"He who puts off the hour of right living is like the bumpkin waiting for the river to run out: yet on it glides, and on it will glide, rolling its flood forever."
-Horace, Epistles I, II.41-43, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough

"The adult is not the highest stage of development. The end of the cycle is that of the independent, clear-minded, all-seeing Child."
-Benjamin Hoff, The Toa of Pooh

"The wise are Children Who Know."
-Benjamin Hoff, The Toa of Pooh

"People may guess and interpret the text up and down,
but I know well, without a doubt, God bade
us expressly to increase and multiply;
that pleasant text I can well understand."
-Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Wife of Bath" from The Canterbury Tales translated by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt

"God has given women by nature deceit, weeping, and spinning, as long as they live."
-Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Wife of Bath" from The Canterbury Tales translated by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt

"Seneca, too, undoubtedly has a good saying:
he states that he can find no difference
between a man who is out of his mind
and one who is drunk."
-Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Pardoner" from The Canterbury Tales translated by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt

"there came a stealthy thief men call Death,
who slays all the people in this country,
and with his spear he smote the man´s heart in two,
and went on his way without a word.
He has slain a thousand during his pestilence:
And, master, before you come in his presence,
It seems to me it is necessary
To be wary of such an adversary;
Always be ready to meet him."
-Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Pardoner" from The Canterbury Tales translated by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt

"Mulier est hominis confusio"
-Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Nun´s Priest´s Tale" from The Canterbury Tales translated by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt

"Women´s counsel is often baneful"
-Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Nun´s Priest´s Tale" from The Canterbury Tales translated by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt

"that perhaps a wife may be your purgatory:
she may be God´s means and God´s scourge!"
-Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Merchant" from The Canterbury Tales translated by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt

"Best thing you can teach your children
Next to never drawing breath
Is choking on it."
-Nickles, J.B. by Archiblad MacLeish

"No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor"
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it."
-Garrison Keillor

"Never be afraid to sit awhile and think."
-Lorraine Hansburry, A Raisin in the Sun

"If you can´t convince them, confuse them."
-Harry S. Truman

"The trouble with America isn´t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has changed to advertising copy."
-Mortimer B. Zuckerman in U.S. News & World Report

"Each of us wages a private battle each day between the grand fantasies we have for ourselves and what actually happens."
-Cathy Guisewite

"Holding on to anger only gives you tense muscles."
-Joan Lunden, Joan Lunden´s Healthy Living

"Get your facts first, and then you can change them as much as you please."
-Mark Twain

"The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that give us our own small satisfactions."
-Billy Joel

"True reason lies in shunning all extremes; we shall be wise in moderation."
-Philinte, The Misanthrope by Moliere

"Don´t take gravity to lightly, or it´ll catch up with you."
-Merlin, The Sword in the Stone, movie

"Being a teenager used to be the stuff of comedies. Now it´s a horror show." -Thomas Hine, "TV´s Teen-Agers: An Insecure, World-Weary Lot" The New York Times 10/26/97

"How is it that she is not amazed at herself, that she keeps her lips closed and makes no such remark?" -Franz Kafka, Describing a beautiful woman in "On the Tram", translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

"Life is granted to none in fee-simple, to all on lease,"
-Lucretius iii.971, translator unknown

"For that matter, even religious worship would have been permitteed if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it."
-George Orwell, 1984

"But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong."
-George Orwell, 1984

"But he abandoned the idea immediately, because even the thought of making any physical effort was unbearable."
-George Orwell, 1984

"´You´re only a rebel from the waist downwards,´ he told her."
-George Orwell, 1984

"War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, hence, in the long run, too intelligent."
-George Orwell, 1984

"All rulers of all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers"
-George Orwell, 1984

"In philosophy, or religiion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an airplane the had to make four."
-George Orwell, 1984

"I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane."
-George Orwell, 1984

"Reality is inside the skull."
-George Orwell, 1984

"Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient."
-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

"Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves."
-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

"I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live init, be it good or bad."
-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

"Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing."
-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

"I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men."
-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior."
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
-Confucius

"Only they who go to soirees and legislative halls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them."
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"Those banks of beautiful ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight sprawl from his horse in the lists with a lance shaft the thickness of you ankle clean though him and the blood spouting, and instead of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a better view; only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief, and look ostentatiously brokenhearted, and then you could law two to one that there was a scandal there somewhere and she was afraid the public hadn´t found it out."
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court

"and if the bereaved don´t buy prayers enough you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill shows up all right."
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court

"The same thing happened in the Wales of my day, under this same old Established Church, which was supposed by many to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise."
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court

"He was born so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood that was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down by inheritance from a long procession of hears that had each done its share toward poisoning the stream."

"A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake, is himself mistaken. Yeas, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed-even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them-even in the Germans-if one could but force it out of his timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe."
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court

"However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easy to do-in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a country where they have ranks and castes, a man isn´t ever a man, he is only part of a man, he can´t ever get his full growth."
-Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur´s Court

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
-George Orwell, Animal Farm

"´How can it be else but true, Prissy? Would he say a lie? For look you, Prissy, an´ it were not true, it would be a lie. It surely would be. Now think on´t. For all things that be not true be lies; thou canst make nought else out of it."

"´When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart."
-Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

"not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils and was not a grandeur to be desired. Why they did not use a dog or a plumber seems strange, but all the ways of royalty are strange."
-Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

"What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it, thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient; `twill be time enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened."
-Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper

"you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator."
-Jonathan Swift, Gulliver´s Travels II, VI

"The King was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. He was amazed how so impotent and groveling an insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of blood and desolation, which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines, whereof he said, some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver."
-Jonathan Swift, Gulliver´s Travels II, VII

"And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."
-Jonathan Swift, Gulliver´s Travels II, VII

"It is allowed that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours, with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the righ; with spleen, flatus, vertigos and deliriums; with scrowfulous tumours full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations, with canine appetites and crudeness of digestion, besides many other needless to mention."
-Jonathan Swift, Gulliver´s Travels III, VI

"Neither were their men strong nor their women chaste."
-Polydore Virgil

"I could not reflect without some amazement, and much sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal, should have place by instinct womankind."
-Jonathan Swift, Gulliver´s Travels IV, VII

"I assured him, that this whole globe of earth must be at least three times gone round, before one of our female Yahoos could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in."
-Jonathan Swift, Gulliver´s Travels IV, VI (Swift´s attack on importing into impoverished Ireland)

"For, of what use is freedom of thought, if it will not produce freedom of action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of all objections against Christianity?"
-Jonathan Swift, "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity"

"I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to children."
-Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal" (On selling yearling humans as meat)

"Men would become as fond of their wives, during he time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, or sows when they are ready to farrow, more offer to beat or trick them (as it is too frequent a practice) for fear of miscarriage. [Because at a year old the child will be sold for meat.]"
-Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"

"When one sees so many people who scandalously neglect their duty, one learns to have patience with men like you."
-Franz Kafka, The Trial

"it´s often better to be in chains than to be free."
-Franz Kafka, The Trial

"In the midst of life we are in the midst of death, a truer word was never said."
-Announcer, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act I

"children are a thing only a parent can stand, and a truer word was never said"
-Sabina, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act I

"The best thing about animals is that they don´t talk much."
-Mr. Antrobus, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act I

"There´s the law. That´s Moses."
-Mr. Antrobus, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act I

"That´s right, young man. There are too many people in the world as it is. Everybody´s in the way, except one´s self."
-Fortune Teller, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act II

"Except for two things, pleasure and power, what is life?"
-Sabina, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act II

"It´s never been told to any man and it´s never been told to any woman, and if it finds its destination, a new time will come. We´re not what books and plays say we are. We´re not what advertisements say we are. We´re not in the movies and we´re not on the radio.
We´re not what you´re all told and what you think we are: We´re ourselves. And if any man can find one of us he´ll lean why the whole universe was set in motion. And if any man harm any one of us, his soul-the only soul he´s got-had better be at the bottom of that ocean,-and that´s the only way to put it."
-Mrs. Antrobus, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act II

"Four score and ten billion years ago our forefather brought forth upon this planet the spark of life,-"
-Mr. Antrobus, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act II

"All you people think you´re not loved enough, nobody loves you."
-Sabina, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act III

"Why is it that however far I go away, I always find myself back in the kitchen?"
-Sabina, Thornton Wilder´s The Skin of Our Teeth Act III

"Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them."
- Dion Boucicalt

"The future is no more uncertain than the present."
- Walt Whitman

"I never liked the middle ground - the most boring place in the world."
- Louise Nevelson

"Words are seductive and dangerous material to be used with caution."
- Barbara Tuchman

"When some folks agree with my opinions I begin to suspect I'm wrong."
- Kin Hubbard

"Worry is as useless as a handle on a snowball."
- Mitzi Chandler

"Every path has its puddle."
- English Proverb

"To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it."
- American Amusement Machine Association, et al. vs. Teri Kendrick, et al. (United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit, No. 00-3643)