My Favorite Quotes

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized as wiser that oneself.                    (Marlene Dietrich)

Our lives improve only when we take risks- and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.            (Walter Anderson)

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.        (Bertrand Russel)

Love is not enough. It must be the cornerstone, the foundation- but not the complete structure. It is much to pliable, to yielding.            (Bette Davis)

**NEW** A love will tell you they love you endlessly.  A true love will tell everyone else they love you endlessly despite the embarrassment factor        (Murphy's Laws of Love)

A true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At all times she can be as dignified as her persona requires.

Insanity- doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.        (Albert Einstein)

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize.  The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.            (Lois McMaster Bujold)

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.        (William Blake)

Hope is a waking dream.        (Aristotle)

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

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.        (Clarence Thomas)

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget            (Thomas Szasz)

The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.        (Charles Dudley Warner)

Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament- it is possible to be both.  How?  By never taking an necessary chance and minimizing risks you can't avoid.  This permits you to play out the game happily, untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.

Imagination is more important than knowledge        (Albert Einstein)

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

Write down the advice of he who loves you, though you may not like it at present.        (English Proverb)

Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure "good" government, it simply insures that it will work. But, such governments are rare- most people want to run things but want no part of the blame.  This used to be called the "Backseat-driver Syndrome"        (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty", "meaningless", or "dishonest" and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.        (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Only a sadistic scoundrel- or a fool- tells the truth on social occasions.        (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Formal courtesy between husband and wife is even more important than it is between strangers.         (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens are the only animal that voluntarily does this to itself.         (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate- and quickly.             (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac, but flowers work almost as well.         (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

A brute kills from pleasure, a fool kills from hate.         (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Never appeal to a man's "better nature"- he may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.         (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

You can have peace or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.         (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something....

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men.  Let's play that over again too... Who decides?                 (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

$100 placed at 7% interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000 - by which time it will be worth nothing.             (Lazarus Long/Robert Heinlein)

The true secret to giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.            (Hannah Whitall Smith)

In giving advice, seek to help, not to please.            (Solon)

Stupid is forever, ignorance can be fixed.        (Don Wood)

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.        (Frank Crane)

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.        (Brendan Francis)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.        (Marcel Proust)

We are all teachers, and what we teach is what we need to learn, and so we teach it over and over again until we learn it.            (A Course in Miracles)

Lift up the self by the Self
And don't let the self droop down,
For the Self is the self's only friend
And the self is the Self's only foe.                (I know this one's cryptic- the self is a reference to the lower self, where Self represents the higher self) (Chapter 6, Verse 5 of the Bhagavad Gita)

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them is surely damnation.        (Lois McMaster Bujold)

**NEW** Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.        (The Murphy Philosophy)

**New** Quotes from Murphy's Laws of Love, just for fun:

The love of your life will only want you back once you are in another serious relationship.

The person you want the most will end up with the person you hate the most.

Being told that someone doesn't want to date you because you're such a good friend, is like being told that you didn't get the job because you're overqualified

No matter how beautiful/wonderful s/he may seem to be, there's always someone out there that's sick and tired of his/her s**t too.

It's only kinky the first time you do it.

Any good looking person you see that isn't alone, will be accompanied by a person of the opposite sex who doesn't deserve to be with them.

Procrastination is a lot like masturbation, it feels good until you realize your just f*cking yourself

As soon as you break up the man (or woman) who couldn't commit TO YOU will get married.

The day you decide to tell you're boyfriend you could not live without him he will leave you the next day.

The Key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time.

If you believe a relationship can't work, but feel the need to try, it won't.
Corollary: You will later find out that your lack of belief caused it to fail

Show me a husband who won't, I'll show you a neighbor who will

Never go to bed mad, stay up and fight.

A woman never forgets the men she could have had; a man, the women he couldn't.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Sex is a three-letter word which needs some old-fashioned four-letter words to convey its full meaning.

Sex is dirty only if it's done right.

Sex has no calories.

The amount of love someone feels for you is inversely proportional to how much you love them.