Winston Churchill

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

If you're going through hell, keep going.
- All from Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965

About: Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace near Oxford, England on 30 Nov in 1874. His father was a duke, his mother an American heiress. He graduated from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, served in India and Sudan, and then resigned his commission to cover the Boer War as a journalist. As first lord of the admiralty he modernized the Royal Navy in preparation for World War I. He was in and out of politics, his forceful opinions didn't always make him welcome on either side of the aisle. Those opinions did make him a good fit during World War II when he served as Prime Minister. Throughout his life he was an ardent student of history, and wrote several volumes. His quick wit and clear language make him a favorite of any quotation collector.

Louisa May Alcott

Fame is a pearl many dive for and only a few bring up. Even when they do, it is not perfect, and they sigh for more, and lose better things in struggling for them.

Far away in the sunshine are my highest inspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.

Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one.

Love is a great beautifier.
- All from Louisa May Alcott, 1832 - 1888

About: Louisa May Alcott was born at Germantown, Pennsylvania on 29 Nov in 1832. Her father was a member of the Transcendentalist Club at Boston, the family was close to Emerson, Thoreau, and the other key members of that group. Mostly by choice or principle, the family was poor during her youth, a time that formed the basis for her best-known work, Little Women. In addition to the group of family-centered novels for which she is still well loved, she wrote for children and also turned out a number of racier novels (called "potboilers" at the time) under the name A. M. Barnard.

William Blake

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

A truth that's told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent.

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare; My business is to create.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern.

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
- All from William Blake, 1757 - 1827

About: William Blake was born at London on 28 Nov in 1757. His parents recognized his headstrong character and didn't send him to school, although he was given art classes. His first of many visions, a tree full of angels, came at the age of ten. He trained as an engraver, and later developed a process of plate making that allowed a mix of text and illustration on the same page from a single plate, which was not particularly profitable in his business but he did use it for several books of his own poetry. His poetry and painting did not meet with much success during his lifetime, but not only has his poetry been set to music in recent decades (both classical and rock) we have these quotes.

Gail Sheehy

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.

If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.

If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.

With each passage of human growth we must shed a protective structure like a hardy crustacean. We are left exposed and vulnerable - but also yeasty and embryonic again, capable of stretching in ways we hadn't known before.

Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough.
- All from Gail Sheehy

About: Gail Sheehy was born at Mamaroneck, New York on 27 Nov in 1937. Although she has written a number of well-regarded biographies, she is best known for covering change and growth in adult Americans, starting with Passages, which has been hailed as one of the ten most influential books of the last century.

Charles Schulz

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.

I have a feeling that when my ship comes in, I'll be at the airport.

Life is like a ten speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.

No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it.

The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon.

Try not to have a good time, this is supposed to be educational.
- All from Charles Monroe Schulz, 1922 - 2000

About: Charles Monroe Schulz was born at Minneapolis, Minnesota on 26 Nov in 1922. His only formal training in art was a correspondence course, but in 1949 he started drawing a daily comic-strip for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press called "Li'l Folks," in 1950 it was renamed "Peanuts" and syndicated by United Features. At the time of his death in 2000, the strip had demonstrated enough wit and insight to attract readers around the world - Peanuts appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers and 24 languages. He won about every award and honor a cartoonist can win, and the hearts of millions. These quotes are from Mr Schulz and his characters.

Wisdom

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
- Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
- Charles Caleb Colton, 1780 - 1832

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and Third, by experience, which is the bitterest.
- Confucius

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfful to seek other than itself.
- Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931

It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, 1841 - 1935

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970

Eliot

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain upon the affections.

I've never had any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
- All from George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), 1819 - 1880

About: Mary Ann Evans was born at Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, England on 22 Nov in 1819, and was raised in a very conventional and pious manner. She broke that pattern early in her adult life, serving as editor and reviewer for the radical Westminster Review. Although there were many women writers at the time these were mostly writers of romance, Evans wrote her novels under the name George Eliot in order to be taken seriously. Her work, especially Middlemarch, is regarded as key to the development of the modern novel, introducing psychological insight into the characters and counterpointed plot structure.

Voltaire

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Doubt is not a pleasant mental state but certainty is a ridiculous one.

He who makes two blades of grass grow in place of one renders a service to the state.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely.
- All from François Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 - 1778

About: François Marie Arouet was born at Paris on 21 Nov in 1694. He received his education at a Jesuit college there, leaving school at age 16 and soon becoming a favorite among the aristocracy for his wit. Hubris struck, after he wrote a satire of the government he spent almost a year in the Bastille. He kept writing, but started using the name Voltaire.

Conversation

Conversation, n. A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1881 - 1906

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.
- Deborah Tannen

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
- Dorothy Nevill, 1826 - 1913

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.
- Margaret Millar

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
- Emily Post, 1872 - 1960

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950

Infinity

Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
- Blaise Pascal, 1623 - 1662

Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.
- Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519

This is the truth: As from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.
- Maitri Upanishad

The notion of the infinite expanse and copiousness of the cosmos is the result of the mixture, carried to the extreme limit, of laborious creation and free self-determination.
- Franz Kafka, 1883 - 1924

Infinities and indivisibles transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness; Imagine what they are when combined.
- Galileo Galilei, 1564 - 1642

A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard.
- Professor Steiner

Drums

If you hear a different drummer - dreamer, take a chance. The road you choose to travel means the difference in the dance.
- D. Morgan

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
- Mary Ellen Kelly

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? 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, 1817 - 1862

You know the drum was the first instrument besides the human voice.
- Billy Higgins

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882

If thine enemy wrong thee, buy each of his children a drum.
- African proverb

Georgia O'Keeffe

To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage.

I have been terrified every day of my life, but that has never stopped me from doing everything I wanted to do.

To make your unknown known - that is the important thing.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the work.

I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.
- All from Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887 - 1986

About: Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was born at Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on 15 Nov in 1887. She wanted to pursue a career in art at a very early age, and studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students' League at New York, then returned to Chicago and worked in commercial art. She had stopped painting for a while and was teaching school at Amarillo, Texas when she sent some landscape drawings to a friend at New York City. The friend showed them to gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz who, without O'Keeffe's knowledge, staged her first gallery show. She moved to New York, married Stieglitz, and began one of the most successful artistic careers of the last century. O'Keeffe was able to move in close to nature and give us a rich and subtle look at things, particularly flowers, that is both precisely pictorial and abstract.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.

Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.
- All from Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 - 1894

About: Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born at Edinburgh, Scotland on 13 November in 1850. Expecting to follow in his fathers footsteps as an engineer, he went to the University of Edinburgh, but poor health caused him to switch to law. He was admitted to the bar as an advocate at age 25, but had already decided to become a writer. Somewhere he changed the Lewis to Louis. His stories of travel and adventure were gems.

Sense

There are forty kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense.
- African proverb

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.
- Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744

To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
- Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
- Carl Gustav Jung, 1875 - 1961

There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.
- Don Herold, 1889 - 1966

This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.
- George F. Will

Veterans

All of us who served in one war or another know very well that all wars are the glory and the agony of the young.
- Gerald R. Ford

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.
- Robert Edward Lee, 1807 - 1870

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
- Otto von Bismarck, 1815 - 1898

However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
- Douglas MacArthur, 1880 - 1964

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.
- George S. Patton, 1885 - 1945

Journalism - II

A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life - what people are interested in. That's journalism.
- Burton Rascoe

A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others.
- Marguerite Duras

A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.... Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.
- Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960

There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period.
- François Auguste René Rodin, 1840 - 1917

Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of [achieving] a free society.
- Felix Frankfurter, 1882 - 1965

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
- Tom Stoppard

Dark

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
- Charles A. Beard, 1874 - 1948

There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark.
- Hannah Senesh

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
- Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968

History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark.
- Lord John Whorfin

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
- Desiderius Erasmus, 1466 - 1536

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
- Plato

Albert Camus

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.

Integrity has no need of rules.
- All from Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960

About: Albert Camus was born at Mondovi, Algeria in 1913. His father died the next year, but despite poverty Camus got most of a college education before tuberculosis forced him to drop out. He went to France as a journalist in World War II, joined the Resistance, and shared editing of Combat, an underground daily in Paris, with Jean-Paul Sartre, another of the main Existentialist philosophers. He became a key figure in posters on college dorm room walls in the '70s, and is still quotable today.

Brass

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
- Agnes de Mille, 1905 - 1993

With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.
- Norman Mailer

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
- Theodore M. Hesburgh

If you wish in this world to advance
Your merits you're bound to enhance;
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven't a chance.
- William S. Gilbert, 1836 - 1911

There is a spirit in us ... that makes our brass to blare and our cymbals crash - all, of course, supported by the practicalities of trained lung power, throat, heart, guts.
- Laurence Olivier

Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as the trumpet-clang of another's fame.
- Baltasar Gracian, 1601 - 1658

Singers

I cannot sing the old songs
I sang long years ago,
For heart and voice would fail me,
And foolish tears would flow.
- Charlotte Barnard

On the subject of singing, the frog school and the lark school disagree.
- Chinese proverb

Each bird must sing with his own throat.
- Henrik Ibsen, 1828 - 1906

In the depth of my soul there is a wordless song.
- Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931

Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.
- Zora Neale Hurston, 1901 - 1960

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another.
- Frank Zappa, 1940 - 1993

Journalism

I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy.
- A. J. Liebling, 1904 - 1963

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
- Cyril Connolly, 1903 - 1974

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
- Karl Kraus

Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.
- Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

No news is good news. No journalists is even better.
- Nicolas Bentley

Address

Nothing succeeds like address.
- Fran Lebowitz

Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else.
- Ivern Ball

A man without an address is a vagabond; a man with two addresses is a libertine.
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.
- Carson McCullers, 1917-1967

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
- Quentin Crisp, 1908 - 1999

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
- Ring Lardner, 1885 - 1933

Weather

Weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society - things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.
- Elwyn Brooks White, 1899 - 1985

If you want to see the sun shine, you have to weather the storm.
- Frank Lane

The weather-cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it ... did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.
- Heinrich Heine, 1797 - 1856

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?
- Kelvin Throop III

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.
- Kin (Frank McKinney) Hubbard, 1868 - 1930

I'm leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it's not raining.
- Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx, 1890 - 1977

Faces

Circumstances alter faces.
- Carolyn Wells

After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies. We get to be responsible for our faces.
- Cynthia Ozick

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
- James Arthur Baldwin, 1924 - 1987

As life runs on,
the road grows strange
With faces new,
- and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
'Neath every one a friend.
- James Russell Lowell, 1819 - 1891

In thy face I see the map of honor, truth, and loyalty.
- William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
- Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx, 1890 - 1977

John Adams

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty, in that case, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.

Neither philosophy, nor religion, nor morality, nor wisdom, nor interest will ever govern nations or parties against their vanity, their pride, their resentment or revenge, or their avarice or ambition.

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it! If you do not, I shall repent it in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it!

We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
- All from John Adams, 1735 - 1826

About: John Adams was born at Braintree, Massachusetts in 1735, to what was already an old American family. Educated at Harvard, he briefly taught school before turning to law, and then to politics. Like his second cousin Sam Adams, he was heavily involved in planning the fight for independence. He nominated Washington to be Commander in Chief of the army, seconded the motion to declare independence, and led the committee which crafted the Declaration. With John Jay he negotiated the treaty with Great Britain after the war and was the first US ambassador to the Court of Saint James. In the first presidential election under the new constitution he ran second, which meant he became the vice president, repeated in the second election, and won the third with Thomas Jefferson coming in second. One of the greatest animosities of the era was between Adams and Jefferson, although they seemed to be able to work together at times and both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Hair

Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits.
- Charles Robert Darwin, 1809 - 1882

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
- Chinese proverb

I think women see me on the cover of magazines and think I never have a pimple or bags under my eyes. You have to realize that's after two hours of hair and makeup, plus retouching. Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.
- Cindy Crawford

When others kid me about being bald, I simply tell them that the way I figure it, the good Lord only gave men so many hormones, and if others want to waste theirs on growing hair, that's up to them.
- John Glenn

My concern today is not with the length of a person's hair but with his conduct.
- Richard M. Nixon, 1913 - 1994

There's many a man has more hair than wit.
- William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

Liberty

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
- Aristotle, 384 - 322 BC

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.
- David Hume, 1711 - 1776

The things required for prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosperous commerce are three. First, liberty; second, liberty; third, liberty.
- Henry Ward Beecher, 1813 - 1887

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.... While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.
- Learned Hand, 1872 - 1961

Liberty is one of the most precious gifts heaven has bestowed upon Man. No treasures the earth contains or the sea conceals can be compared to it. For liberty one can rightfully risk one's life. - Miguel de Cervantes, 1547 - 1616

There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
- Ed Howdershelt