Clocks

You can't turn back the clock, but you can wind it up again.
- Bonnie Prudden

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
- François Marie Arouet (Voltaire), letter to Count Schomberg, 31 August 1769

Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you're waking up to instant stress. You shouldn't be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it's time to start your day.
- Sharon Gold

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock;
My thoughts are minutes.
- William Shakespeare, Richard II

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.
- Golda Meir

Jokes

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
- Baltasar Gracian, 1601 - 1656

When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.
- Garrison Keillor

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
- Georg Christopher Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
- Will Rogers, 1879 - 1935

I've decided to be a dull, morose bore at these press meetings. It's the only safe course. You give me no choice. I tell a joke and you convert it into an international incident. I coin a whimsical term and you make it appear I am at odds with the President. I indulge in some polite banter and you interpret it as a split in the Party.
- Everett McKinley Dirksen, 1896 - 1969

Descartes

Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum. (I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am.)

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
- All from René Descartes, 1596 - 1650

About: René Descartes was born at La Haye, France on 31 Mar in 1596. At age ten he was sent to a Jesuit college at Anjou where he was allowed to sleep late due to poor health, a habit he continued throughout his life and asserted that his best thinking depended on it. Descartes was among the first of the modern philosophers, his works were of profound influence on European thought for several centuries. He also developed significant parts of geometry. His undoing may have been a change in schedule: He was summoned to teach Queen Christina of Sweden philosophy but the lessons were scheduled for five in the morning and he died of pneumonia within a few months.

van Gogh

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storms terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.
- All from Vincent van Gogh, 1853 - 1890

About: Vincent van Gogh was born at Groot Zundert, The Netherlands on 30 Mar in 1853. His words are not, perhaps, as oft remembered as his paintings. They probably aren't worth staring at for as long as the paintings, but they're clearly worth at least a moment of reflection.

Possessions

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.
- André Gide, 1869 - 1951

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
- Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970

Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it.
- François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613 - 1680

My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.
- J. Brotherton

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?
- Natalie Clifford Barney, 1876 - 1972

The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.
- Van Wyck Brooks, 1886 - 1963

Excellence

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
- Aristotle, 384 - 322 BC

Striving for perfection is the greatest stopper there is. It's your excuse to yourself for not doing anything. Instead, strive for excellence, doing your best.
- Laurence Olivier, 1907 - 1989

If you don't do it excellently, don't do it at all. Because if it's not excellent, it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?
- Robert Townsend

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.
- Thomas John Watson, Sr, 1874 - 1956

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
- Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626

Frustration

All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success.
- Dorothea Brande

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.
- Rod Serling

What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before?
- Henry Miller, 1891 - 1980

Nothing is as frustrating as arguing with someone who knows what he's talking about.
- Sam Ewing

Oil

You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.
- Siddhartha Gautama, 563 - 483 BC

It is prudent to pour the oil of delicate politeness upon the machinery of friendship.
- Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette, 1873 - 1954

The oil can is mightier than the sword.
- Everett McKinley Dirksen, 1896 - 1969

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.
- Miguel de Cervantes, 1547 - 1616

An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.
- Washington Irving, 1783 - 1859

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us forty years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!
- Golda Meir

Liberty

Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.
- Arthur Clive Howard Bell, 1881 - 1964

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
- Ignazio Silone

Discipline must come through liberty.... We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.
- Maria Montessori, 1870 - 1952

While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.
- Charles Evans Hughes, 1862 - 1948

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
- John Adams, 1735 - 1826

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!
- Patrick Henry, 1736 - 1799

Spring

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 Dudley Bradstreet, 1612 - 1672

It seems to me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring - the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar.
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 1803 - 1873

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
- George Santayana, 1863 - 1921

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"
- Robin Williams

Law and Justice

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
- Aristotle, 384 - 322 BC

The sentiment of justice is so natural, so universally acquired by all mankind, that it seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion.
- François Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 - 1778

The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own.
- Herbert George Wells, 1866 - 1946

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes.
- Learned Hand, 1872 - 1961

Fidelity to the public requires that the laws be as plain and explicit as possible, that the less knowing may understand, and not be ensnared by them, while the artful evade their force.
- Samuel Cooke, 1708 - 1783

It is not now, nor was it ever the law, that before submitting to a lawful arrest, a fleeing felon is entitled to a fair fistfight.
- Carlos Bea

Impossible

The impossible has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.
- Douglas Noel Adams, 1952 - 2001

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
- Epictetus

Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
- Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983

Only those who attempt the absurd ... will achieve the impossible. I think. I think it's in my basement, let me go upstairs and check.
- Maurits Cornelius Escher, 1898 - 1972

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
- Francis of Assisi, 1182 - 1226

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
- Walter Elias Disney, 1901 - 1966