Favorite quotes

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. -Greek proverb

 

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

 

Every man possesses three characters: that which he exhibits, that which he really has, and that which he believes he has. -Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, novelist and journalist (1808-1890)

 

Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it. -Indian proverb

 

What a pitiable thing it is that our civilization can do no better for us than to make us slaves to indoor life, so that we have to go and take artificial exercise in order to preserve our health. -George Wharton James, journalist, author, and speaker (1858-1923)

 

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought. -Arthur Helps, writer (1813-1875)

 

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

 

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. -Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and statesman (1800-1859)

 

It is well to know something of the manners of various peoples, in order more sanely to judge our own, and that we do not think that everything against our modes is ridiculous, and against reason, as those who have seen nothing are accustomed to think. -Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

 

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)

 

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

 

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

 

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. -Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist (1821-1881)

 

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. -William C. Dement, professor of psychiatry (b. 1928)

 

Gullibility and credulity are considered undesirable qualities in every department of human life -- except religion. -Christopher Hitchens, author and journalist (b. 1949)

 

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. -Charles Evans Hughes, jurist (1862-1948)

 

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason. -Andre Gide, author, Nobel laureate (1869-1951)

 

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out. -Otto von Bismarck, statesman (1815-1898)

 

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. -William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)