Esther's Quote Collection

Decided I need to gather my quotes together.


"Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.
From `Happiness and God's Grace' by Ramana Maharshi

"I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect."
Madeleine L'Engle

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
- James D. Nicoll

Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead.
Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow.
Do not walk beside me either.
Just pretty much leave me alone.
Unknown

A few Franklin P. Jones quotes

Quote :

You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech.

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

What makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don't want to discourage it completely.

The easiest way to solve a problem is to pick an easy one.

Originality is the art of concealing your source.

One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening.

Love doesn't make the word go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values - and witnesses.

It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.

All women should know how to take care of children. Most of them will have a husband some day.

"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live so that when you die, the world will cry and you will rejoice."
Native American saying

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
- Winston Churchill

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."
- Richard Bach

"That is, man's main purpose is not to eat, drink, etc., but to be human."
- M.-L. von Franz from Man and His Symbols

"These transformations cannot be gained without cost. They required my learning to live the rest of my days in the ambiguity of knowing that of all that I am, I am also the the opposite. I cannot rid myself of my demons, without risking that my angels well flee along with them."
- Sheldon Kopp

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
- Hannibal ("I will either find a way or I will make one.")

"We have, I fear, confused power with greatness."
Stewart L. Udall

Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul - The Lost Book from Illusions (2004)
Most of the statements in this book come from the earlier book Illusions (1977)

Quote :

• Perspective— Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.
  
  
• Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.
  
  
• Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.
  
  
• The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
  
  
• There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.
  
  
• Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect.
  Then be sure of one thing:
  
  The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.
  
  
• The original sin is to limit the Is. —Don't.
  
  
• If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
  
  
• In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
  
  
• The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."
  
  
• Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
  Variant: Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
  
  
• Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
  
  
• The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
  
  
• You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.
  
  Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy.
  
  
• Everything in this book may be wrong!

Communications without intelligence is noise;
Intelligence without communications is irrelevant.
- Gen Alfred Gray, USMC


You need only claim the event of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.
- Florida Scott-Maxwell

When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph.
- Pierre Corneille

The most enviable writers are those who, quite often unanalytically and unconsciously, have realized that there are different facets to their nature and are able to live and work with now one, now another, in the ascendant.
- Dorothea Brande

The weaker the man in authority... the stronger his insistence that all his privileges be acknowledged.
- Austin O'Malley

Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly, with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
- Isaac Watts

Some Quotes by Winston Churchill:

• Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
  
  
• Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
  
  
• Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.
  
  
• If you are going through hell, keep going.
  
  
• If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.
  
  
• Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.
  
  
• Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game.
  
  
• Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
  
  
• The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
  
  
• Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.
  
  
• You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
  
  
• We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.
  
  
• Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Six Core Elements of Character
As accepted by most ethics instructors.
Trustworthiness
Respect
Responsibility (self-discipline)
Fairness
Caring (compassion)
Citizenship (obeying the law, staying informed of current affairs, voting, etc.)


Slightly similar...

Aristotle's Four Classic Values
Fortitude (perserverance)
Temperance (controlling human passions)
Prudence (practical wisdom)
Justice (fairness, lawfulness)

"Faith, hope and charity" were later added to make the Seven Virtues.


And while I'm quoting dusty old guys, here are some other lists:

Mistakes of Mankind
1. The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others.
2. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.
4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.
5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not
acquiring the habit of reading and studying.
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

~ Cicero, circa 140 B.C.


Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-Razi (866-925) four reasons why
great men make more mistakes than others:

1. Because of negligence, as a result of too much self confidence.
2. Because of unmindfulness (indifference) which often leads to errors.
3. Because of enticements to follow one's Own fancy or impetuosity in
imagining that what he does or says is right.
4. Crystallization of ancient knowledge in view of the dynamic nature
of science so that present day knowledge must of necessity surpass
that of previous generations. This is because of the continuous
discoveries of new data and new truths.



Bertrand Russell's Decalogue:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

"Activity is the politician's substitute for achievement."


"Always mistrust a subordinate who never finds fault with his boss."


"An infinite number of mediocrities do not add up to one genius."


"An open mouth oft-times accompanies a closed mind."


"If you try to improve one person by being a good example, you're improving two. If you try to improve someone without being a good example, you won't improve anybody."
-James Thorn


"Art is a passion pursued with discipline; science is a discipline pursued with passion."


"I am persuaded that he who is capable of being a bitter enemy can never possess the necessary virtues that constitute a true friend."


You see things; and you say "Why?"
But I dream things that never were;
And I say "why not?"
-George Bernard Shaw


"Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius."


"He who slings mud, loses ground."


"We easily forget that the way people act toward us may be the result of our own behavoir."


"Don't worry about what other people are thinking of you. They're too busy worrying about what you are thinking of them."


"Man occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
-Winston Churchill


"Egotism is something that enables the man in the rut to think he's in the groove."


Fools belittle that which they do not understand.
Cynics belittle everything.
Midgets simply belittle.


"Freedom can be lost as surely tax by tax, regulation by regulation, as it can be bullet by bullet, missile by missile."


"He is all fault who has no fault at all."


"He who would pursue revenge should first dig two graves."


"The mind is its own place to make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell."


Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
- Sam Brown, in "Washington Post", 1977


"One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing his own."


The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
- Eldridge Cleaver, "Soul on Ice", 1968


Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
- Confucius


People are always talking about tradition, but they forget we have a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and stupidity, that there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence and crudity.
- Hugo Demartini, in "Contemporary Artists", 1977


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


"A fool must now and then be right by chance."

A few personal quotes by me:

"Too many screwy people in the world. Not enough straight jackets."

"I disagree with everyone sooner or later. It's part of my charm."

"I am only a figment of your imagination. You should be proud you can achieve such detail."

"Warning - this person's sense of tact is temporarily down due to an energy shortage. Please bear with us until the problem has been corrected."

"Too many stupid people in this world... It really makes you wish that sex was actually complicated."

"They're either on drugs on they should be."