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