Hello my cyber friends and welcome to my personal and favorite quotes. This page is specifically dedicated to famous quotations by famous people. I plan to update this page from time to time. These quotes are alphabetized by topic. So please choose a letter to see a particular topic corresponding to a particular quote. If there are other topics that you think should be listed below, please feel free to email on any suggested topics you might have. Have fun!!
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.John Davison Rockefeller
Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.Nicholas of Cusa
What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.Henry Parry Liddon
Mature women, as mature human beings with all the respect and dignity to be accorded mature beings, should have the right to decide whether or not they carry a specific pregnancy to term.Harold Rosen
It is continued temperance which sustains the body for the longest period of time, and which most surely preserves it free from sickness.Wilhelm von Humboldt
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone; one should keep his friendships in constant repair.Samuel Johnson
Never say you know a man till you have divided an inheritance with him.Johann Kaspar Lavater
Whilst Adam slept, Eve from his side arose: Strange his first sleep be his last repose.Anonymous
Adversity is the first path to truth.George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.Henry Fielding
They always talk who never think.Matthew (Matt) Prior
Fire and sword are but slow engines of destruction in comparison with the babbler.Sir Richard Steele
He who backbites an absent friend, who does not defend him when others find fault; who loves to raise men's laughter, and to get the name of a witty fellow; who can pretend what he never saw; who cannot keep secrets entrusted to him; this man is a dangerous individual. Beware of him, Roman.Horace
Dreading that climax of all human ills,
The Inflammation of his weekly bills.George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.Ralph Waldo Emerson
A blockhead cannot come in, nor go away, nor sit, nor rise, nor stand, like a man of sense.Jean de La Bruyere
Brains well prepared are the monuments where human knowledge is more surely engraved.Jean Jacques Rousseau
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.Charles de Secondat
Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.Cicero
Have something to say; say it, and stop when you've done.Tryon Edwards
The one prudence of life is concentration.Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you introduce a moral lesson let it be brief.Horace
The fewer the words, the better the prayer.Martin Luther
An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.Simon Cameron
The universe is not rich enough to buy the vote of an honest man.Gregory I (Gregory the Great)
Every man has his price.Sir Rober Walpole
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Calamity
Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
Caricature
Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms.
Celibacy
If a msitaken marriage can be purgatory, mistaken celibacy is hell.
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Challenge
If we face our Tasks with the resolution to solve them, who shall say that anything is impossible.
Charm
Charm is more than beauty
Children
If a child annoys you, quiet him by brushing his hair. If this doesn't work, use the other side of the brush on the other end of the child.
Cleverness
Clever men are good, but they are not the best.
It is great cleverness to know how to conceal our cleverness.
Confidence
Let us have a care not to disclose our hearts to those who shut up theirs against us.
When young, we trust ourselves too much; and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth; timid caution of age.
They can conquer who beleive they can.
Trust men and they will be true to you; treat then greatly and they will show themselves great.
Conspiracy
Conspiracies no sooner should be formed than executed.
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practiced perfidy grow faithless to each other.
Coquette
There is one antidote only for coquetry, and that is true love.
The characeristic of coqutes is affection governed by whim. Their life is one constant lie; and the only rule by which you can form any judgement of them is, that they are never what they seem.
God created the coquette as soon as he had made the fool.
The most effective coquetry is innocence.
A coquette is a young lady of more beauty than sense, more accomplishments than learning, more charms of persons than graces of mind, more admirers than friends, more fools than wise men for attendants.
Cowardice
Bullies are always to be found where there are cowards.
Debt
Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.
A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy.
Diet
One meal a day is enough for a lion, and it ought to be for man.
Vegetarianism is harmless enough, although it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-rightouseness.
Diplomacy
When a diplomate says yes he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; when he says no he is no diplomat.
I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me.
I never refuse. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
Dishonesty
So grasping is dishonesty, that it is not respecter of persons; it will cheat friends as well as foes; and were it possible, would cheat even God himself.
He who purposely cheats his friend, would cheat his God.
Dream
Nothing so much convinces me of the boundlessness of the human mind as its operations in dreaming.
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
Dress
A fine coat is but a livery when the person who wears it discovers no higher sense than that of a footman.
Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.
No man is esteemed for gay garments, but by fools and women.
Earnestness
The superior man is slow in his words and earnest in his conduct.
There is no substitute for thoroughdoing, ardent, and sincere earnestness.
Economics
There is always present the two twin dangers of deflation and inflation. And the function of government so far as it affects this matter at all is to be watchfull, to be vigilant and alert, and to take measures from time to time that tend to move in one direction if the signs are we are moving in another.
We cannot forever be an Atlas ... supporting the rest of the world.
If a religion cuts at the very fundamentals of economics it is not a true religion by only a delusion.
Economist have not yet earned the right to be listened to attentively.
Education
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is probably the dark horse you had better watch.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
Egotism
Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender.
Egotism is the tongue of vanity.
Some people, when they hear an echo, think they originated the sound.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Existentialism
Existentialism is nothing but an attempt to draw all consequences from a consistent atheistic position.
All the contemporary existentialists are phenomenologists; that is to say, they try to render explicit, by means of description, what is implicit in the realities which we live in our daily lives, but which we live without being sufficiently aware of them.
Failure
We are all of us failure--at least, the best of us are.
Failure, when sublime, is not without its purpose.
One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.
Golden Rule
Do to every man as you would have him do to you; and do not unto another what you would not have him do to you.
Do no do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
Do not do to your fellowmen what is hateful to you.
Grammar
Everything bows to success, even grammar.
The rights of nations and of kings sink into questions of grammer if grammarians discuss them.
George Moore wrote brilliant English until he discovered grammar.
Hebrew
The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
Innocence
Against the head which innocence secures, insidious malice aims her darts in vain; turned backward by the powerful breath of heaven.
Integrity
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
Intelligence
Intelligence increases mere physial ability one half. The use of the head abridges the labor of hands.
Irony
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
Judgement
You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
Kiss
A kiss is the anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicular muscles in a state of contraction.
Liar
A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me.
You can best reward a liar by believing nothing of what he says.
Mediocrity
Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.
Money
Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.Music
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. Although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet it is blessed in this creation, which, like every creation of art, is mightier than the artist.
Nicknames
Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.
Nuclear Warfare
We develop weapons, not to wage war, but to prevent war. Only in the clear light of this greater truth can we properly examine the lesser matter of the testing of our nuclear weapons.
Let there be more corn and more meat adn let there be no hydrogen bombs at all.
Opinion
He who is master of all opinions can never be the bigot of any.
Plagiarism
They lard thier lean books with the fat of others' works.
Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from.
It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled, thenceforth, to steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the property of him who can entertain it and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.
Pretension
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.
Quiet
The good and the wise lead quiet lives.
To have a quiet mind is to possess one's mind wholly; to have a calm spirit is to command one's self.
Rights
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by thier creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Romance
I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.
Rumor
Rumor was the messenger of defamation, and so swift, that none could be first to tell an evil tale.
Study
I would love to study, and not study to live.
Suspicion
Suspicion is the poison of true friendship.
Tax
Taxes are the sinews of the state.
The taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid by the goverment were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement.
Treason
A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.
Usurer
A money-lender. He serves you in the present tense; he lends you in the conditional mood; he keeps you in the subjunctive; and ruins you in the future!
Voting
A vote is not an object of art. It is the sacred and most important instrument of democracy and of freedom.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
Wit
Wit is a treacherous dart. It is perhaps the only weapon with which it is possible to stab oneself in one's own back.
Wit should be used as a shield for defence rather than as a sword to wound others.
Wit consists in assembling, and putting together with quickness, ideas in which can be found resemblance and congruity, by which to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy.
Writing
The artist [in literature] appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition--and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain.
Wrong
It is better to suffer wrong that to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
There are few people who are more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be so.
The remedy for wrongs is to forget them.
Youth
Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the Lord.
My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.
Let no man despice the youth.
I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men.
Youth had been a habit of hers so long that she could not part with it.