July 2012 Quotations

“How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!”
~~ Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951]

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
~~ Bob Dylan

"The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"The things [that] we hate about ourselves aren't more real than the things [that] we like about ourselves."
~~ columnist Ellen Goodman

"You know [that] you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."
~~ Bob Hope [1903-2003]

"Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]

"Sanity is a cozy lie."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]

"There is nothing that is always or never."
~~ Maxine in Santa Fe, New Mexico

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"I've never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know."
~~ Epicurus [341–270 B.C.E.]

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishment – there are consequences."
~~ R.G. Ingersoll [1833-99]

"Everything is funny as long as it's happening to someone else."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]

"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in a cage."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]

"If pregnancy were a book, they would cut out the last two chapters."
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Time is the only critic without personal ambition."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
~~ Mae West [1893-1980]

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"Keep your face always to the sunshine, and the shadows will fall behind you."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"There is no such thing as bravery, only degrees of fear."
~~ John Wainwright [1921-95]

"you can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough for me."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]

"Parents are not interested in justice. They're interestded in peace and quiet."
~~ Bill Cosby

"There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient."
~~ novelist Marilynne Robinson

"The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control."
~~ Ogden Nash [1902-71]

"The only thing more destructive than a tornado is a family."
~~ Reynolds Price [1933-2011]

"To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is a reason."
~~ artist Ai Weiwei

"To be what we are, and to be what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself."
~~ Carl Gustav Jung [1875-1961]

"We now operate in a world in which we can assume neither competence nor good faith from the authorities. The consequences of this simple, devastating realization define American life."
~~ Chris Hayes

"An historian is a prophet in reverse."
~~ Friedrich von Schlegel [1772-1829]

“Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”
~~ Frank Capra [1897-1991]

"The luxury of doing good surpasses every personal enjoyment."
~~ John Gray

"People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them."
~~ Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]

"So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indespensible; and no man is useless while he has a friend."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Everything changes, nothing is lost."
~~ Ovid [43 B.C.E. – 17 or 18 C.E.]

"There is a limit to what you can do in politics."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"All good books have one thing in common: They are truer than if they had really happened."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one."
~~ Jerry Garcia [1942-95], of the Grateful Dead band

"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
~~ Adam Smith [1723-90]

"When a man realizes his littleness, his greatness can appear."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"It is very strange that the years teach us patience – that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting."
~~ novelist Elizabeth Taylor of U.K.

"Every life viewed from the inside is a series of defeats."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not."
~~ John Irving

"Happy people do a great deal for their friends."
~~ Willa Cather [1873-1947]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}