topher's favorite quotes, in random order


On a large enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

~ Chuck Palahniuk


A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower


A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and question - as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche


Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

~ Voltaire


Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has.

~ Martin Luther


There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?

~ Dick Cavett


Each one of an agreeable couple may be willing to die for the other, yet be unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the right moment.

~ George Meredith


Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

~ Jean Jacques Rousseau


Offered a sexless heaven I’d say, "No thank you."—women are such sweet hell.

~ Ovid (Translated from Latin)


Make voyages! Attempt them. There's nothing else.

~ Tennessee Williams


The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

~ David M. Ogilvy


Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy.

~ Robert Anthony


How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

~ Annie Dillard


You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

~ Albert Camus


In wisdom gathered over time, I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

~ Ansel Adams


Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity.

~ R. I. Fitzhenry


I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.

~ Leo Buscaglia


Truth is what stands the test of experience.

~ Albert Einstein


I want to be all used up when I die.

~ George Bernard Shaw


Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

~ George Bernard Shaw


Certainly there are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

~ Jules Renard


Affliction is the good man's shining time.

~ Edward Young


You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.

~ Alan Alda


When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break.

~ William Hale White


It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

~ Noel Coward


We're given second chances every day of our life. We don't usually take them, but they're there for the taking.

~ Andrew M. Greeley


There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.

~ Jane Austen


An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.

~ Oscar Wilde


Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.

~ Dan Barker


If men knew all that women think, they'd be twenty times more daring.

~ Alphonse Karr


Our strength is often composed of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show.

~ Mignon McLaughlin


The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.

~ Scott Adams


...religion...teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.

~ Richard Dawkins


Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety.

~ Rose F. Kennedy


Of my own spirit let me be in sole though feeble mastery.

~ Sara Teasdale


'Luck' is a name we give to certain improbable things.

~ topher


God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, that combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met.

~ Farrah Fawcett


Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.

~ John Quincy Adams


It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.

~ Agatha Christie


Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

~ Leo Buscaglia


It's far more admirable to confuse people than it is to reassure them.

~ Will Sheff


Fortune and love favor the brave.

~ Ovid


Get a bicycle. You will certainly not regret it, if you live.

~ Mark Twain


How much have cost us the evils that never happened!

~ Thomas Jefferson


Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

~ Denis Diderot


All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.

~ Cathy Ladman


You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.

~ Richard Jeni


How enlightened is wearing God like some do Versace?

~ Vanna Bonta


My body has certainly wandered a good deal, but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.

~ Noel Coward


I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

~ Douglas Adams


And when the time comes to die, I'll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.

~ Everett Ruess


Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

~ Aaron Levenstein


Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

~ Elbert Hubbard


It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.

~ Mark Twain


Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

~ Tennessee Williams


The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

~ Horace Walpole


The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

~ Winston Churchill


If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.

~ Gelett Burgess


Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason.

~ Martin Luther


We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.

~ Will Rogers


But I was thinking of a way to multiply by ten, and always, in the answer, get the question back again.

~ Lewis Carroll


To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both our eyes, is easier than to think.

~ William Cowper


Shock is still fun. I won't ever shut the door on it.

~ Nicolas Cage


Men are so made that they can resist sound argument yet yield to a glance.

~ Honore De Balzar


Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


...the dread of death - the great poison to the happiness.

~ Adam Smith


Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there's nothing like seeing your history in the faces of your friends.

~ Ani DiFranco


...happiness responds to circumstances, but, basically, it's internal.

~ Jennifer Michael Hecht


I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.

~ Jules Renard


Nothing should be prized more highly than the value of each day.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

~ Bertrand Russell


After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer


We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

~ Thomas A. Edison


In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

~ Bertrand Russell


Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

~ John Gardner


The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.

~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel


People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.

~ E.B. White


Be Silly. Be honest. Be kind.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

~ Tom Robbins


The idea is to die young, as late as possible.

~ Ashley Montagu


Don't fear failure. Fear succeeding at something that doesn't matter.

~ Dan Erickson


If you want to learn to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody. Just build a house.

~ Christopher Walken


The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

~ Alfred Adler


Love is everything it's cracked up to be...It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.

~ Erica Jong


The heart has arguments with which the logic of the mind is not acquainted.

~ Blaise Pascal


I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright


The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.

~ Isak Dinesen


If it's worth a daydream, it's worth a road trip.

~ topher


Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

~ Heraclitus


Character can not be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

~ Helen Keller


There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.

~ Dorothy Thompson


To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

~ Douglas Adams


Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know.

~ Richard Burton


A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.

~ Thomas J. Watson


Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.

~ Leo Buscaglia


Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

~ Blaise Pascal


Change is the end result of all true learning.

~ Leo Buscaglia


And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

~ Abraham Lincoln


Wish not so much to live long as to live well.

~ Benjamin Franklin


Cowardice is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

~ Ernest Hemingway


Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.

~ Socrates


If you don't want it bad enough to risk losing it—you don't want it bad enough.

~ Tom Krause


Even if there is nothing to laugh about, laugh on credit.

~ Author Unknown


To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.

~ Soren Kierkegaard


The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

~ George Bernard Shaw


The important thing is not to stop questioning.

~ Albert Einstein


Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.

~ Walter Lippmann


The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

~ Samuel Johnson


Adventure is just bad planning.

~ Roald Amundsen


Play so that you may be serious.

~ Anacharsis


People who throw kisses are mighty hopelessly lazy.

~ Bob Hope


The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

~ Ellen Parr


To be afraid is a priceless education.

~ Lance Armstrong


You cannot have what you want if you are content to remain what you are.

~ Robin Sharma


Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

~ Sir Richard Steele


Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!

~ Friedrich Nietzsche


He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.

~ Sir William Drummond


Fear is a habit.

~ Aung San Suu Kyi


Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities aggrivates his fear; troubles half seen do torture.

~ Seneca


It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

~ E. E. Cummings


Life begins when a person first realizes how soon it ends.

~ Marcelene Fox


To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

~ E. E. Cummings


Blessed is the person who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

~ George Eliot


The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

~ Benjamin Franklin


There is no distance on earth as far away as yesterday.

~ Robert Nathan


Many people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do so.

~ Bertrand Russell


Who will shuffle when he's not going anywhere, will scratch when he's not itching and grin when he's not tickled.

~ Dennis Archer


If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.

~ George Bernard Shaw


He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

~ Albert Einstein


The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it.

~ Pearl S. Buck


No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

~ Michel de Montaigne


Commit the oldest kind of sins, the newest kind of ways.

~ William Shakespeare


My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

~ Mark Twain


The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher.

~ Elbert Hubbard


The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.

~ Blaise Pascal


If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship.

~ Annie Dillard


Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.

~ Bertrand Russell


The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone.

~ Mignon McLaughlin


War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

~ William Tecumseh Sherman


One person out of one will die.

~ Warren Miller


I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

~ Mark Twain


To be normal, one must be peculiar in one way or another.

~ Heywood Broun


I don't pretend to understand the universe—it's much bigger than I am.

~ Albert Einstein


When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.

~ William Joseph Slim


Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.

~ Robert H. Schuller


Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

~ W. Somerset Maugham


Some people walk in the rain; others just get wet.

~ Roger Miller


We find comfort among those who agree with us--growth among those who don't.

~ Frank A. Clark


Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

~ Douglas Adams


There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

~ Bertrand Russell


All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.

~ Sidney Lumet


A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.

~ William James


The things you fear are undefeatable, not by their nature, but by your approach.

~ Jewel Kiltcher


All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

~ James Thurber


As long as we wish for safety, we will have difficulty pursuing what matters.

~ Peter Block


People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

~ Dave Barry


People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

~ Marcel Proust


Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.

~ Arthur Somers Roche


For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'

~ John Greenleaf Whittier


Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.


I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

~ Douglas Adams


The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

~ Oscar Wilde


When I grow up, I want to be a little boy.

~ Joseph Heller


Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

~ Fran Lebowitz


Life isn't a matter of milestones but of moments.

~ Rose F. Kennedy


Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.

~ Laurence J. Peter


A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

~ Gian Carlo Menotti


Don't be afriad to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.

~ H. Jackson Browne


When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

~ Thomas Jefferson


When you argue with reality, you lose - but only 100% of the time.

~ Byron Katie


So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

~ Bertrand Russell


The art of flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

~ Douglas Adams


A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

~ George Bernard Shaw


Careful. We don't want to learn from this.

~ Bill Watterson


As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

~ Leonardo da Vinci


Look for the ridiculous in everything, and you will find it.

~ Jules Renard


An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

~ G. K. Chesterton


Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

~ Bertrand Russell


It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.

~ Sara Teasdale


Do you want to know the surefire way to stay anxious? Don't do the thing that makes you nervous.

~ Larina Kase


Love is like Pi - natural, irrational, and very important.

~ Lisa Hoffman


Endure and persist, this pain will turn good by and by.

~ Ovid


I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.

~ Edith Sitwell


Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.

~ Tom Krause


Women often wish to give unwillingly what they really like to give.

~ Ovid


We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

~ John Steinbeck


An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

~ HL Mencken


Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather, to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "holy shit, what a ride!"

~ Anonymous


He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.

~ Albert Einstein


If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.

~ Bruce Barton


You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.

~ Ethel Barrymore


Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

~ H. H. Williamson


Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.

~ Napoleon Bonaparte


Maturity of mind is the capacity to endure uncertainty.

~ John Finley


There is in every village a torch--the teacher: and an extinguisher--the clergyman.

~ Victor Hugo


I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

~ Stephen Henry Roberts


Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

~ Carl Jung


You're never too old to become younger.

~ Mae West


Compassion is deeper than religion.

~ Sam Harris


It is for the superfluous we sweat.

~ Seneca


The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

~ Dale Carnegie


Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

~ Philip K. Dick


Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

~ Napoleon Bonaparte


An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

~ Aldous Huxley


Indolence is sweet, and its consequences bitter.

~ Voltaire


...in our time, a beard is the one thing a woman can not do better than a man...

~ John Steinbeck


One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.

~ Lewis Carroll


Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

~ Douglas Adams


The less routine, the more life.

~ Amos Bronson Alcott


Let your children go if you wish to keep them.

~ Malcolm Forbes


Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.

~ Rose Franken


Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.

~ Leo Buscaglia


Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

~ Scott Adams


In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners.

~ Jonathon Miller


I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.

~ Bill Cosby


Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.

~ Rudyard Kipling


I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.

~ Anonymous


There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.

~ Douglas MacArthur


Lighthouses are more useful than churches.

~ Benjamin Franklin


More important than understanding life, is enjoying it.

~ topher


In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche


This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

~ John Adams


The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll


We're only young once, but with humor, we can be immature forever.

~ Art Gliner


I like life. It's something to do.

~ Ronnie Shakes


I certainly had no idea how little faith Christians have in their own faith till I saw how ill their courage and temper can stand any attack on it.

~ Harriet Martineau


Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

~ Sydney Smith


A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

~ Aristotle


Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

~ Frank Leahy


People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


Think long and hard before compromising happiness for sensibility.

~ topher


Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules.

~ Douglas Adams


Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

~ Virginia Woolf


Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.

~ Oscar Wilde


Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.

~ Leo Buscaglia


Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

~ Ayn Rand


Up, sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough.

~ Benjamin Franklin


Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

~ H.L. Mencken


Don't wait. The time will never be just right.

~ Napoleon Hill


If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.

~ Marva Collins


The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

~ Dick Werthimer


The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

~ Alan Kay


If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

~ Frank A. Clark


The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

~ Barbara Kingsolver


Run not to escape your fears, but rather, to chase your dreams.

~ topher


Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

~ Seneca The Younger


When one person suffers from a delusion, it's called insanity. When many people suffer a delusion, it's called religion.

~ Robert M. Pirsig


Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

~ Albert Einstein


We can not live better than in seeking to become better.

~ Socrates


We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

~ Elbert Hubbard


Assume nothing, pursue everything.

~ Kevin Riper


If all your friends jumped off of a bridge, would you? If you had any sense at all, of course you would.

~ Tony Vigorito


Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.

~ Doris Egan


Go West, young man.

~ Aaron Burr


Hedging your bets in life is wasting energy. Do what you're drawn to in the most vigorous way you know.

~ topher


There are moments when everything goes well. Don't be frightened, it won't last.

~ Jules Renard


There's only one reason to shave on Sunday, and it isn't church.

~ topher


The best way out is always through.

~ Robert Frost


If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts.

~ Lance Armstrong


It's too comforting, like the bible. It makes you brain dead.

~ Allan Hobson


The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.

~ Carl L. Becker


Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

~ Clarence Darrow


If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.

~ Albert Einstein


A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.

~ Bill Cosby


If you've never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame.

~ Adam F. Duritz


Every day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

~ May Sarton


You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.

~ Edwin Louis Cole


There is no up nor down to the universe and no hierarchy of value outside the human mind.

~ Jennifer Michael Hecht


If you only do what you know you can do—you never do very much.

~ Tom Krause


A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez


Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

~ Douglas Adams


Who needs Satan when you have a God like this?

~ Robert M. Price


Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.

~ Doris Egan


You are richer today if you have laughed, given, or forgiven.

~ Anon


There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

~ Mark Twain


A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

~ George Bernard Shaw


When we love there is no reason why.

~ Vanna Bonta


Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

~ Richard Dawkins


Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

~ Sam Brown


Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.

~ James Neil Hollingworth


We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

~ Tom Robbins


I am ready to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

~ Winston Churchill


Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you, kid. Let's go!

~ Maya Angelou


Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

~ Ashley Montague


When you're through changing, you're through.

~ Bruce Barton


Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

~ Elbert Hubbard


Physics is the universe's operating system.

~ Steven R. Garman


Never mistake motion for action.

~ Ernest Hemingway


The beauty of simplicity is the complexity it attracts.

~ Tom Robbins


Don't go around saying that the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

~ Mark Twain


A man chases a woman until she catches him.

~ Anonymous


When death comes, the farce is over, so let us take our pleasure while we can.

~ Julien Offray de La Mettrie


Go as far as you can see. When you get there you will be able to see further.

~ Thomas Carlyle


I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

~ Thomas Carlyle


If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, we are a sorry lot indeed.

~ Albert Einstein


Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother.

~ Norman Douglas


Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

~ Tom Robbins


No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

~ Confucius


If you worried about falling off the bike, you’d never get on.

~ Lance Armstrong


Opportunities never come to those who wait... they are captured by those who dare to attack.

~ Paul J. Meyer


Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no one common denominator. But, among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

~ Wystan Hugh Auden


You have to live with the crashes, and hope you don't get into one.

~ Lance Armstrong


I'm learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.

~ Eartha Kitt


Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

~ Erich Fromm


If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

~ Lao Tzu


Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform.

~ Susan B. Anthony


Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

~ Robert Frost


You can end love more easily than you can moderate it.

~ Seneca The Elder


Never explain—your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

~ Elbert Hubbard


Happiness and love are just a choice away.

~ Leo Buscaglia


If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

~ T.S. Eliot


I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason.

~ John Locke


The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

~ Bertrand Russell


Truth may sometimes hurt but delusion harms.

~ Vanna Bonta


It was the greatest of imperfect ventriloquist acts: when his lips moved, her body sang.

~ Tom Robbins


Adventure is just an excuse to do something stupid. But, it's an excuse that I can accept.

~ Brad Ray


What happens when the future has come and gone?

~ Robert Half


Very early in my life it was too late.

~ Marguerite Duras


If the price of living is dying, I'll give it a try.

~ topher


The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

~ Oscar Wilde


The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow of the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.

~ Ferdinand Magellan


For after all, if the love of mere glory is selfish, it is not quite so low as the love of mere comfort.

~ Alfred Thayer Mahan


A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.

~ Albert Einstein


Security is the denial of life.

~ Germaine Greer


Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

~ Steve Wozniak


The future is called 'perhaps,' which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.

~ Tennessee Williams


Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?

~ Mark Twain


Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

~ Gandhi


Curiosity is one of those insatiable passions that grow by gratification.

~ Sarah Scott


Anecdotes aren't data.

~ Anonymous


If things go wrong, don't go with them.

~ Roger Babson


People who are sensible about love are incapable of it.

~ Douglas Yates


Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

~ Mark Twain


He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.

~ James Gibbons Huneker


Paradoxically, we cannot navigate clearly within a relationship unless we can live without it.

~ Harriet G. Lerner


No profit grows where is no pleasure taken.

~ William Shakespeare


Life is too important to take seriously.

~ Corky Siegel


If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

~ Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa


Analysis kills spontaneity.

~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel


What I conclude is that religion has nothing to do with experience or reason but with deep and irrational needs.

~ Richard Taylor


In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

~ Joan D. Vinge


Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

~ Helen Keller


There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

~ George Santayana


I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.

~ Edgar Allen Poe


Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient.

~ Aristotle


Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

~ Benjamin Disraeli


Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes


Better hazard once than always be in fear.

~ Thomas Fuller


When choosing between two evils, I always like to choose the one I've never tried before.

~ Mae West


If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein


The follies a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.

~ Helen Rowland


Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

~ William Jennings Bryan


Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.

~ Frank Forrester Church III


Wisdom is not acquired save as the result of investigation.

~ Sara Teasdale


I am not bound to please thee with my answers.

~ William Shakespeare


You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

~ Douglas Adams


With the catching end the pleasures of the chase.

~ Abraham Lincoln


If you're sitting around waiting to be sure, you're just sitting around.

~ topher


Be a life short or long, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.

~ David Starr Jordan


The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

~ Henry David Thoreau


There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.

~ Tennessee Williams


My theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything—even if you have no clue what you're doing.

~ Jessica Alba


When people are least sure they are most dogmatic.

~ John Kenneth Galbraith


It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

~ Tom Robbins


The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

~ Bertrand Russell


Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for.

~ Earl Warren


I don't know if god exists, but it would be better for his reputation if he didn't.

~ Jules Renard


Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.

~ Arnold Bennett


What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

~ Christopher Hitchens


You were born an original. Don't die a copy.

~ John Mason


Don't rely too much on labels, for too often they are fables.

~ Charles H. Spurgeon


Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

~ Barbara Kingsolver


The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you will make one.

~ Elbert Hubbard


I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

~ Mark Twain


Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle


Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

~ Jules Renard


I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.

~ Rita Mae Brown


It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

~ Jules Renard


It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

~ H.L. Mencken


When I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. When I look up, I just trip over things.

~ Ani Difranco


The hardest battle you're ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.

~ Leo Buscaglia


What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.

~ Bertrand Russell


Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.

~ James Russell Lowell


As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more.

~ Jules Renard


If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten.

~ Mark Twain


Happiness as an end does not justify any means, but it justifies a great many of them.

~ topher


Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

~ Edgar Allan Poe


I thought I had a hernia once; it turned out my underwear were just too tight.

~ Andy Castona


A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious, but who understands the nonexistent.

~ Elbert Hubbard


Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.

~ Fletcher Knebel


When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

~ Mark Twain


If you survived your own childhood, you have enough stories to last several lifetimes.

~ Flannery O’Conner


If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

~ Erica Jong


You're only given a little spark of madness. You musn't lose it.

~ Robin Williams


Praise happenstance.

~ topher


Don't panic.

~ Douglas Adams


When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

~ Desiderius Erasmus


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

~ Tallulah Bankhead


As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

~ Ernest Hemingway


There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll


Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.

~ Christopher Morley


Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation.

~ Jennifer Michael Hecht


The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt


Be good and you will be lonesome.

~ Mark Twain


Feel the fear and do it anyway.

~ Susan Jeffers


There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

~ Gilbert Keith Chesterson


The lazy are always wanting to do something.

~ Marquis De Vauvenargues


We are the stuff of the universe, momentarily sentient, but aside from that little piece of weirdness, we are already home.

~ Jennifer Michael Hecht


While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

~ Helen Keller


One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

~ A. A. Milne


Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

~ Democritus


We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

~ Frank Tibolt


That the truth hurts does not make it false. Reality does not have the capacity to accommodate your feelings.

~ topher

search topher's quotes database by keyword, author, or both:

separate search terms
with a space

see topher's whole quote database