—SAMUEL JOHNSON
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
—VACLAV HAVEL
Disturbing the Peace
There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
Waiting is still an occupation. It is not having anything to wait for that is terrible.
—CESARE PAVESE
Il Mestiere di Vivere
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
In every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a smiling dawn.
—KAHLIL GIBRAN
Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
A ship should not ride on a single anchor, nor life on a single hope.
—EPICTETUS
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
—REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them.
—CLARE BOOTHE LUCE
I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.
—J. B. PRIESTLEY
In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope.
—Bernie Siegel
Love, Medicine and Miracles
When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.
—REV. CHARLES L. ALLEN
There is no better or more blessed bondage than to be a prisoner of hope.
—ROY Z. KEMP
THE KIND OF BEAUTY I WANT . . .
The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within—strength, courage, dignity.
—RUBY DEE
Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty—they merely move it from their faces into their hearts.
—MARTIN BUXBAUM
in National Enquirer
Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.
—GABRIELA MISTRAL
Desolacíon
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic.
—ROSALIND RUSSELL
Tell a girl she’s beautiful, and she wouldn’t believe you really mean it. Tell her she’s more beautiful than another girl, and she would delightfully believe you’re being true.
—HASNA HASSAN SIRAJEDDINE
People have the strength to overcome their bodies. Their beauty is in their minds.
—PETER GABRIEL CLARK-BROWN
in Style magazine
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
—LEO TOLSTOY
I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. What do you want—an adorable pancreas?
—JEAN KERR
The Snake Has All the Lines
Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.
—SOPHIA LOREN
Women & Beauty
Fashions fade; style is eternal.
—YVES SAINT LAURENT
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
SPEAK THE TRUTH . . .
Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.
—SLOVENIAN PROVERB
Never assume the obvious is true.
—WILLIAM SAFIRE
Sleeper Spy
I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.
—ELIE WIESEL
quoting from a Hasidic rabbi’s prayer
Truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
—NADINE GORDIMER
The truth is not always dressed for the evening.
—MARGARET LEWERTH
Stuyvesant Square
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now—always.
—ALBERT SCHWEITZER
On the Edge of the Primeval Forest
Only the truth can still astonish people.
—JEAN-MARIE POUPART
Ma Tite Vache A Mal Aux Pattes
Some people so treasure the truth that they use it with great economy.
—H. RAY GOLENOR
A half truth is a whole lie.
—YIDDISH PROVERB
A half-truth is usually less than half of that.
—BERN WILLIAMS
A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
—WILLIAM BLAKE
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
—GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
Add one small bit to the truth and you inevitably subtract from it.
—Dell Crossword Puzzles
Many people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
—LOUIS KRONENBERGER
The man who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as the honesty. Possibly more.
—RICHARD J. NEEDHAM
in The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
—WILLIAM JAMES
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch. Nay, you may kick it about all day, and it will be round and full at evening.
—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
—ROBERT FROST
Truth hurts—not the searching after; the running from!
—JOHN EYBERG
The truth will ouch.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
Of course, it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.
—MARGARET THATCHER
The color of truth is gray.
—ANDRÉ GIDE
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
—MARK TWAIN
A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
—EDGAR J. MOHN
Every time you try to smother a truth, two others get their breath.
—BILL COPELAND
What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
He who mistrusts most should be trusted least.
—THEOGNIS
I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.
—ISAAC NEWTON
A paradox is a truth that bites its own tale.
—American Farm & Home Almanac
We always weaken whatever we exaggerate.
—JEAN-FRANÇOISE DE LA HARPE
Nothing lays itself open to the charge of
exaggeration more than the language of naked truth.
—JOSEPH CONRAD
Always tell the truth. You may make a hole in one when you’re alone on the golf course someday.
—FRANKLIN P. JONES
It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
—ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
—ERIC HOFFER
Men hate those to whom they have to lie.
—VICTOR HUGO
The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
Gift from the Sea
When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.
—BILL COPELAND
HAPPINESS LIES IN WAIT . . .
Happiness lies in wait; it comes upon suddenly, like a midnight thief at a turn up in the street, or in the midst of a dream, because a ray of light, a strain of music, a face, or a gesture has overcome the despair of living.
—HECTOR BIANCIOTTI
Sans la Misericorde du Christ
Happiness walks on busy feet.
—KITTE TURMELL
If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.
—WILLARD R. ESPY
Man must search for what is right, and let happiness come on its own.
—JOHANN PESTALOZZI
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
—Quoted in The Cockle Bur
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
—BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Conquest of Happiness
Before strongly desiring anything, we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.
—FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
It is an illusion to think that more comfort means more happiness. Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to be needed.
—STORM JAMESON
Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.
—CHANNING POLLOCK
Mr. Moneypenny
Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can be felt only if you don’t set any conditions.
—ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
—SOREN KIERKEGAARD
The foolish person seeks happiness in the distance; the wise person grows it under his feet.
—JAMES OPPENHEIM
Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.
—EPICTETUS
The discontented man finds no easy chair.
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Real elation is when you feel you could touch a star without standing on tiptoe.
—DOUG LARSON
The more the heart is nourished with happiness, the more it is insatiable.
—GABRIELLE ROY
Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness—happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you’re lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.
—ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS
Some Are Born Great
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
—INGRID BERGMAN
The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.
—ERASMUS
Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.
—ALICE WALKER
Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
—JOHN LUBBOCK
One filled with joy preaches without preaching.
—MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA
Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.
—MILDRED BARTHEL
in Ensign
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.
—JOHN BARRYMORE
To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own—this is happiness.
—J. B. PRIESTLEY
There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
—FREYA STARK
The Journey’s Echo
Shared joy is double joy and shared sorrow is half-sorrow.
—SWEDISH PROVERB
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.
—H. JACKSON BROWN
A Father’s Book of Wisdom
An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music.
—MARK TWAIN
Great joys, like griefs, are silent.
—SHACKERLEY MARMION
For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
—DALAI LAMA
Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.
—TOM ROBBINS
Jitterbug Perfume
HUMOR IS NOT A TRICK . . .
Humor is not a trick, not jokes. Humor is a presence in the world—like grace—and shines on everybody.
—GARRISON KEILLOR
Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.
—JAPANESE PROVERB
Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
—VICTOR BORGE
Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.
—VICTOR HUGO
Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
—LANGSTON HUGHES
The Book of Negro Humor
Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of the heart.
—MORT WALKER
Laughter can be heard farther than weeping.
—YIDDISH PROVERB
Laughter translates into any language.
—Graffiti
The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes.
—WILLIAM DAVIS
Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.
—WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
—W. H. AUDEN
After God created the world, He made man and woman. Then, to keep the whole thing from collapsing, He invented humor.
—GUILLERMO MORDILLO
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor, to console him for what he is.
—The Wall Street Journal
So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.
—GORDON W. ALLPORT
Wit surprises, humor illuminates.
—ELI SCHLEIFER
It always hurts a bit when you strike your funny bone. That’s the essence of humor.
—JIM FIEBIG
Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who
makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.
—GEORGE BURNS
We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.
—JOSEPH HELLER
Nothing makes your sense of humor disappear faster than having somebody ask where it is.
—IVERN BALL
in The Saturday Evening Post
If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.
—MARIE OSMOND
Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else.
—WILLIAM ROTSLER
Beware of those who laugh at nothing or at everything.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.
—ERIC SEVAREID
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.
Quotable Quotes Page 18
