The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.  ~ Samuel Butler ~

If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.
~ Charles Schulz ~

Perhaps the whole world is actually a banquet, to which every living thing is invited. First you come as guests: then eventually you're on the menu.
~ David Suzuki ~

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of
what I do. That is character!
~ Theodore Roosevelt ~

Benevolence is the characteristic element of humanity, and the great exercise of it is in loving relatives.
~ Tze-Sze ~

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
~ Herman Hesse, from DEMIAN ~

So give up your bitterness, and your acidity, and your heavy-heartedness. Don't you realize how many fruits have already escaped out of sourness into sweetness?
~ Rumi ~

Be happy. It is a way of being wise.
~ Colette ~

When you talk about your troubles, your ailments, your diseases, your hurts, you give longer life to what makes you unhappy. Talking about your grievances merely adds to those grievances. Give recognition only to what you desire. Think and talk only about the good things that add to your enjoyment of your work and life. If you don't talk about your grievances, you'll be delighted to find them disappearing quickly.
~ Thomas Dreier ~

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
~ Emo Phillips ~

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

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
~ Jean Anouilh ~

It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.
~ C.W. Leadbeater ~

Our vision is more obstructed by what we think we know than by our lack of knowledge.
~ Kristen Stendahl ~

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
~ Richard Bach ~

The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate His processes to the convenience of individuals.
~ William James, from The Variety of Religious Experience, 1902~

It is a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
~ William Somerset Maugham ~

Every (person) must decide whether to walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of selfishness. This is the judgment. Life's most persistent and urgent question is "What are you doing for others?"
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ~

I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
~ Rebecca West, 1913 ~

We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self..."
~ William James ~

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am infinite. I contain multitudes!
~ Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself" ~

Time is nature's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once.
~ Unknown ~

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh ~

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.
~ Francoise Sagan ~

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
~ Erica Jong ~

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
~ Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) ~

If God made us in his image, we have certainly returned the compliment.
~ Voltaire ~

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth others are here for I don't know.
~ W.H. Auden ~

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
~ Thomas Carlyle ~

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Mary-Jeanette Taylor

Updated 09-22-06