What is the fear of the “gay agenda” that has so upset people? Do people think that if gay people are given a place at the table, they’ll be so convincing we’ll all end up blowing them? What is the issue? “You know, I’m straight, but you’ve made such a convincing argument …”
Jon Stewart (b. 1962) American satirist, comedian, and television host. [b. Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]
Stand-up comedy performance at RIT (2005)
Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) American writer
A Moveable Feast (1964)
Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it a charm.
[Nur Thaten geben dem Leben Starke, nur Maas ihm Reiz.]
Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) German writer, art historian, philosopher, littérateur [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter; pseud. Jean Paul]
Titan, Zykel 145
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, critic, author, polymath
Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (1895)
It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) American novelist
“On the Disadvantages of Democracy,” The American Democrat (1838)
What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Afterthoughts, ch. 1 (1931)
Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern — why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners, “On the Fear of Death” (1821-1822)
Full text.
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
Lynda Barry (b. 1956) American cartoonist, author, teacher
(Attributed)
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
Christopher Morley (1890-1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist, poet
(Attributed)
Our very defects are … shadows of our virtues.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1831, undated)
Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but, as a rule, it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of New York with genius enough, with brains enough, to own five millions of dollars. Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe. That money will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He cannot own it. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity. No one is happier in a palace than in a cabin.
When I hear somebody sigh that “Life is hard,” I am always tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
(Attributed)
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Journal (25 Jul 1839)
The slaves of custom are the sport of time.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
De Augmentis Scientiarum [Advancement of Learning], Book 6, ch. 3, “Innovation” (1605)
A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
Writers at Work, Fourth Series, “On Publishing” [ed. G. Plimpton] (1977)
For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking.
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) English physicist, author
British Telecom advertisement (1993)
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation, Dialogue 2 (1738)
Black care rarely sits beside the rider whose pace is fast enough.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail, ch. 4 “The Round Up” (1896)
Full text.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
“The Citizen and the State,” A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
The reason I don’t worry about society is, nineteen people knocked down two buildings and killed thousands. Hundreds of people ran into those buildings to save them. I’ll take those odds every fucking day.
Jon Stewart (b. 1962) American satirist, comedian, and television host. [b. Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]
Interview, Rolling Stone (2007-11 )
No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it’s not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) American writer
“Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter,” Esquire (Sep 1935)
As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.
Shunryū Suzuki (1905-1971) Japanese Zen Buddhist master
(Attributed)
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
On the Contrary, ch. 7 (1962)
There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners, “On Living to One’s-Self” (1821-22)
Full text.
When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.
Lillian Smith (1897-1966) American author
(Attributed)
Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ch. 5 (1876)
When Jesus painted that symbolic picture of the great assize, he made it clear that the norm for determining the division between the sheep and the goats would be deeds done for others. One will not be asked how many academic degrees he obtained or how much money he acquired, but how much he did for others. Did you feed the hungry? Did you give a cup of cold water to the thirsty? Did you clothe the naked? Did you visit the sick and minister to the imprisoned? In a sense, every day is judgment day, and we, through our deeds and words, our silence and speech, are constantly writing in the Book of Life.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Strength to Love, ch. 9 “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” sec. 2 (1963)
(Source)
The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.
Matthew Henry (1662-1714) English writer, religious philosopher
An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, Genesis 2:21 (1708-10)
Self-criticism is the secret weapon of democracy.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Nomination Acceptance Speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago (26 Jul 1952)
Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all — the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Last written note
(Source)
Recorded by A. Paine (his literary executor), Mark Twain: A Biography, Vol III, Part 2, ch. 293 (1912).
The rule of law should not suspended whenever it is convenient or urgent. It is at times when we are most tempted, most compelled to ignore the law that we should should be most reliant upon it, and consider most carefully the consequences of ignoring it. The law is there precisely to keep us from making mistakes when it is convenient or urgent to act.
Graham Ericsson (b. 1947) American writer, aphorist
Into a New Day (2008)
Custom reconciles us to everything.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman, orator, philosopher
A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, 4.19 (1756)
No day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a little child will make it holier still.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child” (1877)
(Source)
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.”
Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986) Anglo-American columnist, journalist, author
(Attributed)
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose.
All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.Helen Keller (1880-1968) American author and lecturer
(Attributed)
Scratch a cynic and underneath, as often as not, you will find a dead idealist.
Joseph Epstein (b. 1937) American writer
“Our Favorite Cynic,” New Yorker (25 Mar 1996)
Hope is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good to chase swallows with the salt; Faith is the grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope lives on ignorance; open-eyed Faith is built upon a knowledge of our life, of the tyranny of circumstance and the frailty of human resolution. Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes honourable defeat to be a form of victory. Hope is a kind old pagan; but Faith grew up in Christian days, and early learnt humility.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Virginibus Puerisque” (1881)
(Source)
We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
Travels With Charley: In Search of America, Part 3 (1962)
Talent is able to achieve what is beyond other people’s capacity to achieve, yet not what is beyond their capacity of apprehension; therefore it at once finds its appreciators. The achievement of genius, on the other hand, transcends not only others’ capacity of achievement, but also their capacity of apprehension; therefore they do not become immediately aware of it. Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target, as far as which others cannot even see.
[Das Talent vermag zu leisten was die Leistungsfähigkeit, jedoch nicht die Apprehensionsfähigkeit der Uebrigen überschreitet: daher findet es sogleich seine Schätzer. Hingegen geht die Leistung des Genies nicht nur über die Leistungs, sondern auch über die Apprehensionsfähigkeit der Andern hinaus: daher werden Diese seiner nicht unmittelbar inne. Das Talent gleicht dem Schützen, der ein Ziel trifft, welches die Uebrigen nicht erreichen können; das Genie dem, der eines trifft, bis zu welchem sie nicht ein Mal zu sehn vermögen.]
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher
Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung [The World as Will and Representation], Vol. 2, ch. 31 “Vom Genie [On Genius]” (1844 ed.) [tr. Payne (1958)]
(Source)
(Source (German)). Referencing Vol. 1, sec. 36.
Commonly paraphrased: "Talent hits a target no-one else can hit; genius hits targets no-one else can see."
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden, “Conclusion” (1854)
Mankind is naturally divided into three sorts; one third of them are animated at the first appearance of danger, and will press forward to meet and examine it; another third are alarmed by it, but will neither advance nor retreat, till they know the nature of it, but stand to meet it. The remaining third will run or fly upon the first thought of it.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
(Attributed)
In R. W. Emerson, Journal (Aug 1851).
I have complete faith in the continued absurdity of whatever’s going on.
Jon Stewart (b. 1962) American satirist, comedian, and television host. [b. Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]
Interview, Philadelphia Inquirer (2007-04-22)
(Source)
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) American writer
Death in the Afternoon, ch. 11 (1932)
Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.
Joseph Heller (1923-1999) American novelist
God Knows (1984)
It is, sir, the people’s Constitution, the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) American statesman, lawyer, orator
Debate in US Senate, to Robert Young Hayne (26 Jan 1830)
Courage is of two kinds: courage in the face of personal danger, and courage to accept responsibility, either before the tribunal of some outside power or before the court of one’s own conscience.
[Der Muth ist doppelter Art: einmal Muth gegen die persönliche Gefahr, und dann Muth gegen die Verantwortlichkeit, sei es vor drm Richterstuhl irgend einer äussern Macht, oder der innern, nämlich des Gewissens.]
Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) Prussian soldier, historian, military theorist
On War [Vom Kriege], Book 1, ch. 3 “On Military Genius [Der Kriegerische Genius],” (1.3) (1832) [tr. Howard & Paret (1976)]
(Source)
(Source (German)). Alternate translations:
Courage is of two kinds: first, physical courage, or courage in the presence of danger to the person; and next, moral courage, or courage before responsibility, whether it be before the judgment seat of external authority, or of the inner power, the conscience.
[tr. Graham (1873)]
Courage is of two kinds: first, courage in presence of danger to the person, and next, courage in the presence of responsibility, whether before the judgment seat of an external authority, or before that of the internal authority which is conscience.
[tr. Jolles (1943)]
Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners, “On Corporate Bodies” (1821-22)
Full text.
Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.
Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC) Greek historian
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 3, 82 [tr. Crawley, Wick (1982)]
LILY: I worry no matter how cynical you become,
it’s never enough to keep up.Jane Wagner (b. 1935) American humorist, writer, director
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Part 1 (1985) [perf. Lily Tomlin]
(Source)
Variant: "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up."
The very idea of the power and the right of the People to establish Government presupposes the duty of every Individual to obey the established Government.
George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
“Farewell Address” (17 Sep 1796)
And how shall we choose among so much variety? No man can choose for, or prescribe to, another. But every one must follow the dictates of his own conscience, in simplicity and godly sincerity. He must be fully persuaded in his own mind and then act according to the best light he has. Nor has any creature power to constrain another to walk by his own rule. God has given no right to any of the children of men thus to lord it over the conscience of his brethren; but every man must judge for himself, as every man must give an account of himself to God.
John Wesley (1703-1791) English cleric, Christian theologian and evangelist, founder of Methodism
Sermon #39, “Catholic Spirit,” I.8
Full text.
Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or to make the desert bloom. There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech, Hartford, Connecticut (18 Sep 1952)
Delay always breeds danger; to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Spanish novelist
Don Quixote, Part 1, Book 4, ch. 2 (1605) [tr. Motteux and Ozell (1743)]
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The True Believer, ch. 71 (1951)
There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.