Self/Life/Attitudes

A great deal of good can be done in the world if one is not too careful who gets the credit. -A Jesuit Motto

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. - John Barrymore

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. - James Dent in Charleston, W. Va., Gazette

A porch is the only real reward you need after a long summer's day - Shawn Sell (in USA Today)

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning, Andrea Del Sarto

All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in this world is for enough good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. – Arnold Bennett

Anything I've ever done that was ultimately worthwhile...initially scared me to death. - Bette Bender

Anywhere I am is HERE. Anywhere I am not is THERE? - Grover (Sesame Street Muppet)

Attack life, it's going to kill you anyway. - Steven Coallier

Be an optimist... at least until they start moving animals in pairs to Cape Kennedy.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Beware of the fury of the patient man. - John Dryden

Care about people, not their opinions of you. - Bruce Heckathorn

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.

Do you have the curiosity and courage to meet the rest of whom you are? - Steven Puerto

Don't ask me any questions, because I just might tell you the truth.

Don't think of it as being outnumbered, think of it as a wide target selection.

Enjoy... all the days of this meaningless life... -- all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. - Ecclesiastes 9:9-10

Everything's important. Either that or nothing is. I prefer the former. - Cantus the Minstrel, Fraggle Rock

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. - Dennis Wholey

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Mark Twain

Happiness is often the result of being too busy to be miserable.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind. - C. S. Lewis

Have you reached a point in your life when you think, 'This is the best I'm ever going to do, the best I'm ever going to feel, the best I'm ever going to look" and it ain't that great? - City Slickers

How would the child that you were view the person you've become?

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it. - Garrison Keilor

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible. - Jane Austen

I don't have pet peeves; I have major fucking psychotic hatreds, okay? And it makes the world a lot easier to sort out. - George Carlin

I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it. - Ray Bradbury

I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right. - Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson: A Study in Scarlet

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

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. – Kahlil Gibran

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass. - Maya Angelou

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

I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe or laugh or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. - Gilda Radner

I wouldn't mind dying - it's that business of having to stay dead that scares the shit out of me. - R. Geis

I'd rather be thought of as a lesbian than thought of as a bigot. - straight mom in a gay-rights group

I'm the kid who has this habit of dreaming/ Sometimes gets me in trouble too/ But the truth is I could no more stop dreaming/ Than I could make them all come true - Buddy Mondlock

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it? - Joan Baez

I've suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened. - Mark Twain

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. - J.K. Galbraith

If I did not laugh, I should die. - Abraham Lincoln

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. - Audre Lorde

If I had my life to live over I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. - Nadine Stair

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. - Ray Bradbury

If you always do what interests you, then at least one person will be pleased. - Advice to Katharine Hepburn from her mother

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. - Lin Yutang

If you can't be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped.

If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

If you don't care where you are, you're not lost.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time. - Josh Billings

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

If you hear a voice within you saying "You are not a painter," then by all means paint .... and that voice will be silenced. - Vincent Van Gogh If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it. - Andy Rooney

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

It is better to regret something you did, rather than to regret something you didn't do.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations. - Walter Bagehot

It's great to be young and insane. - Michael Keaton in "Dream Team"

Kids don't say, "Wait." They say, "Wait up, hey wait up!" Because when you're little, your life is up. The future is up. Everything you want is up. "Hold up. Shut up! Mum, I'll clean up. Let me stay up!" Parents, of course, are just the opposite. Everything is down. "Just calm down. Slow down. Come down here! Sit down. Put... that... down." - Jerry Seinfeld

Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone, and the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone. - Paul Johannes Tillich

Life is a rollercoaster. Try to eat a light lunch. - David A. Schmaltz

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. - Stephen Vincent Benét

Life isn't fair, but we do try to make it equally unfair for everyone.

Live so that you wouldn't mind selling your pet parrot to the town gossip. - Will Rogers

Live your own life, for you will die your own death. - Latin proverb

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

May you live every day of your life. – Jonathan Swift

Millions long for immortality but do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. - Susan Ertz

Moderation in all things? But this saying itself is immoderate. For example, who wants to have a moderate orgasm?

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. - Ashleigh Brilliant

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth. - Benjamin Disraeli

No man knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan and raised an adolescent. - Mercelene Cox

Normal is in the eye of the beholder. - Whoopi Goldberg

Remember that the beauty of any dream is in never letting it go.

Resolutions? ME?? Just what are you implying? That I need to change?? Well, Buddy, as far as I'm concerned, I'm perfect the way I am! For your information, I'm staying like this, and everyone else can just get used to it! If people don't like me the way I am, well, though beans! It's a free country! I don't need anyone's permission to be the way I want! This is how I am - take it or leave it! By golly, life's too darn short to waste time trying to please every meddlesome moron who's got an idea how I ought to be! I don't need advice! Everyone can just stay out of my face! - Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Sanity is madness put to good uses. - George Santayana

So in conclusion, gentlemen, fuck you. - NY State Senator Allan K. Race (D), in a written response to a racist group's letter.

Sometimes I go into my own little world. But that's okay, they know me there. - Joel Hodgson

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks of a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands. The real art is getting them clean again. - Honore de Balzac

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. - Norbet Platt

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. - Doug Larson

The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your own ingenuity, self-sufficiency, and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead. - William Menninger

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity. - Francis Maitland Balfour

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. – Ben Franklin

The future is no place to place your better days. - Dave Matthews, "Cry Freedom"

The only difference between graffiti & philosophy is the word fuck...

The pursuit of happiness that once carried the weight of the American Revolution now seems frivolous and has to wait. But joy is also a habit. Use it or lose it. And happiness is not a banal smiley face to stick on an envelope. It's an option that we must exercise or watch atrophy. - Ellen Goodman

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert H. Humphrey

The way the world underestimates me will be my greatest weapon. - Calista Flockhart

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say. - Cyril Connoly
There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day. - Alexander Woollcott

There comes a time in every man's life when he's consumed by the desire to spit on his palms, hoist the black flag and start cutting throats. Henry Louis Mencken

To laugh often and love much, to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics; to appreciate beauty; to give of one's self; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - that is to have succeeded. - Harry Emerson Fosdick

Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad. - Norm Papernick

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. - Carl Bard

Three things are bad for you. I can't remember the first two, but doughnuts are the third. - Bill Petersen

True spirit is loving life and not caring who knows or what they have to say about it. - J. Silgals

To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic. - Albert Schweitzer

We don't always get what we want, we don't always get what we like, just as long as we don't get what we deserve.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. - Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. - Japanese proverb

What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail? - Dr. Robert Schuller

When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed. - Marilyn Manson

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. - Alexander Graham Bell

When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.

When you are not accepting the unacceptable, please try to do it in the most loving way possible. - Geoffrey Nickerson

Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about little puppies. - Gene Hill

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. – Buddha

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