Life is like a falling autumn leaf; it could go straight toward the ground or allow the winds to carry it to places before landing. -Khanh L. Bui- When a number of persons within a society have enjoyed for a considerable period of time certain opportunities for getting wealth, for excercising power and authority, and for successfully claiming prestige and social deference, there is a strong tendency for these people to feel that these benefits are theirs by right. -George Williams- It is part of the whole tyranny of fashion, where women will inflict pain on themselves...for what, to please men. -Ralph Nader- The price of peace-for us and for every nation in the world-is the price of giving up prejudice, hatred, fear, and ignorance. -Henry A. Wallace- A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only he himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity. -John B. Gough As the dimensions of the tree are not always regulated by the size of the seed, so the consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus, the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little. -Charles C. Colton The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach. -Lin Yutang If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man -Mark Twain The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving -Oliver Wendell Holmes Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of tricks and duplicity than straightforward and simple integrity in another. -Charles C. Colton Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin. -Desiderius Erasmus Choose rather to punish your appetities than be punished by them -Tyrius Maximus We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato One should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it-and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sat down on a hot stove lid! She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again-and that's well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more -Mark Twain I am prepared for the worst but hope for the best -Benjamin Disraeli Misfortunes one can endure-they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults-ah!-there is a sting of life! -Oscar Wilde Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can -Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton Human Nature is not so miserable as that we should be always melancholy; nor so happy as that we should be always merry. In a word, a man should not live as if there were no God in the world; nor, at the same time, as if there were no men in it. -Joseph Addison If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains -Cicero The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. This is part of the penalty for greatness, and every great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure contumely without resentment. -Elbert Hubbard For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness -Ralph Waldo Emerson If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than we are. -Baron De La Montesquieu Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat -Harry Emerson Fosdick You can be deprived of your money, your job and your home by someone else, but remember that no one can ever take away your honor. -William Lyon Phelps Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But, like the seafaring men on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them reach your destiny. -Carl Schurz It is harder to keep at the top than to get there. There are no office hours for leaders. It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others. -Joseph Addison The injuries that we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed in the same scales. -Aesop It is because men are prone to be partial towards those they love, unjust to those they hate, servile to those above them, and either harsh or overindulgent to those below them in station, poverty or distress, that it is difficult to find anyone capable of forming a sound judgment with respect to the qualities of others. -Confucious The essence of justice is mercy. Making a child suffer for wrongdoing is merciful to the child. There is no mercy in letting the child have its own will, plunging headlong to destruction with the bit of its mouth. There is no mercy to society nor to the criminal if the wrong is not repressed and the right not vindicated. We injure the culprit who comes up to take his proper doom at the bar of justice, if we do not make him feel that he has done a wrong thing. We may deliver his body from the prison, but not at the expense of justice nor to his own injury. -E. H. Chapin They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed. -John Tillotson You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. -Mohandas K. Gandhi Your mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission. -Arnold Bennett The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. -Elbert Hubbard When you are young you think money is the most important in life. When you are old, you know it is. -Oscar Wilde Those who are of the opinion that money will do everything may reasonably be expected to do everything for money. -Halifax A man never sees all that his mother has been to him until it's too late to let her know that he sees it. -William Dean Howells New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. -John Locke It took mankind the whole period of recorded time until the early nineteenth century to achieve a population of one billion, only a century to achieve a second billion. It took somewhat over thirty years to raise the world population to three billion. At the present rate of increase, only fifteen years will be required to bring the figure to four billion. -John D. Rockefeller III (1963) It is preoccupations with possessions more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power. -Charles C. Colton I know of no manner of speaking so offensive as that of giving praise, and closing it with an exception -Richard Steele The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but." -Henry Ward Beecher I have been driven many times to my knees, by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day. -Abraham Lincoln Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself. -Dr. Samuel Johnson We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him. -Michel Eyquem De Monaigne Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it. -William Hazlitt When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity. -Albert Einstein He that cleanses a blot with blotted fingers makes a greater blur. -Francis Quarles There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule. -Samuel Butler The great tragedy of science-the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. -Thomas Huxley Perpetual self-inspection leads to spiritual hypochondria (abnormal anxiety) I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desire, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. -John Stuart Mill The lesson of the tremendous days through which we are passing is that men cannot live upon the achievements of their forefathers, but must themselves renew them. We cannot escape the elementary facts of life-that for a people there is nothing for nothing, that what they have they must themselves make, that what they cherish they must themselves achieve, what they wish to keep they must themselves defend. -Walter Lippmann It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even our necessities. Thus, disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing. -Hosea Ballou The noblest deeds are well enough set forth in simple language; emphasis spoils them. -Jean de La Bruyere Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good. -Harriet Beeche Stowe Talking and eloquence are not the same; to speak and to speak well are two things. -Ben Jonson Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk. -Charles Secondat de Montesquieu My rule, in which I have always found satisfaction, is never to turn aside in public affairs through views of private interest, but to go straight forward in doing what appears to me right at the time, leaving the consequences with Providence. -Benjamin Franklin So long as you keep a person down, there must be some part of you down there to keep him down. -Marian Anderson Success consecrates the foulest crimes. -Seneca A young man, to achieve, must first get out of his mind any notion either of the ease or rapidity of success. Nothing ever just happens in this world: Everything is brought about. Success never comes to a man of its own volition: It will meet a man halfway, but it will never come to him all the way. -Edward W. Box It requires more courage to suffer than to die. -Napoleon Bonaparte There is not much difference, really, between the squirrel laying up nuts and the man laying up money. Like the squirrel, the man-at least at the start-is trying to provide for his basic needs. I don't know much about squirrels, but I think they know when they have enough nuts. In this way they are superior to men, who often don't know when they have enough, and frequently gamble away what they have in the empty hope of getting more. -Bernard M. Baruch Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live. -Charles C. Colton Suicide is not to fear of death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valor to condemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live. -Thomas Browne What the superior man seeks is in himself, but what the small man seeks is in others. -Confucius The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little. -Dr. Samuel Johnson Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. -Winston Churchill Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt. -Dr. Samuel Johnson To rejoice in another's prosperity is to give content to your lot; to mitigate another's grief is to alleviate or dispel your own. -Tryon Edwards The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterward. -Anatole France Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them. -Christian Nevell Bovee Temperance is moderation in the things that are good and total abstinence from the things that are foul. -Frances E. Willard A man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner -Halifax Live is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way and if we are to live and not to die together we must learn a kind of charity and tolerance absolutely vital to the continuance of human life on this planet. -Bertrand Russell He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. -Elbert Hubbard We always dread the sight of the person we love when we have been coquetting elsewhere. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld That which is to be most desired in America is oneness and not sameness. -Stephen S. Wise 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 A man should be upright, not to be kept upright. -Marcus Aurelius An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of soul is not strictly worth saying. -Mark Twain They who believe in virtue because man has never been found perfect, might as reasonably deny the Sun because it is not always noon. -Augustus Hare Without a rich heart wealth is an ugly beggar. -Ralph Waldo Emerson Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he who has much, but wants more. -Charles C. Colton Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. -John Ruskin Fools learn nothing from wise men, but wise men learn much from fools. -Johann Kaspar Lavater Be very slow to believe that you are wise than all others; it is a fatal but common error. -Charles C. Colton In seeking wisdom, thou art wise; in imagining that you hast attained it, thou art a fool. -Rabbi Ben-Azai-------Khanh L. Bui------- Source: Jacob M. Braude, Quotes by Famous People Next Page