A click on any link will open a new browser window
The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
from "The Book Of Tea" - Kakuzo Okakura
Adults are just obsolete children.
Dr. Seuss
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be burned all the while
from "The Lesson Of The Moth" - Don Marquis
You cannot learn to fly by flying.
First you must learn to walk, and to run, and to climb, and to dance.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Whoever fights monsters should see to it
That in the process he does not become a monster.
If you gaze for long into an abyss,
the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche - "Beyond Good and Evil"
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Live as to die tomorrow. Learn as to live forever.
Isadore of Seville
I like not only to be loved but also to be told that I am loved. The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech. And I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
George Eliot
I expect to pass this way but once; any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature. Let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Etienne Griellet
Oh God of dust and rainbows, help us see that without dust the rainbow would not be.
Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
Do not dwell in the past.
Do not dream of the future.
Concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha (563-483 BC)
If you can't find the truth where you are, where else do you think you will find it?
Buddha
Believe nothing because it is written in books.
Believe nothing because wise men say it is so.
Believe nothing because it is religious doctrine.
Believe it only because you yourself know it to be true.
Buddha
All that is is the result of what we have thought.
Buddha
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer but rather what they miss.
Thomas Carlyle
Books may be burned and cities sacked,
but truth, like the yearning for freedom,
lives in the hearts of humble men.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
When the earth reclaims your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Kahlil Gibran from "The Prophet"
Life is like a journey, taken on a train
With a pair of travellers at each windowpane.
I may sit beside you all the journey through,
Or I may sit elsewhere, never knowing you.
But if fate should make me sit by your side,
Let's be pleasant travellers; it's so short a ride.
Anonymous
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling
Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
from John Greenleaf Whittier's "Maud Muller"
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.
Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
Katherine Hepburn
The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn
When teachers themselves are taught to learn.
Bertolt Brecht
To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex.
Art is the sex of the imagination.
George Jean Nathan
This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible as music,
But positive, as sound.
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
Is Truth's superb surprise.
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind,
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
"1129" by Emily Dickinson
Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?
Edgar Allen Poe
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
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
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
Isaac Asimov
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.
Helen Keller
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man;
if you want anything done, ask a woman.
Margaret Thatcher
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
To the living we owe respect
but to the dead we owe only the truth.
Voltaire
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" - Robert Frost (1875 - 1963)
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
from "The Road Not Taken" - Robert Frost
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
from "The Hollow Men" - Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 - 1965)
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 18)
The past is history,
The future is a mystery
and now is a gift.
That's why we call it the present.
Anonymous
No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy.
People imagine they can reach one another.
In reality they only pass each other by.
Franz Schubert
If I have seen a little farther than others,
it is because I have stood on
the shoulders of giants.
Sir Isaac Newton
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Henry W. Longfellow
Life is real! life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Henry W. Longfellow
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Henry W. Longfellow
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
Henry W. Longfellow
No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.
Henry W. Longfellow
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
Henry W. Longfellow
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.
Henry W. Longfellow
All things come round to him who will but wait.
Henry W. Longfellow
I would rather be ashes than dust.
I would rather my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled in dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
Man's chief purpose is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
Jack London
The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.
Robert G. Ingersoll
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain
Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive anyway.
Mark Twain
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Mark Twain
If at first you don't succeed, try again.
Then quit; there's no use being a damn fool about it.
Mark Twain
When I was 14, I couldn't believe how ingnorant my father was.
By the time I turned 21 I was astounded at how much the old man had learned in just seven years.
Mark Twain
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
Art is long, life is short.
Goethe
To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake
I was angry with my friend,
I told my wrath, my wrath did end;
I was angry with my foe,
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
William Blake
They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.
Sir Philip Sidney
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
from "Locksley Hall" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
from "Locksley Hall" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
from "Locksley Hall" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
from "Choric Song of the Lotos-Eaters" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I am a part of all that I have met.
from "Ulysses" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Here at the quiet limit of the world.
from "Tithonus" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
We are ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
from "In Memoriam" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
from "In Memoriam" - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
That is as well said as if I had said it myself.
Jonathan Swift
May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift
There is none so blind as they that won't see.
Jonathan Swift
A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What outward form and feature are
He guesseth but in part;
But what within is good and fair
He seeth with the heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
That passage is what I call the sublime
dashed to pieces by cutting too close
with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In my heart
Is the seed of the tree
Which will be me.
Nourished by understanding
Warmed by friends
Fed by loved ones
Matured by wisdom
Tempered by tears.
Leonard Nimoy
(yes, Mr. Spock on "Star Trek" has a soft side)
Today,
Time has stopped.
A minute is still a minute.
An hour is still an hour.
And yet,
The past and the future
Hang in perfect balance.
All focused on the present.
A sweet flow of excitement
Warms me.
You are near.
Leonard Nimoy
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
from "A Thing of Beauty" - John Keats (1795 - 1821)
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
from "Ode on a Grecian Urn" - John Keats
Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?
John Keats
The poetry of earth is never dead.
John Keats
The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
from "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur" - Edward Fitzgerald (1809 - 1883)
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Marilyn Monroe ~ My Words
Main Quotes Page
Funky border graphics from
