"People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim."
--Ann Landers

Seek not happiness too greedily, and be not fearful of happiness.
-- Lao-tsze

"The family you come from isn't as important as the family you're going to have."
--Ring Lardner

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
-- Vernon Sanders Law

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
-- Harper Lee

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
-- John Lilly

"The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials."
--Lin Yutang

"One must lose one's life in order to find it."
--Anne Murrow Lindbergh

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach."
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere."
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard think makes it impossible."
--George C. Lorimer

"Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise."
--Samuel Lover

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.
-- Clare Booth Luce, in Reader's Digest, 1979

"Who loves not wine, women and song, / Remains a fool his whole life long."
--Martin Luther, attr.

"Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power."
Shirley MacLaine

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.
-- Andre Malraux

"Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude."
--Katherine Mansfield

"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."
--Marcus Aurelius

"Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all."
-- Michael Masser and Linda Creed

"It is not enough to posses wit. One must have enough of it to avoid having too much."
--Andre Maurois

"Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can."
-- Elsa Maxwell, September 28, 1958

"The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next."
--Mingnon McLaughlin

"Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers."
--Mignon McLaughlin

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
-- Thomas Merton

"If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home."
--James Michener

"The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it."
--Harvey Milk

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
-- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

"Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."
--Henry Miller

Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!
-- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

"We create our fate every day we live."
--Henry Miller

"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is."
--Margaret Mitchell

"If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused."
--Walter Mondale

"One never knows what each day is going to bring. The important thing is to be open and ready for it."
--Henry Moore

When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation.
-- Cherrie Moraga

"Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting."
--Christopher Morely

It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.
-- John Viscount Morley, of Blackburn

"Have no fear of change as such and, on the other hand, no liking for it merely for its own sake."
--Robert Moses

"Minutes are worth more than money. Spend them wisely."
--Thomas P. Murphy

"I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or to make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel."
--Gloria Naylor

"There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear."
--Jawaharlal Nehru

"If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street."
--Ben Nicholas

"One's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action . . . which bring results."
--Florence Nightingale

Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
-- Richard M. Nixon (1913 - 1994), in his White House farewell

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I've found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they'll divulge it.
-- Joyce Carol Oates

"Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not a sum of what we have been but what we yearn to be."
--Jose Ortega y Gassett

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."
--George Orwell

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
-- Ovid (43 BC - 18 AD)

Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.
-- Clementine Paddleford

"Only fools and dead men don't change their minds. Fools won't and dead men can't."
--John H. Patterson

"The squeaky wheel doesn't always get greased; it often gets replaced."
--John Peers

". . . if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don't need advice."
--Laurence J. Peter

"If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening."
--Marge Piercy

"Your wealth is where your friends are."
--Plautus

It is certainly desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
-- Plutarch

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream by night.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, 'Eleanora,' 1842

"Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate."
--Alexander Pope

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
-- Colin Powell

"Every moment that I am centered in the future, I suffer a temporary loss of this life."
--Hugh Prather

"Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door of my lips."
--Psalms, 141:3

Be very circumspect in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals thou shalt enjoy more pleasure; in the society of thy superiors thou shalt find more profit. To be the best in the company is the way to grow worse.
-- Francis Quarles

"That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end."
--Francis Quareles

"If you count all your assets you always show a profit."
--Robert Quillen

Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.
-- David Reisman

"If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right."
--Jules Renard

"You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted." -- Ruth E. Renkl

"I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something -- a great deal -- to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing; and that we can deflect words, by trivialization, of course, but also by ritualized respect, or we can let them enter our souls and mix with the juices of our minds."
--Adrienne Rich

"A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's."
--Jean Paul Richter

"Don't let other people tell you what you want."
--Pat Riley

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
-- Rodin

"I learn by going where I have to go."
--Theodore Roethke

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

"When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"No leader can be too far ahead of his followers."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, September 7, 1903

Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary.
-- Julius Rosenwald

Silence is more musical than any song.
-- Christina Rossetti

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Your first appearance, he said to me, is the gauge by which you will be measured; try to manage that you may go beyond yourself in after times, but beware of ever doing less.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
-- Arthur Rubinstein

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.
-- John Ruskin

You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.
-- John Ruskin

"The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way."
--Bertrand Russell

See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.
... Samuel Rutherford (1600-1664)

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
-- A. Sachs

A really patient man neither complains nor seeks to be pitied; he will speak simply and truly of his trouble, without exaggerating its weight or bemoaning himself. If others pity him, he will accept their compassion patiently, unless they pity him for some ill he is not enduring, in which case he will say so with meekness, and abide in patience and truthfulness, combating his grief and not complaining of it.
... Francois de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, Teacher(1567-1622)

"Bringing up a family should be an adventure, not an anxious discipline in which everybody is constantly graded for performance."
--Milton R. Saperstein

"Good friends are good for your health."
--Irwin Sarason

"We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be."
--May Sarton

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer

"The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it."
--George C. Scott

"One should count each day a separate life."
--Seneca

"Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."
--Seneca

"Kill the snake of doubt in your soul, crush the worms of fear in your heart and mountains will move out of your way."
-- Kate Seredy

The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
-- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), 'King Henry IV part I'

This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day; Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), 'Hamlet,' Act I, Scene iii

"No profit grows where there is no pleasure ta'en."
--Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew)

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
-- George Bernard Shaw

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. ~ John A. Shedd

"The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests."
--Gail Sheehy

"Changes are not predictable; but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation."
--Gail Sheehy

"Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach."
--Sydney Smith

Reprove thy friend privately; commend him publicly.
-- Solon

"You win the victory when you yield to friends."
--Sophocles

"Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life."
--Muriel Spark

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."
--John Steinbeck

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
--Robert Louis Stevenson

"To aim at the best and to remain essentially ourselves is one and the same thing."
--Janet Erskine Stuart

"Life is a battle in which we fall from wounds we receive in running away."
--William L. Sullivan

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
-- Karen Sunde

"When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats."
-- Claude Swanson

One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
-- Jonathan Swift

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
-- Jonathan Swift

Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.
-- Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

It is no profit to have learned well, if you neglect to do well.
-- Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

Live well. It is the greatest revenge.
-- The Talmud

Never expose yourself unnecessarily to danger; a miracle may not save you...and if it does, it will be deducted from your share of luck or merit.
-- The Talmud

"Examine the contents, not the bottle."
--The Talmud

"The burden is equal to the horse's strength."
--The Talmud

The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become.
-- Harold Taylor

"All effort is in the last analysis sustained by the faith that it is worth making."
--Ordway Tead

"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it."
--Margaret Thatcher

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
-- I Thessalonians

The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold then in the right scale of values.
-- Norman Thomas

The most powerful factors in the world are clear ideas in the minds of energetic men of good will.
-- J. Arthur Thomson

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
-- Henry David Thoreau

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."
--Henry David Thoreau

"Only a weak mind seeks ultimate answers."
--Agnes Thornton

"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then - we elected them."
--Lily Tomlin

"We learn the rope of life by untying its knots."
--Jean Toomer

"How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?"
--Harry Truman

"Courage is rarely reckless or foolish . . . courage usually involves a highly realistic estimate of the odds that must be faced."
--Margaret Truman

"Keep breathing."
--Sophie Tucker

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)