Sayings & Quotes

[Lilith7]

"The sound of laughter has always seemed to me the most civilised music in the universe."
Peter Ustinov

"We shall not perish as a people even if we get our money supply wrong-but if we get our human relationships wrong, we shall destroy ourselves."
Robert Runcle

"If you keep looking in the rear vision mirror you'll miss the huge wreck coming up in front of you."

“Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery by doubling our joy and dividing our grief”

"To err is human to arr is pirate."
Anon

[Lilith7]

A Civil War general a few seconds before being shot and after being told to take cover - "Don't be silly, they couldn't hit a barn door from that distance"


"The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured."

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad....."
Anon

"We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one."
Tom Hiddleston

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
George Bernard Shaw


"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."
      Confucius

[Lilith7]

"In the long run ,we shape our own lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility."
Eleanor Roosevelt


“Nothing is more important than empathy for another human beings suffering. Nothing, Not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we are going to survive with dignity”
Audrey Hepburn


"One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy & understanding are sufficient."
Charles M Blow

"If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble."
Bob Hope

[Lilith7]

“Attention is the rarest and purest form  of generosity”
Simone Weil


 "As we attune ourselves more and more closely to the value of passing moments, we learn that  we are something of a moment ourselves.”
Julia Cameron


"If you found out you were dying, would you be nicer, love more ,try something new?
Well you are. We all are."
Anon

‘In the affairs of others even fools are wise. In their own business even sages err.’
Po Chu-i

[Lilith7]

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived & lived well.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson


"We need leaders  not in love with money but in love with justice, not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.”
Martin Luther King Jnr.

“Each of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm. When we look at each other we must say  I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.”
 Maya Angelou


“Now the New Year reviving old desires, the thoughtful soul to solitude retires.”
Omar Khayyam

[Lilith7]

“What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year.”
Vern McLellan

“We all get the exact same 365 days. The only difference is what we do with them.”
Hillary DePiano

Famous last words
Humphrey Bogart, actor:
"I should never have switched from scotch to martinis."


Ludwig van Beethoven, composer and pianist:
There are a variety of reports regarding Beethoven's last words. Some say the composer, who was deaf by the end of his life, said:
"I will hear in heaven"

while others suggest he said:
"Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est" (Applaud, friends, the comedy is finished)

But still others say that after a publisher brought the composer 12 bottles of wine, his final words were:
"Pity, pity, too late!"


Groucho Marx, comedian and film star:
"This is no way to live!"

Leonardo da Vinci, inventor and painter:
"I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have."


Augustus Caesar, first Roman emperor:
"I found Rome of clay; I leave it to you of marble." — what he reportedly said to his subjects.
"Have I played the part well? Then applaud me as I exit." — what he reportedly said to his friends who were with him throughout his reign.

Karl Marx, philosopher:
"Last words are for fools who haven't said enough."

[Lilith7]

“Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.”
Colin Wilson

“Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.”

“Knowledge is something which you can use.
Belief is something which uses you.”


“When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.”

“Right time, right place, right people equals success.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.”
Idries Shah

[Lilith7]

"When thinking about life remember this; no amount of guilt can change the past, & no amount of worrying can change the future."
Umar Ibn Al-Khattaab

"My parents taught  me honesty, truth, compassion, kindness and how to care for people. Also they encouraged m e to take risks, to boldly go. They taught me that the greatest danger in life is  not taking the adventure."
Brian Blessed

‘Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. ‘

'What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.'
Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Lilith7]

"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you."

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Ralph Waldo Emerson


"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. "

"O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."
T. S. Eliot

[Lilith7]

The older you get, the more quiet you become. Life humbles you so deeply as you age, you realise how much nonsense you’ve wasted the time on.
Anon


“Challenges are gifts  that force us to search for a new centre of gravity 
Oprah Winfrey

"Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace."
Martin Luther King

"A lot of problems in the world would disappear if we talked to each other instead of about each other."
Anon

‘Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.’
Jean-Paul Richter

[Lilith7]

There was a star danced, & under that star was I born.’
Shakespeare


“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
Ursula Le Guin


‘Monday’s child is full of grace,
Tuesday’s child is fair of face,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving & giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for its living,
And a child that’s born on the sabbath day
Is fair & wise & good & gay.’
 Traditional nursery rhyme

“Dancing is the best medicine that cures all mental & heart & body aches.
You dance, you fly. You dance with passion & love & you will be pretty much closer to your very own essence as a human.”
Eugenia Rakassah

[Lilith7]

“History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything. “
Jeffrey D.Sachs (Economist.)


"Live in such a way that if someone spoke badly of you, no one would believe it."
Anon


"Acquire knowledge, it enables its professor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven. It is our friend in the desert, our company in solitude and companion when friendless. It guides us to happiness, it sustains us in misery, it is an ornament amongst friends and an armour against enemies."
(widely attributed to the Prophet Mohammed)


“Employers have gone away from the idea that an employee is a long-term asset to the company, someone to be nurtured and developed, to a new notion that they are disposable.”
Barbara Ehrenreich

[Lilith7]

“Both chronic, long-term poverty and downward mobility from the middle class are in the same category of things that America likes not to think about.”

“Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favours not only the clever but the murderous.”


“No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.”

“America is addicted to wars of distraction.”


“We love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist.”

“Like many other women, I could not understand why every man who changed a diaper has felt impelled, in recent years, to write a book about it.”


“Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.”

Barbara Ehrenreich

[Lilith7]

"When you have more than you need build a bigger table – not a higher fence."
Anon


"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you."
John Bunyan


"The undefined negotiated by the unprepared, to get the unspecified for the uninformed."
Brexit definition, letter to the Irish times


"If we could look into each other’s hearts, & understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, & care."

"Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth."
Anon

[Lilith7]

"The moral crisis of our age has nothing to do with gay marriage or abortion; its insider trading, obscene CEO pay, wage theft from ordinary workers, Wall streets continued gambling addiction, corporate payoffs to friendly politicians & the billionaire takeover of our democracy."
Robert Reich


"Learn to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else."
Leonardo Da Vinci

"You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there."
George Burns

“The  greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.”

“Life would be tragic, if it weren’t so funny.“
Stephen Hawking


“I think we have all experienced passion that is not in any sense reasonable.”

“Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness.”

“Generally, we admire the thing we are not.”

Stephen Fry

[Lilith7]

"The premise of minimum wage when it was introduced, was that a single wage earner should be able to own a house & support a family. That was what it was based on; a full time job, any job, should be able to accomplish this.
The fact that people scoff at this idea if presented nowadays, as though the people who ring up your groceries or hand you your burgers don’t deserve the luxury of a home & family is disgusting."
Detrea

"Also, if a livable wage breaks the system then the system deserves to be broken."
Femoids


“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

"It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself."

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Eleanor Roosevelt

[Lilith7]

"Friendship with one’s self is all important, because without it one can not be friends with anyone else in the world."

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

"Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness you are able to give."

"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."
Eleanor Roosevelt


"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people taking themselves too seriously."
Robert Weighton

[Lilith7]

"If you can't laugh at yourself Jeffrey, you are missing out on the Joke of the Century"
Dame Edna Everidge to Baron Archer



“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
Einstein

“I do not believe making money in order to consume goods is mankind’s sole purpose on this planet. If you’re wondering what I believe our purpose on this planet is, I’ll give you a hint: It has to do with creating and sharing.”
Bill Hicks



“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible. “

“The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made. “

“You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”


“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”


“When I was a boy, the Dead sea was only sick.”

“It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.”

George Burns

[Lilith7]

“If we reach the limit of human endurance, if the pain goes beyond the grasp of palliative care; we should have the human right to say: “This far & no further” & be assisted, with proper safeguards to take such steps as necessary to quit this life in dignity.”
Alex Cole-Hamilton

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”

“When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'.”

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.”


“I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.”

“Humour is reason gone mad.”

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


“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

“I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.”

“Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well I have others.”

“One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.”

“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.”

“If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.”


Groucho Marx






Groucho Marx


“I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.”


“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”



“If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.”

“Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.”

“Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.”


“A child of five could understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
Groucho Marx

[Lilith7]

“I intend to live forever, or die trying.”

“Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women.”


“Whatever it is, I'm against it.”

“I have nothing but respect for you -- and not much of that.”


“While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.”

Groucho Marx