I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him. ~Abraham Lincoln
If you feel that you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed you. ~Robert Goheen, Time, 23 June 1961
Innovative capitalists have tried to rewrite nature, but to no avail. ~Astrid Alauda
Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring. ~Edward Gorey
A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life. ~Isadora James
Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds. ~Quentin Crisp
The neurotic's mountain and molehill are equivalent in size. ~Terri Guillemets
You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. ~"The Mission," Chapter 8
I've been attending lots of seminars in my retirement. They're called naps. ~Merri Brownworth
I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world. ~Thomas A. Edison
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. ~Henry David Thoreau
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? ~Alan Paton
When the historian of the Twentieth Century shall have finished his narrative, and comes searching for the subtitle which shall best express the spirit of the period, we think it not at all unlikely that he may select "The Age of Advertising" for the purpose. ~Printers' Ink, 27 May 1915
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else. ~Havelock Ellis
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers. ~Robert Ingersoll Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity. ~Robert G. Ingersoll
Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold and dung. Before you understand it, it's like gold; after you understand it, it's like dung. ~Zen Saying
Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience. ~Clarence Day, The Crow's Nest
Humble birth did not retard his genius, nor high place corrupt his soul. ~Cass Gilbert
Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family. ~Berke Breathed, Bloom County Babylon
Finland has produced so many brilliant distance runners because back home it costs $2.50 a gallon for gas. ~Esa Tikkannen, 1979
If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. ~Albert Einstein
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. ~Frank Lloyd Wright
There are two days in the week about which and upon which I never worry... Yesterday and Tomorrow. ~Robert Jones Burdette