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Favorite Quotes

"In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You can quote me." -- Elwood Dowd quoting his mother. In the movie "Harvey"

One thing only I know; and that is that I know nothing. -- Socrates (supposedly)

"Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. -- Gimli on leaving Galadriel. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.

"In essentials let there be unity, in non-essentials, liberty, in all things, charity." -- The original author is unclear.

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly." -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis.

"That it is not living which is of most importance, but living well." -- Socrates in Plato, The Crito.

"I never was a coward at heart, although I have invariabley been a coward in action." -- Fydor Dostoevsky, Notes From the Underground

"Nay, in an average man of the world, his constant rubbing with it blunts that finer spiritual insight indispensible to the understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters, whether evil ones or good." -- Hermin Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor

"Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blindingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity." -- Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor

"The prodigious paradox of faith, a paradox that makes a murder a holy and a God-pleasing act, a paradox that gives Isaac back to Abraham again, no thought can grasp, because faith begins precisely where thought stops. -- Soren Kierkegaard, The Knight of Faith

"I say, wrong must not win by technicalities." -- Aeschylus, The Eumenides

"If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you." -- Francois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable support." -- George Washington

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

"Yes, we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -- Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham City Jail

"Qu’est-ce qu’optimisme?…Hélas! Dit Candide, c’est la rage de soutenir que tout est bien quand on est mal." -- Voltaire, Candide ou L’optimisme

"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen."

-- Francis of Assisi, Eerdmans’ Handbook to the History of Christianity

"Laws and Principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this; when my body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour, stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?" -- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

"Do the best you can: face your deficiencies and acknowledge them, but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight...When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another." -- Helen Keller

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -- Alfred Jay Marrow

"Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions." -- Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

"To loose thee, sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
'T is true the draught is destitute,
But then, I had the dew!

The Caspian has its realms of sand,
Its other realm of sea;
Without the sterile perquisite
No Caspian could be.
-- Emily Dickenson

"The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear."

-- Jalal al Din Muhammad ar Rumi

"We suffer more in our mind than in reality."

-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner."

-- Lao Tzu

"It's never to late to be what you might have been."

-- Maybe Mary Ann Evans under the pen name of George Eliot

"A fool is known by his speech, and a wise man by silence."

-- Pythagoras

"Our life is what our thoughts make it."

-- Marcus Aurelius

"If you are the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room."

-- Confucius

"Thinking is difficult. That's why most people judge."

-- Carl Jung