is of very great importance. Fear is in itself degrading; it easily becomes an obsession; it produces hate of that which is feared, and it leads headlong to excesses of cruelty. - Bertrand Russell