Future, Jilted, Foolish

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees
nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.
~ Jim Bishop

To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride. Do your best to
forget it and if you don't succeed, at least pretend to.
~ Moliere

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
~ Colette

Persist, Usefulness, Quartet

We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are.
~ Tobias Wolff

Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use be
preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had.
~ Sir Francis Bacon

[T]here's no bad day that can't be overcome by listening to a
barbershop quartet; this is just truth, plain and simple.
~ Chuck Sigars

Theories, Faith, Force

I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has
data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead
of theories to suit facts.
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

We think having faith means being convinced God exists in the same way
we are convinced a chair exists. People who cannot be completely
convinced of God's existence think faith is impossible for them. Not
so. People who doubt can have great faith because faith is something
you do, not something you think. In fact, the greater your doubt the
more heroic your faith.
~ Real Live Preacher

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
~ Abraham Lincoln

poverty, gift, data

Poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of
the affection we have for each other, or degrade us in our own
opinion, or in that of any person, whose opinion we ought to value.
~ Ann Radcliffe

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
~ Charles Dudley Warner

The best way to compile inaccurate information that no one wants is to
make it up.
~ Scott Adams

disappointments, greatness, get busy

Mistakes and disappointment make the sweet things in life that much sweeter.
~ Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

Even the great get greater by doing more of it.
~ Colleen Wainwright

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I
can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.
~ Theodore Roosevelt

Atheist, Fire, Intelligence

I'm still an atheist, thank God.
~ Luis Bunuel

Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and
he's warm for the rest of his life.
~ Terry Pratchett

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
~ Charles Darwin

Courage, Fishing, Sources

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the judgment that something
is more important than our fear.
~ Ambrose Redmoon

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted
line. He caught every other fish.
~ Steven Wright

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for
his facts.
~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Danger, Envy, Encouragement

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
~ Jane Goodall

Envy can be a positive motivator. Let it inspire you to work harder
for what you want.
~ Robert Bringle

Encouragement is like a premium gasoline - it helps to take knocks out
of living.
~ Anonymous

Image, Progress, Belief

It is the image of God reflected in you that so enrages hell; it is
this at which the demons hurl their mightiest weapons.
~ William Gurnall

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
~ George Santayana

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
~ Edith Sitwell

Enemy, Success objective, Thought

So long as a man remains no real threat to the Enemy, Satan's line to
him is "You're fine." But after you do take sides, it becomes "Your
heart is bad and you know it."
~ John Eldridge, Wild at Heart

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything
else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations
bend to that one objective.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
~ Sir William Osler

Doubt, Reasonable, Ready

Do not doubt in the dark what you have learned in the light.
~ Susie Larson

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable,
you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left
is a compromise.
~ Robert Fritz

People who are 'ready' give off a different vibe than people who
aren't. Animals can smell fear; maybe that's it./ The minute you
become ready is the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it's no longer
about 'becoming'. Suddenly it's about 'doing'.
~ Hugh Macleod

Tomorrow, Opinions, Expression

The man of God you want to be tomorrow, start living today.
~ Unknown

I just never let anything bother me, man. I know myself really well.
Nobody's opinion of me can shake my opinion of myself.
~ Ruben Studdard

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the
expression of opinions that we loathe.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Student, Wit, Outnumbered

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions,
never know too much to learn something new.
~ Og Mandino

What's the point of havin' a rapier wit if I can't use it to stab people?
~ Jeph Jacques

If it is once again one against forty-eight, then I am very sorry for
the forty-eight.
~ Margaret Thatcher

Crazy, Truth, Morals

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.
~ Apple, Inc.

We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart.
~ Blaise Pascal

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Expression, Messy, Crispiness

Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for
it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul.
~ Friedrich Froebel, "Father" of modem kindergarten

People are people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one
another from day to day - even hour to hour.
~ Elizabeth Moon

It is amazing how much crisper the general experience of life becomes
when your body is given a chance to develop a little strength.
~ Frank Duff

Creative play, Liars, Phones

It is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free
to be creative.
~ D.W. Winnicott

Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens.
~ Nick Diamos

All phone calls are obscene.
~ Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Meaning, More, Philosophers

All play means something. It goes beyond the confines of purely
physical or purely biological activity. It is a significant
function-that is to say, there is some sense to it.
~ Johan Huizinga, cultural historian

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
~ Bill Hoest

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for
science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and
probably wrong.
~ Richard Feynman

Playtime, Self, Virtue

Today's young children are controlled by the expectations, schedules,
whims, and rules of adults. Play is the only time they can take
control of their world.
~ Sheila G. Flaxman

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one
cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not
to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly
to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that
virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and
every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my
teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a
mischievous person.
~ Socrates

Stress reduction, Decorating, Experience

Playing reduces stress, improves life, and increases creativity. Who
doesn't want that?
~ Stevanne Auerbach, Dr. Toy

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of
people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough
bookshelves.
~ Anna Quindlen

Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get
if you don't.
~ Pete Seeger

Ideas, Intelligent life, Misquotation

I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air;
transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent
with fancy, and winged it with paradox.
~ Oscar Wilde, playwright, novelist

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists
elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
~ Bill Watterson

I improve on misquotation.
~ Cary Grant