Coleridge

Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind.

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Friendship is like a sheltering tree.

He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

Only the wise possess ideas; the greater part of mankind are possessed by them.
- All from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772 - 1834

About:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born at Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, England on 21 Oct in 1772. The youngest of thirteen children, he was hectored by older brothers, which led to his taking frequent sanctuary in the local library, reading the Arabian Nights at age six. With his friend William Wordsworth he founded the Romantic Movement in England. His best-known works are The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, the latter of which he claimed came to him in a dream. Today's quotes are a bit more grounded in reality than his poetry.

Christopher Wren

Architecture is the purest of the plastic arts, for it does not reproduce scenes from nature and it does not borrow any literary interest by representing subjects. It stands by itself on its own ground.
- Clementina Caroline Anstruther-Thomson, 1857 - 1921

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.
- Constantin Brancusi, 1876 - 1957

In architecture the pride of man, his triumph over gravitation, his will to power, assume visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of form.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
- Frank Lloyd Wright, 1869 - 1959

About:

Sir Christopher Wren, the English architect who planned the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666, was born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England on 20 Oct in 1632. In addition to designing over 50 English churches and many other buildings, he found time to lecture in astronomy, experiment in a number of other scientific fields, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society.

Intelligence

You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.
- Alvin Toffler

A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.
- Charles F. Kettering, 1876 - 1958

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896 - 1940

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
- Laurence J. Peter, 1919 - 1990

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
- Ambrose Bierce

Space

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with all other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
- John Muir, 1838 - 1914

But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity.
- Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
- Pascal, Pensees

The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

- Freeman Dyson

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle
- Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892

Sky

When you look up at the sky, you have a feeling of unity, which delights you and makes you giddy.
- Ferdinand Hodler, 1853 - 1918

There are moments on most days when I feel a deep and sincere gratitude, when I sit at the open window, and there is a blue sky or moving clouds.
- Kaethe Kollwitz, 1867 - 1945

We all live under the same sky, but we don't have the same horizon.
- Konrad Adenauer, 1876 - 1967

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

For the man sound in body and serene in mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.
- Jerome K. Jerome, 1859 - 1927

Look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still - that up above beyond the cloud is still sunlight and warmth and cloudless blue sky.
- Charles Kingsley, 1819 - 1875

Relax

If I had my life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes. I would relax. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would pick more daisies. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
- Don Herold, 1889 - 1966

Spend everyday casual, but industrious; Every moment alert, but relaxed.
- Guy Finley

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
- Herodotus, 484 - 424 BC

Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.
- Indra Devi

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.
- Sydney J. Harris, 1917 - 1986

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
- Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

Reliability

Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.
- Alfred A. Montapert

Trust also your own judgment, for it is your most reliable counselor. A man's mind has sometimes a way of telling him more than seven watchmen posted on a high tower.
- Ecclesiasticus

If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation.
- Freeman Dyson

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
- Edsger Dijkstra

The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 - 43 BC

My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.
- Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

Groucho Marx

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don't anymore. I realized it was killing conversation.

When you're always trying for a topper you aren't really listening. It ruins communication.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says, "Yes," you know he is a crook.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.

A woman is an occasional pleasure but a cigar is always a smoke.

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.

All people are born alike - except Republicans and Democrats.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

How do you feel about women's rights? I like either side of them.

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.

- All from Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx, 1890 - 1977

About:

Julius Henry Marx was born at New York City on 2 Oct 1890, we know him as Groucho. At age fifteen he was the first of the brothers to start a stage career, twice the rest of his troupe disappeared in the night and left him to pay the bills. It may have been this that led to his hunger for material success, in turn driving the careers of the Marx Brothers. (This was reinforced by their mother's social ambitions and Chico's perennial financial distress from gambling.) Groucho kept his eyebrows raised and jabbed with his cigar to punctuate his rapier wit.

For more info: http://www.groucho-marx.com/

Daniel Joseph Boorstin

The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.

Formerly a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary to keep him properly in the public eye.

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration. From the cautious quest for what they knew (or thought they knew) was out there, into an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. These are two substantially different kinds of human enterprise.

A sign of a celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
- All from Daniel Joseph Boorstin, 1914 - 2004

About:

Daniel Joseph Boorstin was born at Atlanta, Georgia on 1 Oct 1914. His father successfully defended a Jew falsely charged with rape and murder, the Ku Klux Klan's lynching of the defendant sent the family to Oklahoma. He graduated with honors from Harvard, won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed a double first and qualified as a barrister. Back in the US he earned his doctorate at Yale and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar. Naturally, his next step was to become a professor of history at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He was director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History for six years and Librarian of Congress for twelve. Historians panned his work, and the American Library Association opposed his appointment at the Library of Congress, in both cases because he was trained in law instead of the fields he actually worked in. Despite his education, he was brilliant in both roles, as well as in his observations about American culture.