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LOVEY HOWELL: You know, I really wouldn't mind being poor, if it weren't for one thing. THURSTON HOWELL III: What is that, my dear? LOVEY: Poverty.
It's no shame being poor, but it's no great honor, either.
SHELDON HARNICK
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
SYDNEY SMITH
Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.
WILLIAM PITT
It's no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might be proud to call his own, but I wish to sell out.
MARK TWAIN
Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.
I've always been after the trappings of great luxury, you see, I really, really have. But all I've got hold of are the trappings of great poverty. I've got hold of the wrong load of trappings, and a rotten load of trappings they are too, ones I could have very well done without.
PETER COOK
Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind.
Robert Louis Stevenson
When the gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers.
OSCAR WILDE
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
VOLTAIRE
Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service and therefore more generally chosen.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
O ye Gods, grant us what is good whether we pray for it or not, but keep evil from us even though we pray for it.
PLATO
I am just going to pray for you at St. Paul's, but with no very lively hope of success.
SYDNEY SMITH
Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.
WILLIAM INGE
Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Alas, I know if I ever became truly humble, I would be proud of it.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
RALPH KRAMDEN: I promise you this, Norton. I'm gonna learn. I'm gonna learn from here on in how to swallow my pride. ED NORTON: That ought not to be too hard. You've learned how to swallow everything else.
THE HONEYMOONERS
It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
POPE JOHN XXIII
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
ERROL FLYNN
If you trap the moment before it's ripe, The tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go You can never wipe off the tears of woe.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
C. NORTHCOTE PARKINSON
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
THOMAS EDISON
Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
ST. AUGUSTINE
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.
ANTON CHEKHOV
Do not put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.
JOSH BILLINGS
Most people put off till tomorrow that which they should have done yesterday.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
MARK TWAIN
He who hesitates is poor.
ZERO MOSTEL
He who hesitates is a damned fool.
MAE WEST
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
He promised me earrings, but he only pierced my ears.
ARABIAN SAYING
I wish you all sorts of prosperity with a little more taste.
ALAIN RENÉ LESAGE
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
3 JOHN 2
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshiped.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
First he bought a '57 Biscayne and put it in a ditch. He drank up all the rest, that sonofabitch.
JONI MITCHELL
Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
PSALM 122:7
Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.
MARK TWAIN
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
MARK TWAIN
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor. Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Public opinion is compounded of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.
ROBERT PEEL
Strong lives are motivated by dynamic purposes.
KENNETH HILDEBRAND
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
RICHARD BACH
Perfections of means and confusion of goals seem—in my opinion—to characterize our age.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Since I was twenty-four there never was any vagueness in my plans or ideas as to what God's work was for me.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
You have to know what you want to get.
GERTRUDE STEIN
Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.
DON MARQUIS
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER
As Miss America, my goal is to bring peace to the entire world and then to get my own apartment.
JAY LENO
Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.
WALTER PATER
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
QUENTIN CRISP
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.
ERICH FROMM
The real distinction is between those who adapt their purposes to reality and those who seek to mould reality in the light of their purposes.
HENRY KISSINGER
Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and our gifts.
GEORGES ROUAULT
My function in life was to render clear what was already blindingly conspicuous.
QUENTIN CRISP
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
ROBERT BYRNE
Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
MARGARET YOUNG
I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR the night before his death
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
DR. ROBERT SCHULLER
Human beings seem to have an almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for the truth. One's only task is to realize oneself.
R. D. LAING
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
ERICH FROMM
You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
JAMES ALLEN
Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upwards from the unconscious . . . As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
C. G. JUNG
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
There is then a simple answer to the question "What is the purpose of our individual lives?" They have whatever purpose we succeed in putting into them.
A. J. AYER
From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any first and foremost object but one— to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for himself.
MARK TWAIN
What do people want? They want to be themselves, they want to reach their own potential. Some of them want men, some of them want women, some of them want neither, some of them want a pet turtle. The bottom line is self-expression.
PAUL KRASSNER
Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
HENRY JAMES
Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
RITA RUDNER
The real difference between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination, can accomplish almost anything; and in this lies the distinction between great men and little men.
THOMAS FULLER
When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it—don't back down and don't give up—then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.
BOB DYLAN
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that a caprice lasts a little longer.
OSCAR WILDE
I don't continually question my reason to live. It's just a state of being. The real question is what you're doing with the living you're doing, and what you want to do with that living.
MICK JAGGER
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
A man needs a purpose for real health.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
I want death to find me planting my cabbages.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. We learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
FRANCIS OF ASSISI
The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.
HORACE
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
COCO CHANEL
Follow your bliss.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become—to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-ÉXUPÉRY
Great men are instruments by which the Highest One works out his designs; light-radiators to give guidance and blessing to the travelers of time.
MOSES HARVEY
The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty concludes to build a woodshed.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Be not simply good; be good for something.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.
WASHINGTON IRVING
If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life.
ROBERT PANTE
No wind favors him who has no destined port.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
In life, as in football, you won't go far unless you know where the goalposts are.
ARNOLD GLASOW
There are few moments during her recital when one can relax and feel confident that she will make her goal, which is the end of the song.
PAUL HUME
The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
When a fantasy turns you on, you're obligated to God and nature to start doing it—right away.
STEWART BRAND
After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.
SPOCK STAR TREK
Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going.
GEORGE MORLEY
Take care to get what you like, or you will end by liking what you get.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be "happy." I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.
LEO ROSTEN
But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
EXODUS 9:16
The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose.
1 CORINTHIANS 3:8
It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.
HUGH BLACK
Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters—to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.
LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH
We live very close together. So, our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them at least don't hurt them.
DALAI LAMA
Grasp all, lose all.
FOURTEENTH-CENTURY PROVERB
The true profession of a man is to find his way to himself.
HERMANN HESSE
First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal—a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends—wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
ARISTOTLE
What is my loftiest ambition? He answered: I've always wanted to throw an egg into an electric fan.
OLIVER HERFORD
Copyright © 1996 Prelude Press, Inc. site credits