Quotes from some of my favourite books

Random Quotes

Thinking you need rest makes you restless.
Thinking you have to work hard makes you tired
Thinking you have worked hard brings self-pity.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant.
Anon
We are all looking for a woman who can sit in a mini-skirt and talk philosophy , executing both with confidence and style.
Anon
O! Wanderers in the shadowed land despair not! For though dark they stand, all woods there be must end at last, and see the open sun go past: the setting sun, the rising sun, the day's end, or the day begun. For east or west all woods must fail ...
J. R. R. Tolkien
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's consience
Harper Lee(To Kill a Mockingbird)
When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
Mary Kay Ash
If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you'll get the best.
Begin to live as you wish to live.
Unknown
Most people live and die
with their music still unplayed.
They never dare to try.
Mary Kay Ash
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott
We don't see things as they are,
we see them as we are.
Anais Nin
I wasn't afraid to fail.
Something good always comes out of failure.
Anne Baxter
What you dislike in another take care to correct in yourself.
Thomas Sprat
Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment.
Ralph Marston
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.
Dr. Seuss
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau
(Walden)
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. Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
Be absolutely determined to enjoy what you do.
Gerry Sikorski
Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there's love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.
Ella Fitzgerald
My favorite quote is "Life is too short to be little," written by Disraeli. Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings.
Andre Maurois
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
the appetite may sicken, and so die.
-- Twelfth Night . Shakespeare
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves,
are triumph and defeat .
Henry Longfellow
There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living out of what one loves to do. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make that happen.
Wayne Dyer
Its never too late to be , what you might have been.
George Eliot
To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
William Blake
Dance as though no one is watching you.
Love as though you have never been hurt before.
Sing as though no one can hear you.
Live as though heaven is on earth.
Souza
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
Voltaire
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
William Blake
Speak when you're angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.
Lawrence J. Peter
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
. . .if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Ivan Turgenev
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
Helen Keller
He who angers you , conquers you.
Elizabeth Kenny (Australian Nurse)
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.
Woodrow Wilson
Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.
Rose Kennedy
Knowing is not enough;
We must apply.
Willing is not enough;
We must do.
Goethe
Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.
Katherine Whitehorn
You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
Doug Floyd
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
T.B. Macaulay
PLANT IMPOSSIBLE GARDENS.
Look forward to dreams. Cry during movies.
Swing as high as you can on a swingset, by moonlight.
Cultivate moods.
Do it for love. Take lots of naps.
Take moonbaths.
Giggle with children.
Listen to old people.
Drive away fear. Play with everything.
Entertain your inner child.
Build a fort with blankets.
Get wet. Hug trees. Write love letters.
SARK
Sticks and stones are hard on bones
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything
But silence breaks the heart.
Suzanne Nichols
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Hellen Keller.
No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it.
Charles M. Schulz
A dwarf is small, even if he stands on a mountain top; a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
George Bernard Shaw
Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
George Bernard Shaw
Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
Henry David Thoreau
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.
Henry David Thoreau
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
Charles P. Issawi
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
Christopher Morley
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.
Dr. Konrad Adenauer
If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
Anatole France
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
Benjamin Franklin
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
Jerome K Jerome
Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!
Ben Jonson
You cant talk with a bullet. If you try to do that, you are not just a fool, you are a dead fool.
Mario Puzo, "The Godfather"
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Voltaire
One man with a belief is more important than a thousand ones with an interest.
Voltaire
Who does not love wine, women, and song, Remains a fool his whole life long.
Johann Heinrich Voss
It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose.
Darrin Weinberg
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace -- and what did they produce' The cuckoo-clock.
Orson Welles,, "The Third Man"
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting.
T.H. White
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great is passed away.
William Wordsworth
The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.
William Wordsworth
In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing
Mignon McLaughlin
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
Jeff Valdez
One's first book, kiss, home run, is always the best.
Clifton Fadiman (1904 - )
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
Dr. David M. Burns
When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph.
Pierre Corneille (1606 - 1684)
It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Jay and the Peacock
Imagination is cheap experience.
Reason can answer questions , but only imagination can ask them.
Ralph Gerard
A Diamond is nothing but the coal that did well under pressure.
Today is the tomorrow that yesterday you spent money thinking that there would be none.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victems he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler
Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals.
Finley Peter Dunne
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones.
John Cage
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you don't like?
Jean Cocteau
To be stupid, selfish, an have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
Brendan Gill
Ninty percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.
Henry Kissinger
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
Laurence J. Peter
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork and picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
Tom Stoppard
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
Peter Ustinov
Muscles come and go; flab lasts.
Bill Vaughan
There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
Steven Wright
It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, 'launder' became a dirty word.
William Zinsser
People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to.
George Allen
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Wernher von Braun
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning
Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
Buddha
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.
Dale Carnegie
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
Benjamin Disraeli
Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastry demands all of a person.
Albert Einstein
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Robert Frost
He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.
Thomas Fuller
Dare to be naive.
Buckminster Fuller
The modern physicist is a quantum theorist on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and a student of gravitational relativity theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On Sunday he is neither, but is praying to his God that someone, preferably himself, will find the reconciliation between the two views.
Norbert Wiener
Physics is much too hard for physicists.
David Hilbert
Whatever you can do, or believe you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Goethe
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Goethe
Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.
Mary Kay Ash
When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.
Colleen C. Barrett
Dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you.
Mary Bly
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Anne Bradstreet
What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call.
Liz Carpenter
All you'll get from strangers is surface pleasantry or indifference. Only someone who loves you will criticize you.
Judith Crist
Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.
Dianne Feinstein
An oral contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Anon
Anteaters are generally found at picnics.
Anon
Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.
Martin Luther
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Mangesh Gupte <mangesh[at]csa.iisc.ernet.in>
Last modified: Thu Nov 4 22:34:45 2004