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LAWYERS
There are three reasons why lawyers are replacing rats as laboratory research animals. One is that they're plentiful, another is that lab assistants don't get attached to them, and the third is that there are some things rats just won't do.
LAWYER JOKE NO. 3,479,153(c)
They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.
THOMAS MORE describing Utopia
LEADERSHIP
A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.
JOHN UPDIKE
True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.
ROBERT TOWNSEND UP THE ORGANIZATION
How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?
HARRY S. TRUMAN
LEARNING
See also EDUCATION, KNOWLEDGE
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
ARISTOTLE
Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
What a wonderful day we've had. You have learned something, and I have learned something. Too bad we didn't learn it sooner. We could have gone to the movies instead.
BALKI BARTOKOMOUS
I bid him look into the lives of men as though into a mirror, and from others to take an example for himself.
TERENCE
LIES
I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't.
MARK TWAIN
There's one way to find out if a man is honest—ask him. If he says, "Yes," you know he's a crook.
GROUCHO MARX
INTERVIEWER: You've been accused of vulgarity. MEL BROOKS: Bullshit!
The biggest liar in the world is They Say.
DOUGLAS MALLOCH
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude.
ALEXANDER HAIG
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
I can't tell a lie—not even when I hear one.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
LIFE
See also LIFE IS . . .
Life! Can't live with it, can't live without it.
CYNTHIA NELMA
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Some people die at twenty-five and aren't buried until they are seventy-five.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
While alive, he lived.
MALCOLM FORBES etched on his tombstone
Life's experiments are great fun. This is but another one.
RUDYARD KIPLING
A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory.
Unified, disciplined, armed with the secret powers of the atom and with knowledge as yet beyond dreaming, Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.
H. G. WELLS
There's an old joke: Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain resort and one of them says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know, and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life.
Woody Allen opening lines to Annie Hall
The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.
HELEN HAYES AT AGE 83
Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
RUTH RENDELL
We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.
E. M. CIORAN
Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Who knows? Maybe my life belongs to God. Maybe it belongs to me. But I do know one thing: I'm damned if it belongs to the government.
ARTHUR HOPPE
I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.
DEUTERONOMY 30:19
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.
MARK TWAIN TOM SAWYER
Life is too short to waste In critical peep or cynic bark, Quarrel or reprimand: 'Twill soon be dark; Up! Mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!
What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.
COLETTE
If I had to define life in a word, it would be: Life is creation.
CLAUDE BERNARD The Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine
Dear friend, all theory is gray, And green the golden tree of life.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
There must be more to life than having everything.
MAURICE SENDAK
There's got to be more to life than sittin' here watchin' Days of Our Lives and foldin' your Fruit of the Looms.
MAMA MAMA'S FAMILY
Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.
EPICTETUS
Grasshopper, look beyond the game, as you look beneath the surface of the pool to see its depths.
MASTER PO KUNG FU
Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
LIFE IS . . .
Also see LIFE
. . . a banquet, and some poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death.
AUNTIE MAME
. . . working.
KARL MARX
. . . work.
HENRY FORD
. . . but play.
LEON DE MONTENAEKEN
. . . a cabaret.
LIZA MINNELLI
. . . a play. It's not its length, but its performance that counts.
SENECA
. . . short. Live it up.
NIKITA KHRUSCHEV
. . . a tragedy for those who feel, a comedy for those who think.
JEAN DE LA BRUYERE
. . . a B-picture script.
KIRK DOUGLAS
. . . like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.
JOHN UPDIKE
. . . a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
. . . a tale told in an idiom, full of unsoundness and fury, signifying nonism.
JAMES THURBER
. . . no brief candle to me. It is sort of a splendid torch that I have got hold of for the moment.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
. . . something like a trumpet. If you don't put anything in, you won't get anything out.
W. C. HANDY
. . . playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
SAMUEL BUTLER
. . . either a daring adventure, or nothing.
. . . an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
CARL SANDBURG
. . . like eating artichokes. You've got to go through so much to get so little.
T. A. DORGAN
. . . a scrambled egg.
DON MARQUIS
. . . far too important a thing ever to talk about.
OSCAR WILDE
. . . like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
LEWIS GRIZZARD
LIGHT
These are the soul cages. These are the soul cages. Swim to the light.
STING
I'm going to turn on the light, and we'll be two people in a room looking at each other and wondering why on earth we were afraid of the dark.
GALE WILHELM
His word burned like a lamp.
ECCLESIASTICUS 48:1
Light, love, life.
JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER epitaph
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light, and there was light."
GENESIS 1:1-3
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.
JESUS OF NAZARETH Matthew 5:14-16
Beyond plants are animals, Beyond animals is man, Beyond man is the universe. The Big Light, Let the Big Light in!
JEAN TOOMER
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
EDITH WHARTON
There was a young lady named Bright, Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way, And returned home the previous night.
ARTHUR BULLER
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
And God smiled again, And the rainbow appeared, And curled itself around his shoulder.
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
Everything has a crack in it—that's how the light gets in.
More light!
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE last words
[The sun] gives light as soon as he rises.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense: the last was the light of reason.
FRANCIS BACON
Reason is the light and lamp of life.
CICERO
Reason is a natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties.
JOHN LOCKE
If we would be guided by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.
LOUIS BRANDEIS
Literature is a kind of intellectual light which, like the light of the sun, may sometimes enable us to see what we do not like.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
There are two kinds of light—the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.
JAMES THURBER
Light is the symbol of truth.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Knowledge is nothing but the continually burning up of error to set free the light of truth.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
To do right is to be faithful to the light within.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
In life, the thing to do is supply light and not heat.
WOODROW WILSON
Consciousness is the inner light kindled in the soul; a music, strident or sweet, made by the friction of existence.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Dreaming is to think by moonlight by the light of an inner moon.
JULES RENARD
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness.
THOMAS CARLYLE
LIVING IN THE FUTURE
I still lived in the future—a habit which is the death of happiness.
QUENTIN CRISP
Haste, haste, has no blessing.
SWAHILI PROVERB
If a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. Such a creature is probably immortal.
We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope still push us on toward the future.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Ah, the future! That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
AMBROSE BIERCE
LIVING IN THE PAST
Memory, the priestess, kills the present and offers its heart on the shrine of the dead past.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
LIVING IN THE PRESENT
I hear that you're building your house deep in the desert. Are you living for nothing now? I hope you're keeping some kind of record.
LEONARD COHEN "FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT"
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
WILLIAM INGE, DEAN St. Paul's, London
They were upon their great theme: "When I get to be a man!" Being human, though boys, they considered their present estate too commonplace to be dwelt upon. So, when the old men gather, they say: "When I was a boy!" It really is the land of nowadays that we never discover.
BOOTH TARKINGTON
I scarcely remember counting upon happiness—I look not for it if it be not in the present hour—nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights—or if a sparrow come before my window I will take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.
"We live in the present, we dream of the future and we learn eternal truths from the past.
MADAME CHIANG KAI-SHEK
No time like the present.
MARY DE LA RIVIÈRE MANLEY
Every situation—nay, every moment—is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
IGOR STRAVINSKY
No mind is much employed upon the present. Recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The supreme value is not the future but the present. The future is a deceitful time that always says to us, "Not yet," and thus denies us. The future is not the time of love: what man truly wants he wants now. Whoever builds a house for future happiness builds a prison for the present.
OCTAVIO PAZ
Those who talk about the future are scoundrels. It is the present that matters.
LOUIS FERDINAND CÉLINE
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act,—act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
ARTHUR MILLER
Past and to come seem best; things present worst.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it.
FRANÇOIS LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Remember that the sole life which a man can lose is that which he is living at the moment.
MARCUS ANTONINUS
For present joys are more to flesh and blood, than a dull prospect of a distant good.
JOHN DRYDEN
The present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or to attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
We can see well into the past; we can guess shrewdly into the future; but that which is rolled up and muffled in impenetrable folds is today.
Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
ALBERT CAMUS
There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards; they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.
MARIE EDGEWORTH
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
As for the Future, your task is not to foresee but to enable it.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-ÉXUPÉRY
The man least dependent upon the morrow, that is, the person living in and enjoying the moment, goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.
EPICURUS
AIDS has come upon us with cruel abandon. It has forced us to confront and deal with the frailty of our being and the reality of death. It has forced us into a realization that we must cherish every moment of the glorious experience of this thing we call life. We are learning to value our own lives and the lives of our loved ones as if any moment may be the last.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
Capture the moment, whoever you are. None of us is here forever.
ADRIAN
Be here now.
RAM DASS
The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.
LOVE
See also ROMANTIC LOVE
Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.
R. A. DICKSON
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
ALEXANDER SMITH
We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.
JACQUES MARITAIN
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
KEN KESEY
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
LILY TOMLIN
Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled.
HARLAN ELLISON
You love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered.
D. H. LAWRENCE
There is a Law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish.
ALFRED ADLER
Love is a metaphysical gravity.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Now I adore my life With the Bird, the abiding Leaf, With the Fish, the questing Snail, And the Eye altering all; And I dance with William Blake For love, for Love's sake.
THEODORE ROETHKE
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
WOLFGANG AMADÉUS MOZART
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known.
WALT DISNEY
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
MAE WEST
In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.
LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Love without attachment is light.
NORMAN O. BROWN
Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. AUDEN
So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
PAUL I Corinthians 13
He that gives his heart will not deny his money.
THOMAS FULLER, M.D.
This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Give all to love; Obey thy heart.
So, the All—Great, were the All—Loving too.
ROBERT BROWNING
The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in that we arouse.
FRANÇOIS LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
I love it, I love it; and who shall dare, to chide me for loving that old armchair?
ELIZA COOK
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Large was his wealth, but larger was his heart.
JOHN DRYDEN
LUXURY
A private railroad car is not an acquired taste. One takes to it immediately.
ELEANOR R. BELMONT
It's lavish, but I call it home.
CLIFTON WEBB (TO DANA ANDREWS) LAURA
Who serves a good lord lives always in luxury.
POEM OF THE CID
The luxury of doing good surpasses every other personal enjoyment.
JOHN GAY
His successor will send out a tax collector to maintain the royal splendor.
DANIEL 11:20 explaining what to do after inheriting a kingdom
Luxury comes as a guest, to take a slave.
JONI MITCHELL
Copyright © 1996 Prelude Press, Inc. site credits