Quotes

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Quotations, Quotations, Quotations

I love quotations. They make me sound smarter than I actually am. Just ask any of my friends and family, and they'll tell you freely that I like to pepper my conversation quite liberally with thoughts from others...as well as some tidbits of my own! Anyway, here's the part of my site designed for visitors to come and get inspired through the reading of inspirational quotations, inspirational stories, poems, etc ...all of which are things I have heard and collected over the years, and including several of my personal favorites. I've categorized them for your convenience. If you have some favorites you do not see here, and would like to submit for parousal, feel free to drop me a line. Enjoy, and do come back soon.

College and Education

"The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means to an education." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The college undergraduate is a lot of things--many of them as familiar, predictable and responsible as the bounce of a basketball, and others as startling (and occasionally disastrous) as the bounce of a football." - John Sloan Dickey

"Education is what remains when one has forgotten everything he learned in school." - Albert Einstein

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life." - Plato

"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad." - Theodore Roosevelt

"College professor--someone who talks in other people's sleep." - Bergen Evans (Editorial Comment: I dedicate this quote to all teachers of Music Theory...if you've been there, you know what I mean!)

"Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man's lifetime income--which he then spends sending his son to college." - Bill Vaughn (Editorial Comment: And this one goes out to my folks!)

"The chief value in going to college is that it's the only way to learn it really doesn't matter." - George Edwin Howes

"Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." - G.K. Chesterson

"The important thing is the educational experience itself - how to survive it." Donald Barthelme

Simpsons

"Clown college" --Sideshow Bob's description of Princeton, his evil brother Cecil's alma mater. (Editorial Comment: U of I suits me just fine, thank you very much.)

"Almost got tenure." --Otto the bus driver, on his teaching career at Brown University

"Trying is just the first step toward failure." - Homer Jay Simpson

"I'm old! Gimme, gimme, gimme!" --Grandpa Simpson, walking into the Social Security Office

"You know, most people don't know the difference between apple cider and apple juice, but I do. Now here's a little trick to help you remember. If it's clear and yella', you've got juice there, fella! If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town. " --Ned Flanders (Editorial Comment: Boy, that man has too much time on his hands...)

Life in General

"Do not cuss, hollar, pee, or throw up in public places or otherwise call attention to yourself, as it will probably get you in trouble." --Forrest Gump

"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship." - Louisa May Alcott

"My mother, she used to tell me that in life, you can either be oh, so smart, or oh, so pleasant. For years, I was smart. I highly recommend pleasant." - Elwood P. Dowd in the play "Harvey"

"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing milk bone underwear. - Norm, from the TV show "Cheers"

"Men at some time are masters of their fate" - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act i, Sc.2

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact." --George Eliot, Impressions of Theoprastus Such, 1879.

"Justice to others is charity to ourselves." --Montesquieu, discussion of the Troglodytes in Lettres Parsones, Letter 12, 1721

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." - Maya Angelou

"Extreme intelligence is accused of madness, like extreme lack of it. Nothing passes for good except mediocrity." --Blaise Pascal, Pensées.

"If I had my life to live again. I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." - Tallulah Bankhead

"You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens." - Ethel Barrymore

Music

"Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below." - Joseph Addison

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." - Red Auerbach

"It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony." - Benjamin Britten

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite." - Thomas Carlyle

"The history of a people is found in its songs." - George Jellinek

Theatre

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being." - Thornton Wilder

"The novel is more of a whisper, whereas the stage is a shout." - Robert Holman

"By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings." - Arthur Miller

"The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life." - Oscar Wilde

Politics

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river." -Nikita Khrushchev, 1963.

"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution." - Hannah Arendt

"[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government." - Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1813.

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." -Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Religion

"[Religious] wars are not produced by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance [held by] the one which believed itself to be dominant." Montesquieu, Lettres Parsanes, Letter LXXXV, 1721.

"God shall be my hope, my stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet" - Shakespeare, Henry VI, Act ii, Sc.3

"Let never day nor night unhallowed pass, but still remember what the Lord hath done" - Shakespeare, Henry VI, Act ii, Sc.1

"My pastor tells me what to believe and I believe it." --Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Creed of a Savoyard Priest