Here are some of my favorite quotes. Some of these are serious, some are humorous, and they all are worthy of contemplation.
Double-secret extra credit is available! This is not announced, it is only a product of you discovering this page.
For extra points, select one of these quotes and:
-re-write it
-give a valid interpretation
-apply it to either your life and your own philosophy or to a work of literature (give good supporting details)
More effort = more points.
You can do this up to once per week.
THE QUOTATIONS:
“The highest result of education is tolerance.”
- Helen Keller
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” -Dale Carnegie
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
- Stephen King
“Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature” -Charles Dickens
“Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive” -Margaret Mead
"When you do
the common things in life in an uncommon way,
you will command the attention of the world."
*George Washington Carver
What is written without effort is in general
read without pleasure.
*
Samuel Johnson
One forgets words as one forgets names. One's
vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.
*
Evelyn Waugh
An author ought to write for the youth of his own
generation, the critics of the next, and the school-masters of ever afterward.
*
F. Scott Fitzgerald
English is such a deliciously complex and
undisciplined language, we can bend, fuse, distort words to all our purposes. We
give old words new meanings, and we borrow new words from any language that
intrudes into our intellectual environment.
*
Willard Gaylin
"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art
is
knowing which ones to keep."
--Scott Adams
"He who joyfully marches to
music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large
brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brainsurgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile."
-Robert Cormier
There are two ways of being creative. One can
sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers
flourish.
Warren G. Bennis
“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.” -Stephen King
“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” -Stephen King
It has always surprised me how little attention
philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind
than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is
involved in changing them.
Edward de Bono
The need to be right all the time is the biggest
bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong
than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
Edward de Bono
Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body
rather than a body with a soul.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Everything is perfect in the universe - even your desire to improve it.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes
on inside.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
I will grow. I will become something new and grand, but no grander than I now
am. Just as the sky will be different in a few hours, its present perfection and
completeness is not deficient, so am I presently perfect and not deficient
because I will be different tomorrow. I will grow and I am not deficient.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and
laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the poser to choose either.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Simply put, you believer that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not
accurate. You make yourself unhappy.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last.
The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there's
only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with.
Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
The sun, the moon and the stars would have
disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory
human hands.
Henry Havelock Ellis
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve
without it.
Henry Havelock Ellis
What is to give light must endure burning.
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl
Everything that irritates us about others can
lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Carl Gustav Jung
If there is anything we wish to change in the
child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could
better be changed in ourselves.
Carl Gustav Jung
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for
dealing with the darknesses of other people.
Carl Gustav Jung
One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant
teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The
curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element
for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Carl Gustav Jung
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside,
awakes.
Carl Gustav Jung
A musician must make music, an artist must paint,
a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
Abraham H. Maslow
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every
problem as a nail.
Abraham H. Maslow
What's done to children, they will do to society.
Karl A. Menninger
Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially
if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need
encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody
your judge.
Fritz Perls
Happiness does not come from doing easy work but
from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a
difficult task that demanded our best.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the
recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
A teacher should have maximal authority, and
minimal power.
Thomas Szasz
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that
nothing is.
Thomas Szasz
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
Thomas Szasz
Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to
one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their
own self-importance, learn so easily...
Thomas Szasz
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for
medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine
for magic.
Thomas Szasz
In the United States today, there is a pervasive
tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of
children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively
constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.
Thomas Szasz
People often say that this or that person has not
yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one
creates.
Thomas Szasz
The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the
hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding
yourself.
Thomas Szasz
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive
forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Thomas Szasz
"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of you doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use."
-Earl Nightingale
“I often wonder how different the world would be if Hitler had not been turned down when he applied to art school.”
-George Carlin
“If you nail a tool shed closed, how do you put the hammer away?”
-George Carlin
“Some people see the glass as half full, some see it as half empty…I see the glass as too big.”
-George Carlin
"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."
--Virginia Woolf
“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without ever going over. Out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
Kirt Vonnegut Jr.
“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.”
-George Carlin
