"If we only knew the real value of a day."
--Joseph Farrell

"We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid."
--William Faulkner

"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go."
--William Feather

Beware of the man who won't be bothered with details.
-- William Feather

"Do each daily task the best we can; act as tough the eye of opportunity were always upon us."
--William Feather

"Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self."
--Millicent Fenwick

"Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little."
--Edna Ferber

"If someone gives you so-called good advice, do the opposite; you can be sure it will be the right thing nine out of ten times."
--Anselm Feuerbach

"I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes."
--Sally Field

She was very articulate to all the children about these demons because it was the conflict of bringing up the children, um, and allowing them, and making us understand and participate in the kind of, the stress of bringing up a family and trying to write books and paint and fulfill ones own artistic aspirations. So I think she was articulate and I felt that we were very much aware of the pressure that she was under, and the silence that she needed amongst seven children.
-- Joseph Fiennes regarding his mother -- from Fresh Air transcript

Well I think we were very lucky that my mother was passionate about words, literature, ideas, the imagination, and she and my father, also talked to us, discussion and conversation was encouraged. It wasn't even a self-conscious thing, it just was there, because my mother loved to talk about ideas, and discuss books, ideas of films, plays, pieces of music, and she, I remember, she would always come back from an event, if we were too young to have seen a certain film or gone to a certain concert, she would come back and say, "We saw the most wonderful concert last night. The composer was such-and-such. Or we saw an amazing play last night and it was this kind of play and the story is this." And I think we all were on the receiving end of this enthusiasm. So, in that sense it, I suppose, it may be....to choose to follow a career in, what I suppose, we have to call the Arts, um, didn't seem a big step for us because of the nature of the environment that Jini gave us.
-- Ralph Fiennes regarding his mother -- from Fresh Air transcript

I think, um, I can remember being taken to see Laurence Olivier's Henry VI when I was about 5. -- I loved the music by Sir William Walton. I loved the battle scenes. It was a great film. I mean it, it's got such great cinematic energy that, I think, that an alert 5 year old can respond to it. It's such a brilliant piece of film-making. It's a proof that Shakespeare needn't be the stuff of A-level exams. It's alive. It's story-telling. It's visual.
-- Ralph Fiennes, from Fresh Air transcript -- amidst the laughter of Joe and Sophie

I remember as a, sort of, 5 year old being subjected to a 7-hour long performance of... Of a Pollocks theatre production... Which is a toy theatre, like a sort of proscenium stage, that was produced, directed, and EVERY single part played by Ralph. And I think there was Treasure Island, and, what was the other one?....The Corsican Twins, was it?... [Ralph interjects: The Corsican Brothers, Jack the Giant Killer, Cinderella..... ] It was a brilliant theatre, because what he'd done was, he'd made little footlights in tiny matchboxes. So, there were actually footlights at the bottom of the theatre, and the cut out characters, um, which were on, attached to little wire, um, poles that got moved in and out in front of the proscenium. It was, it was brilliant.... [Ralph: I've still got it. I'm doing a show next week. ]
-- Sophie Fiennes, from Fresh Air transcript -- did the 7 kids in the house ever get into a "Let's Put On a Show" type of thing?

"I call people successful not because they have money or their business is doing well, but because they have a fully developed sense of being alive and engaged in a lifetime collaboration with other human beings - their mothers and fathers, their family, their friends, their loved ones, the friends who are dying, the friends who are being born. Success? Don't you know it is all about being able to extend love to people? Really. Not in a big capital letter sense, but in the everyday - little by little, gesture by gesture, word by word."
-- Ralph Fiennes

"It's to do with the time and space. [The audience is] there, in that moment, witnessing a moment that's never going to happen again in that way. ... You can't kid anyone. You're out there on the stage and there's no editing, there's no soundtrack, you can't change a camera angle. You're just relying on telling the story and your ability to take the audience with you. You're very exposed. You're really exposed out there. ... I find it thrilling."
-- Ralph Fiennes on stage acting

"Shakespeare is a huge force, and we must continually reevaluate this force. Theaters must be ruthless about investigating his contemporary quality. With enough conviction, it is possible to cut through to the heart."
-- Ralph Fiennes at Shakespeare Theater Will Awards, March 2001

"It [classical theater] should provoke us, make us laugh and make us cry. Most of all, it should leave us changed."
--Ralph Fiennes at Shakespeare Theater Will Awards, March 2001

"It [the Holocaust] showed what human beings are really capable of -- not only the Germans, but also the Americans and the English. They knew about Auschwitz but despite that they did nothing. It's the same situation today. We're bombing Kosovo, but we're ignoring the war in Chetchnya and Rwanda. -- When I was at Krakow I used to listen to "Fidelio" on my walkman. The thought that a country that had produced a tyrant like Hitler could also produce a composer like Beethoven, whose songs celebrate the liberation of people that had been arrested without justification gave me hope."
-- Ralph Fiennes from Bild article regarding his work in Schindler's List and Sunshine

"I hide in my roles. I often feel safer in someone else's skin than in my own. I flee from the responsibility of being myself."
-- Ralph Fiennes

I wanted to be an actor because I loved watching stories and being moved and being taken into another world and being transported and coming away from something a little bit changed. I think you can lose your innocence completely when you're part of that world of making movies. I think it can be very dangerous if you don't know that it's happening, because people are very charming and people stroke you and flatter you. You only have to (laughs) adjust your antennae a little, and you're believing it all! And it's dangerous."
-- Ralph Fiennes

"I don't know if I would draw a line between where technique ends and instinct takes over. I think my attitude toward acting is that the performer should be like a skilled and dominating lover. You try to put yourself in the frame of mind where you can exercise fingertip control over what you're doing without losing the essential rush that comes with acting...."
-- Ralph Fiennes on acting

I think that Jini was a woman who was fascinated by being a mother, and she was compelled to be a mother, and she took it on board in a very full on way. But she was also, she had a very strong spiritual dimension to her, and in fact when she was diagnosed terminally ill she actually chose to spend a lot of time by herself and I think that was a very important choice that she made. And we all had to respect that which was actually quite difficult, but at the same time we knew that she was making a very conscious choice and the pilgrimage is actually an extension of that kind of search that she felt she had to make for herself, within herself, that was sort of beyond even the love and compassion and support of the family. And I think that that's something that is possibly an interesting choice that she made. -- She wrote a travel book because she decided when she was ill to make a pilgrimage because really she was fascinated by ancient places where people would be, had gone for centuries and she was fascinated by religion and belief. And she was really a magpie for these things and she had a strong, she had an excitement about the idea of faith and the idea of what she would refer to as an illuminous deity and she really went in a search to find her own relationship to that. And I think there's something that comes through very strongly in both books which is her connection to nature and the practicality of life and the naturalness of that sort of practical aspect. So traveling and being on route and being in the process of a journey is in a sense a metaphor for the whole phenomenon of life itself. So she really enjoyed that and I think the book has a lot of humor in it. She comes through very strongly in On Pilgrimage, personally herself.
-- Sophie Fiennes from Joe, Ralph and Sophie's Fresh Air transcript - regarding their mother Jennifer Lash's books

"Keep your promises to yourself."
--David H. Fink

"The weight of the past can be quite overwhelming sometimes. Indecisiveness is a hard thing to live by. Sometimes you've got to take the plunge."
--Neil Finn, 1984 when he announced the end of Split Enz

"Wherever you are ... you don't have to stay."
-- Neil Finn, Dream Date

"A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary."
--Dorothy Canfield Fisher

It's splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts.
- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist

Deeds, not words shall speak me.
-- John Fletcher

"I jes trying to get on without shovin' anybody, that's all."
--Henry Fonda, "The Grapes of Wrath"

Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances.
-- La Fontaine

"People who never get carried away should be."
--Malcolm Forbes

"If you're looking for perfection, look in the mirror. If you find it there, expect it elsewhere."
--Malcolm Forbes

"Mothers' expectations for their sons are thought to be different from all other earthly ones. As many men see it, life itself is a sisyphean task of trying to meat their expectations."
--Linda R. Forcey, Mothers & Sons

"I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you."
--Harrison Ford

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."
--Henry Ford

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."
-- Brendan Francis

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
-- Benjamin Franklin, 'Poor Richard's Almanack,' June 1746

"There is a difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him."
--Benjamin Franklin

"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training."
--Anna Freud

"A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that of confidence of success that often induces real success."
--Sigmund Freud

"A danger foreseen is half avoided."
--Thomas Fuller

"Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine."
-- Robert C. Gallagher

A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
--Mahatma Gandhi

"It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body."
--Kahlil Gibran

"Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! . . . Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil."
--Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"I can't think of any sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn't help, just a little bit."
--Susan Glasee

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become THE imperative of our middle age."
--Ellen Goodman

"The impossible is often the untried."
--Jim Goodwin

Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts. ~ Ruth Gordon

"All we are asked to bear we can bear."
--Elizabeth Goudge

"It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck, even while waiting for it."
--Baltasar Gracian

Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier.
-- Baltasar Gracian

"To bring the dead to life / Is no great magic. / Few are
wholly dead: / Blow on a dead man's embers / And a live flame will start."
--Robert Graves

"The remarkable thing about the human mind is its range of limitations."
--Celia Green

May your service of love be a beautiful thing; want nothing else, fear nothing else and let love be free to become what love truly is.
-- Hadewijch of Antwerp

"Don't hurry, don't worry. You're only here for a short visit. So be sure to stop and smell the flowers."
--Walter Hagen

"Put duties aside at least an hour before bed and perform soothing, quiet activities that will help you relax."
--Dianne Hales

"When you work seven days a week, fourteen hours a day, you get lucky."
--Armmand Hammer

"A person needs at intervals to separate himself from family and companions and go to new places. He must go without his familiars in order to be open to influence, to change."
--Katherine B. Hathaway

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864)

"It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it"
--Lillian Hellman

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
--Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Without discipline, there's no life at all.
-- Katharine Hepburn

"Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it." --Don Herold

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
~James Herriot

"Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it."
--John Hersey

"The course of life is unpredictable . . . no one can write his autobiography in advance."
--Abraham Joshua Heschel

A man may well bring a horse to the water but he cannot make him drink.
-- John Heywood

"Perfectionism is a dangerous state of mind in an imperfect world."
--Robert Hillyer

When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
-- Alice Hoffman, 'Here on Earth'

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."
--Hans Hoffman

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, -- but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1809 - 1894)

"Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall, a mother's secret hope outlives them all."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

There's nothing that keeps its youth, in so far as I know, but a tree and truth.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books." --Bell Hooks

"If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylum would be filled with mothers."
--Edgar Watson Howe

"The cure for grief is motion."
--Elbert Hubbard

"A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience."
--Elbert Hubbard

"The trouble with many married people is that they are trying to get more out of marriage than there is in it."
--Elbert Hubbard

"Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant – the digitalis of failure."
--Elbert Hubbard

"Wise Man: One who sees the storm coming before the clouds appear."
--Elbert Hubbard

"One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows slowly endures."
--J. G. Hubbard

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
--Elbert Hubbard

"If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?"
--Dolores Huerta

There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow.
-- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 1862

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.
-- Victor Hugo

You cannot go around and keep score. If you keep score on the good things and the bad things, you'll find out that you're a very miserable person. God gave man the ability to forget, which is one of the greatest attributes you have. Because if you remember everything that's happened to you, you generally remember that which is the most unfortunate.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey (1911 - 78 AD)

"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives."
--Robert Maynard Hutchins

"Each bird must sing with his own throat."
--Henrik Ibsen

"Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due."
--William R. Inge

"You can only predict things after they have happened."
--Eugene Ionesco