Ursula Stange's
quoTABLE

 
 

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -- Viktor Frankl

An author's first duty is to let down his country.  --Brendan Behan

Behind every great fortune, there is a crime.  --Honore de Balzac

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.  --Peter De Vries

He is a wise man who invented God.  --Plato

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.  --James Thurber

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.  --Samuel Butler

There is more to life than incresing its speed.  --Mahatma Gandhi

There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money, either. --Robert Graves

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. --Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?" --Rabbi Zuzya

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to
proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people. --Mark Twain

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see. -- Thomas Carlyle

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. --Albert Einstein

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon,
or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. --Henry David Thoreau

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art
of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. --Lin Yutang

You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind. --  Irish Proverb

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. --George Bernard Shaw

Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title. --  Virginia Woolf
Jacob's Room (1922) ch. 5

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. -- Thomas Carlyle

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with any how.  --  Friedrich Neitzsche

There is no such crime as a crime of thought.  There are only crimes of action.  --  Clarence Darrow

Of what use is a philosopher who does not hurt anyone's feelings?  -- Diogenes

Knowledge is not intelligence.  -- Heraclitus

Either belief in God is unconditional or it is no belief at all.  -- Viktor Frankl

Count no man happy until he is dead.  -- Solon

I am confident of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and
the truth of imagination.   -- John Keats

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.  --  Oscar Wilde

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.  --  Oscar Wilde

Worship is transcendent wonder.  --  Thomas Carlyle

Skepticism is the beginning of faith.  --  Oscar Wilde

Children begin by loving their parents.  After a time they judge them.
Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.     -- Oscar Wilde

He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.  --  Schopenhauer

No one worth possessing can quite be possessed.  --  Sara Teasdale

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.  --  Nietzsche

Many hours I waste today ,
Thinking I will make haste someday ,
But that was based on the foolish premise,
That I can redeem this loss on another day.  --  Karl Gheewalla

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.   -- Henry Miller

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.  --  George Orwell

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.  --  Oscar Wilde

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.  --  Thomas Jefferson

Help a man against his will and you do the same as murder him.  --  Horace

No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.  --  Mandell Creighton

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.  --  Dr. Samuel Johnson

The sun shineth upon the dunghill and is not corrupted.  --  John Lyly

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.  --  William James

Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.  --  Eugene McCarthy

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.  --  Wilson Mizner

No man who worships education has got the best out of education...without a gentle contempt for education, no man's education is complete.  --  G.K. Chesterton

Russian Communism is the illegitimate child of Karl Marx and Catherine the Great.  --  Clement Atlee

City life:  millions of people being lonely together.  --  Henry David Thoreau

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.  --  Ben Franklin

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. --  Oscar Wilde

A gun gives you the body, not the bird.  --  Henry David Thoreau

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.   --  Henry David Thoreau
 
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  -- Annie Dillard
 
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.  --  Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.  --  Robert Heinlein
 
Courage is the complement of fear.  A man who is fearless cannot be courageous.  --  Robert Heinlein
 
Many evil men are rich, and good men poor, but we shall not exchange with them our excellence for riches. -- Solon  (c. 638 – 559 B.C.) 

Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be. -- Bertrand Russell 

The true office of any faith is to give life a meaning which death cannot destroy. -- Tolstoy 

The only true education is growing up into a worthwhile world.  --

We loved the earth but could not stay.  -- Loren Eiseley's tombstone 

Children have more need of models than of critics. -- Joubert 

The result of the educative process is the capacity for further education.  -- John Dewey 

We can have facts without thinking, but we cannot have thinking without facts. -- John Dewey 

Although the logos is common to all, the many live as though they had a private understanding.  -- Herakleitos (frag 2) 

Hero worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.   -- Herbert Spencer 

When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their victory but new masters. -- George Saville 

There is nothing so unpardonable as to consent to a senseless, aimless, purposeless life.  -- R. Browning 

An honest God's the noblest work of man.   -- Samuel Butler 

The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.  -- H. Walpole 

Death is a name for beauty not in use.  -- I. Layton 

There is no sin except stupidity.   -- O. Wilde 

The man who does not wish to be one of the mass only needs to cease to be easy on himself.   -- Neitzsche 

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.    -- V. Woolf 

He who learns must suffer and even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of god.  -- Aeschylus 

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.   -- E. Roosevelt 

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment – the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is. --  Jorge Luis Borges 

Much learning does not teach a man to have intelligence.  -- Herakleitos 

A man with his belly full of the classics is an enemy of the human race.   --  Henry Miller 

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.   -- Neitzsche 

Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.   -- Thomas Jefferson 

The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.   -- Anatole France 

I am waiting for the world to be made safe for anarchy.  -- L. Ferlinghetti 

Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.  -- G. M. Trevelyan 

What you do speaks so loud that I can't hear what you say.  -- R. W. Emerson 

It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by robbing a bank clerk.      -- B. Brecht 

A man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for.  -- R. Browning 

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.  -- Thoreau 

Do you not know that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?  -- Rousseau 

Hero worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.  -- H. Spencer 

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.  -- E. Burke 

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge one for yourself.  -- Froude 

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.  -- Virginia Woolf 

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the sermon on the mount.    -- Omar Bradley 

The true university of these days is a collection of books.   -- T. Carlyle 

What is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.  -- Oscar Wilde 

If you can't bring about the best, at least keep the worst from happening.  -- T. More 

No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good. -- Bishop Mandell Creighton 

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. -- Thomas Jefferson 

Spare me therefore, your good intentions, your inner sensitivities, your unarticulated and unexpressed love.  And spare me also these tedious psycho-historians which, by exposing the goodness inside the bad man, and the evil in the good--invariably establish a vulgar and perverse egalitarianism, as if the arrangement of what is outside and what inside makes no moral difference.  -- Willard Gaylin 

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long.  They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.  -- W. Whitman 

A day will come when man will discover an alphabet in the eyes of the chalcedonies, in the marking of the moth, and will learn in astonishment that every spotted snail has always been a poem.  -- Alejo Carpentier The Lost Steps

Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. -- G.M. Trevelyan 

I loathe people who keep dogs. They haven't got the guts to bite people themselves. -- Strindberg in A Madman's Diary

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx 

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.  -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth 

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons. -- Dr. Samuel Johnson 

What is a man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, 
ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine.  --  Isak Dinesen 

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education -- Wilson Mizner 

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  -- Susan Ertz 


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