Quotes

The secret of happiness is to make others believe they are the cause of it. -- Al Batt, in National Enquirer

The unspoken word never does harm. -- Kossuth

The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. -- Mark Twain

Ask advice only of your equals. -- Danish Proverb

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self! -- Nathaniel Hawthorne

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings. -- Arthur Rubinstein

Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience. -- Victoria Holt

Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment. -- Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, 'A Woman of Independent Means'

Purchase not friends by gifts; when thou ceasest to give, such will cease to love. -- Thomas Fuller

Any piece of clothing can be sexy with a quietly passionate woman inside it. -- Anonymous, O Magazine, The Shy Girl's Guide to Sex, February 2003

The fact that we don't know this man, isn't important really. Cause his experience is our experience, and his fate is our fate. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass, says the preacher. All is vanity I think that's a pretty good epitaph for all of us. When we're stripped of all our worldly possessions and all our fame, family, friends, we all face death alone. But it's that solitude in death that's our common bond in life. I know it's ironic, but that's just the way things are. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass. Only when we understand all is vanity, only then, it isn't. -- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, All is Vanity, 1991

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

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck. -- James A. Garfield

A tough lesson in life that one has to learn is that not everybody wishes you well. -- Dan Rather

I believe that uncertainty is rally my spirit's way of whispering, ""I'm in flux. I can't decide for you. Something is off-balance here."" -- Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, June 2003

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. -- Norman Douglas, South Wind, 1917

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Competition is a painful thing, but it produces great results. -- Jerry Flint, in Forbes

When life seems chaotic, you don't need people giving you easy answers or cheap promises. There might not be any answers to your problems. What you need is a safe place where you can bounce with people who have taken some bad hops of their own. -- Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, August 12, 2003

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still. -- Chinese Proverb

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with. -- Lois McMaster Bujold, "The Vor Game", 1990

Our lives teach us who we are. -- Salman Rushdie

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. -- Maureen Dowd, in 'New York Times'

When you have a number of disagreeable duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable first. -- Josiah Quincy

The art of living easily as to money is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means. -- Sir Henry Taylor

Often we can achieve an even better result when we stumble yet are willing to start over, when we don't give up after a mistake, when something doesn't come easily but we throw ourselves into trying, when we're not afraid to appear less than perfectly polished. -- Sharon Salzberg, O Magazine, The Power of Intention, January 2004

The words 'I am...' are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you. -- A. L. Kitselman

We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves. -- Francis J. Braceland, O Magazine, April 2003

The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be. -- Robert Fulghum, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It

In Kyudo philosophy, you don't aim--you become one with the target. Then, in fact, there's nothing to aim at. I find it works well with women, too. Give it a try. -- Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman, Northern Exposure, The Bumpy Road to Love, 1991

Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary. -- Margaret Cho, Margaret Cho's Weblog, 07-05-04

Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable. -- Georg W. Hegel

Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else. -- Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. -- Helen Keller, O Magazine, December 2003

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. -- Henry David Thoreau

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. -- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion. -- Rebecca West, O Magazine, September 2003

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. -- Dorothy Parker, 'But the One on the Right,' in New Yorker, 1929

In attempts to improve your character, know what is in your power and what is beyond it. -- Francis Thompson