Quotable Quotes
Page 8
—BILL VAUGHAN
in Kansas City Star
Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
—COLIN POWELL
I will say this about being an optimist—even when things don’t turn out well, you are certain they will get better.
—FRANK HUGHES
An optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds. A pessimist fears the same may be true.
—DOUG LARSON
Things will probably come out all right, but sometimes it takes strong nerves just to watch.
—HEDLEY DONOVAN
The optimist already sees the scar over the wound; the pessimist still sees the wound underneath the scar.
—ERNST SCHRODER
The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
—PETER USTINOV
It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later.
—LUCIMAR SANTOS DE LIMA
Cheerfulness, like spring, opens all the blossoms of the inward man.
—JEAN PAUL RICHTER
An optimist is the human personification of spring.
—SUSAN J. BISSONETTE
I always prefer to believe the best of everybody—it saves so much trouble.
—RUDYARD KIPLING
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
—HERM ALBRIGHT
Optimism is an intellectual choice.
—DIANA SCHNEIDER
Optimism is a cheerful frame of mind that enables a teakettle to sing though in hot water up to its nose.
—Quoted by HAROLD HELFER IN
The Optimist
An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.
—IRV KUPCINET
in Kup’s Column
The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser—in case you thought optimism was dead.
—ROBERT BRAULT
Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.
—GIL STERN
A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.
—ELBERT HUBBARD
Pessimism never won any battle.
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
—GEORGE F. WILL
The Leveling Wind
I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.
—CLINT EASTWOOD
No one really knows enough to be a pessimist.
—NORMAN COUSINS
The optimist is the kind of person who believes a housefly is looking for a way out.
—GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
—WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn’t see the clouds at all—he’s walking on them.
—LEONARD LOUIS LEVINSON
An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
MORALITY IS ITS OWN ADVOCATE . . .
Morality is its own advocate; it is never necessary to apologize for it.
—EDITH L. HARRELL
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.”
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
Pieces of Eight
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
—ARISTOTLE
It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those we intend to commit.
—JOSH BILLINGS
The biggest threat to our well-being is the absence of moral clarity and purpose.
—RICK SHUMAN
in Time
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
—C. S. LEWIS
The Abolition of Man
It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
—NOËL COWARD
Blithe Spirit
A good example is like a bell that calls many to church.
—DANISH PROVERB
One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than 50 preaching it.
—KNUTE K. ROCKNE
Coaching
The time is always right to do what is right.
—REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Count no day lost in which you waited your turn, took only your share and sought advantage over no one.
—ROBERT BRAULT
The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
—FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.
—HENNY YOUNGMAN
Be on guard against excess. Zeal that is too ardent burns more than it reheats.
—ALEC PELLETIER
Le Festin des Morts
What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.
—BODIE THOENE
Warsaw Requiem
The arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
—REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
If you don’t want anyone to know, don’t do it.
—CHINESE PROVERB
No virtue can be great if it is not constant.
—ALFONSO MILAGRO
Los Cinco Minutos de Dios
Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
in Forbes magazine
Always put off until tomorrow what you shouldn’t do at all.
—MORRIS MANDEL
You can’t run a society or cope with its problems if people are not held accountable for what they do.
—JOHN LEO
in U.S. News & World Report
Stigmas are the corollaries of values. If work, independence, responsibility, respectability are valued, then their converse must be devalued, seen as disreputable.
—GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB
The De-moralization of Society
The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.
—JANE ADDAMS
He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.
—SENECA
A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.
—GEN. COLIN POWELL
My American Journey
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.
—LOUIS KRONENBERGER
If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral.
—SAMUEL P. GINDER
in Washington Post<
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It is unwise to do unto others as you would that they do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
—BERNARD SHAW
What you dislike for yourself do not like for me.
—SPANISH PROVERB
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
—BERTRAND RUSSELL
THE PRINCIPAL MARK OF GENIUS . . .
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
—ARTHUR KOESTLER
The Act of Creation
Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe—you can’t take a taxi.
—ALAN ALDA
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
—MARCEL PROUST
You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
—DOUG FLOYD
in Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington)
Since God made us to be originals, why stoop to be a copy?
—REV. BILLY GRAHAM
While an original is always hard to find, he is easy to recognize.
—JOHN L. MASON
An Enemy Called Average
The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.
—DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.
—FRANK TYGER
in Forbes magazine
It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.
—HENRI POINCARÉ
Don’t expect anything original from an echo.
—Quoted in “The 365 Great Quotes-a-Year Calendar”
Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.
—WILL DURANT
Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
—LORRAINE HANSBERRY
If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents.
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Crack-Up, edited by Edmund Wilson
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward.
—ARTHUR KOESTLER
The Act of Creation
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
—THEODORE H. WHITE
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
—MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
Everyone has talent; what is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
—ERICA JONG
To do what others cannot do is talent. To do what talent cannot do is genius.
—WILL HENRY
When there is an original sound in the world, it wakens a hundred echoes.
—JOHN A. SHEDD
Salt from My Attic
The cynic says, “One man can’t do anything.” I say, “Only one man can do anything.” One man interacting creatively with others can move the world.
—JOHN W. GARDNER
Everything has been thought of before, but the difficulty is to think of it again.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person, its importance not being fully recognized for some time.
—SAMUEL BUTLER
The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward.
—IGOR SIKORSKY
The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
—FERDINAND FOCH
Whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.
—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.
We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others.
—LOUIS KRONENBERGER
No two men are alike, and both of them are happy for it.
—MORRIS MANDEL
in The Jewish Press
Some people march to a different drummer—and some people polka.
—Los Angeles Times Syndicate
THE REAL SECRET OF PATIENCE . . .
The real secret of patience is to find something else to do in the meantime.
—Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games
I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress.
—ELIZABETH MONTAGU
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
—CHINESE EPIGRAM
He that can have patience can have what he will.
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
Patience! The windmill never strays in search of the wind.
—ANDY J. SKLIVIS
Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.
—W. B. PRESCOTT
Beware the fury of a patient man.
—JOHN DRYDEN
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
—JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Patience is the art of hoping.
—VAUVENARGUES
Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself.
—ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
Patience is the ability to put up with people you’d like to put down.
—ULRIKE RUFFERT
There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
—EDMUND BURKE
Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead.
—MAC MCCLEARY
Waiting is worse than knowing. Grief rends the heart cleanly, that it may begin to heal; waiting shreds the spirit.
—MORGAN LLYWELYN
The Wind from Hastings
There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.
—STEVEN WRIGHT
Regardless of how much patience we have, we would prefer never to use any of it.
—JAMES T. O’BRIEN
A man without patience is a lamp without oil.
—ANDRÉS SEGOVIA
Impatience can be a virtue, if you practice it on yourself.
—ROD MCKUEN
1985 Book of Days
He who is impatient waits twice.
—MACK MCGINNIS
One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
We may be willing to tell a story twice but we are never willing to hear it more than once.
—WILLIAM HAZLITT
How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?
—PAUL SWEENEY
Patience often gets the credit that belongs to fatigue.
—FRANKLIN P. JONES
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HERO AND A COWARD . . .
The difference between a hero and
a coward is one step sideways.
—GENE HACKMAN
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
—The Diary of Anaïs Nin
edited by Gunther Stuhlmann
Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
—HARPER LEE
To Kill a Mockingbird
Courage is being scared to death—and saddling up anyway.
—JOHN WAYNE
It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
—ADLAI E. STEVENSON
Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death.
—EARL WILSON
Facing it—always facing it—that’s the way to get through. Face it!
—JOSEPH CONRAD
Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.