sayings and quotes

Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery. ~Matthew Arnold, "Self-Dependence," Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems, 1852


My theory is that men are no more liberated than women. ~Indira Gandhi


Order marches with weighty and measured strides; disorder is always in a hurry. ~Napoleon I, Maxims, 1815


The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river. ~Ross Perot


Minor vices lead to major ones, but minor virtues stay put. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Baseball is a harbor, a seclusion from failure that really matters, a playful utopia in which virtuosity can be savored to the third decimal place of a batting average. ~Mark Kramer


In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse. ~Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One, 1948


Seeking is not always the way to find. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything. ~Fight Club movie, screenplay by Jim Uhls, directed by David Fincher, novel by Chuck Palahniuk


A golf ball is like a clock. Always hit it at 6 o'clock and make it go toward 12 o'clock. But make sure you're in the same time zone. ~Chi Chi Rodriguez


Tell him I've been too fucking busy - or vice versa. ~Dorothy Parker


Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry. ~John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1920


I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year. And thus I drift along into the holidays - let them overtake me unexpectedly - waking up some find morning and suddenly saying to myself: "Why, this is Christmas Day!" ~David Grayson


At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled. ~Marshall B. Rosenberg


If I had time for only two exercises, I would choose yoga and skipping. ~Astrid Alauda


What men desire is a virgin who is a whore. ~Edward Dahlbert


There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities - potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry - that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics. ~Gregory Benford, Timescape


Fooey! The porchlight is burnt out, and I can't see whether it's dark outside or not. ~Dave Beard


That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not. ~James K. Feibleman


I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches. ~Alice Roosevelt Longworth