You can't know me long without realizing that I have a deep adoration of quotes. I'm always copying them; writing them in journals; moving them into a word-file; winnowing them until I have only those I consider worth memorizing; and then adding to my collection once more. It will likely be a lifelong love affair. Here is a handful of them.
"Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering."
Ida Scott Taylor
"Live, as though you were to die tomorrow. Learn, as if you were to live forever."
Ghandi
"Love without clinging, cry if you must, but privately cry, the heart will adjust."
Ruth Bell Graham
"If you love someone, let them go. If they return, they are yours, if they don't, they never were."
Seagull
"[Those who] neglect learning in their youth, lose the past and are dead to the future."
Euripides
"It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
Andrew J. Holmes
"Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is far easier to resist at the beginning than at the end."
Anon
"No one who deserves confidence ever solicits it."
John Churton Collins
"Far too many people wait throughout their entire lives to do good in their own fashion."
Anon
"Cultivate only the habits you are willing to have master you."
Elbert Hubbard
"Where there is desperation, may I bring hope. Where there is sadness, let me bring joy. Allow me to console, rather than be consoled. To understand, rather than be understood. To love, rather than be loved. Because giving is receiving. Because it is in forgiving that we are forgiven. It is in dying that we are born into eternal life."
Anon
"Never argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his own level and then beat you with experience."
Alan Zimmerman
"When a women, who has much to say, says nothing, her silence can be deafening."
Anna and the King
"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
Kahlil Gibran
"For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been."
John Greenleaf Whittier
"Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable."
L Frank Baum
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
Confucius
"First love is alright, as far as it goes. But last love, that's what I'm interested in."
Edge of Love
"I can't criticize his character, mainly because he doesn't seem to have one."
Cheri
"The right to be heard, does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."
Hubert H Humphrey.
"This is the time to remember, because it will not last forever. These are the days to hold on to, because we won't, although we want to."
Billy Joel
"The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtly in the word 'damn' than in the word 'degeneration.'"
G.K. Chesterton
"I've read a lot of books, so I know bunches of stuff that sounds like it could be true."
Brian Andreas
"Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for."
Dag Hammarskjold
"Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt."
Jose Ortega y Gasset
"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problem are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny."
Albert Ellis
“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”
Confucius
"Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?"
Sai Baba
"I may be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it."
Maya Angelou
"We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us."
Charles Bukowski
"The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they re not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others."
William Lyon Phelps
"I will state what I think, not what I am prepared to maintain; it is for men to think things, but for God to know them."
Xenephanes
"Style is more character than clothes, more attitude than affluence. It's you making visible your inner-self. So forget what you learned about appearances not counting, you can no longer afford to be without style."
Hara Estroff Marano
"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life."
Steve Jobs
"Being powerful is like being a lady; if you have to tell everyone you are, you aren't."
Margaret Thatcher
"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."
C.S. Lewis
"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you."
Elisie de Wolfe
"Always dream, and shoot for higher than what you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
William Faulkner
"Trust means being content when the answer to your question is silence."
Anon
It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.
Finnick Odair
"A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person."
Scott Sorrell
"A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities."
Herman Melville
"Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt."
Jose Ortega y Gasset
"Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be."
Kurt Vonnegut
