c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later.
— Lucimar Santos de Lima
The average pencil is seven inches long  with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.
— Robert Brault
Stop the mindless wishing that things would be different. Rather than wasting time and emotional and spiritual energy in explaining why we don't have what we want  we can start to pursue other ways to get it.
— Greg Anderson
Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul  impossibilities vanish.
— Jean de la Fontaine
Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers  powers that would astonish him  that he never dreamed of possessing  forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.
— Orison S. Marden
Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs.
— Maxwell Maltz
Exhilaration of life can be found only with an upward look. This is an exciting world. It is cram-packed with opportunity. Great moments wait around every corner.
— Richard Devos
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared to believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
— Bruce Barton
It is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that we are never so much human as when we are striving for what is beyond our grasp  and that there is no battle worth the winning save that against our own ignorance and fear.
— James Ramsey Ullman
I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace  harmony  health  love  and abundance. Then whenever doubt  anxiety  or fear try to call me  they keep getting a busy signal and soon they'll forget my number.
— Edith Armstrong
You can do anything you wish to do  have anything you wish to have  be anything you wish to be.
— Robert Collier
People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
— Norman Vincent Peale
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matter compared to what lies within us.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
No matter what level of your ability  you have more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime.
— James McCay
Everyone has got it in him  if he will only make up his mind and stick at it. None of us is born with a stop-valve on his powers or with a set limit to his capacities. There is no limit possible to the expansion of each one of us.
— Charles Schwab
Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can bel How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is I
— Anne Frank
The power which resides in man is new in nature  and none but he knows what that is which he can do  nor does he until he has tried.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ask  and it shall be given you  seek  and ye shall find  knock  and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh  receiveth  and he that seeketh  findeth  and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
— Bible
If we did all the things we are capable of doing  we would literally astound ourselves.
— Thomas Alva Edison
Each of us makes his own weather  determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits.
— Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Every beauty and greatness in this world is created by a single thought or emotion inside a man. Every thing we see today  made by past generations  was  before its appearance  a thought in the mind of a man or an impulse in the heart of a woman.
— Kahlil Gibran
Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus  only by hard work  risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: yourself.
— Alan Alda
Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life.
— John Miller
I am not discouraged  because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
— Thomas Alva Edison
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
— Betty Smith
One for whom the pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes.
— Par Lagerkvist
We're all only fragile threads  but what a tapestry we make.
— Jerry Ellis
Today  let's give thanks for life. For life itself. For simply being born!
— Daphne Rose Kingma
I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
— Cicero
Peace rules the day  where reason rules the mind.
— William Collins
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
— Benjamin Franklin
Peace be with you.
— Bible
I have never advocated war  except as a means of peace.
— Ulysses S. Grant
They shall beat their swords into ploughshares  and their spears into pruninghooks  nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war any more.
— Bible
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb  and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.
— Bible
I am a man of peace  God knows how I love peace  but I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace.
— Louis Kossuth
Peace at any price.
— Alphonse de Lamartine
Glory to God  in the highest  and on earth peace  good will toward men.
— Bible
Peace be to this house.
— Bible
Peace hath her victories  No less renowned than war.
— John Milton
If they want peace  nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon-shots.
— Napoleon
Her ways are ways of pleasantness  and all her paths are peace.
— Bible
Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
— Bible
Peace be within thy walls  and prosperity within they palaces.
— Bible
If peace cannot be maintained with honor  it is no longer peace.
— Lord Russell
Peace won by compromise is usually a short-lived achievement.
— Winfield Scott
If the pursuit of peace is both old and new  it is also both complicated and simple. It is complicated  for it has to do with people  and nothing in this universe baffles man as much as man himself.
— Adlai Stevenson
The war-drum throbb'd no longer  and the battleflags were furl'd In the parliament of man  the federation of the world.
— Lord Alfred Tennyson
To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
— George Washington
The pen is mightier than the sword.
— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men  I will find something in them which will hang him.
— Richelieu
The voice of the people is the voice of God.
— Alcuin
The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
— Thomas Jefferson
We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain  that this nation  under God  shall have a new birth of freedom  and that government of the people  by the people  and for the people  shall not perish from the earth.
— Abraham Lincoln
God must have loved the plain people: He made so many of them.
— Abraham Lincoln
The second  sober thought of the people is seldom wrong  and always efficient.
— Martin Van Buren
The two kinds of people on earth that I mean Are the people who lift and the people who lean.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Perfection does not exist. To understand this is the triumph of human intelligence  to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.
— Alfred de Musset
So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.
— Beatrice Potter Webb
The essence of man is imperfection.
— Norman Cousins
A new idea is rarely born like Venus attended by graces. More commonly it's modeled of baling wire and acne. More commonly it wheezes and tips over.
— Marge Piercy
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
— George Orwell
There is no perfection in humanity.
— Samuel Montagne
Perfection never exists in reality  but only in our dreams.
— Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs
He is lifeless that is faultless.
— English proverb
Perfection is out of the question.
— Anne Archer
His only fault is that he has no fault.
— Pliny, the Younger
If you're looking for perfection  look in the mirror. If you find it there  expect it elsewhere.
— Malcolm Forbes
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it has been written  the world would end.
— Robert Graves
It is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.
— Saint Augustine
A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.
— John Henry Cardinal Newman
What  after all  is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.
— Christopher Fry
Angels can do no better.
— K. Panuthos
To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
— Norman Cousins
Striving for perfection is the greatest stopper there is. You'll be afraid you can't achieve it. ... It's your excuse to yourself for not doing anything. Instead  strive for excellence  doing your best.
— Sir Laurence Olivier
The "C" students run the world.
— Harry S. Truman
You know what they call the guy who finishes last in medical school? They call him Doctor!
— Abe Lemons
A good garden may have some weeds.
— Thomas Fuller
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
— John Berger
Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.
— Ned Rorem
A finished person is a boring person.
— Anna Quindlen
He is all fault who hath no fault at all. For who loves me must have a touch of earth.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson
You're only human  you're supposed to make mistakes.
— Billy Joel
Truth is immortal  error is mortal.
— Mary Baker Eddy
I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.
— Felix Frankfurter
Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.
— Pamela Hansford Johnson
I like a man with faults  especially when he knows it. To err is human- I'm uncomfortable around gods.
— Hugh Prather
If the best man's faults were written on his forehead  it would make him pull his hat over his eyes.
— Gaelic proverb
Friendships aren't perfect  and yet they are very precious. For me  not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.
— Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing  if not carcinogenic.
— Ursula K. LeGuin
A concern with the perfectibility of mankind is always a symptom of thwarted or perverted development.
— Hugh Kingsmill
When everything has to be right  something isn't.
— Stanislaw Lee
The maxim "Nothing avails but perfection" may be spelled "Paralysis."
— Winston Churchill
Perfectionism is a dangerous state of mind in an imperfect world.
— Robert Hillyer
Perfectionism is slow death.
— Hugh Prather
Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
— Carlos Fuentes
The more a human being feels himself a self  tries to intensify this self and reach a never-attainable perfection  the more drastically he steps out of the center of being.
— Eugene Herrigel
The man who makes no mistakes lacks boldness and the spirit of adventure. He never tries anything new. He is a brake on the wheels of progress.
— M. W. Larmour
I only have to stop the puck  not beat it to death.
— Don Beaupre
To try to be better is to be better.
— Charlotte Cushman
Even a clock that is not going is right twice a day.
— Polish proverb
When we do the best that we can  we never know what miracle is wrought in our life  or in the life of another.
— Helen Keller
We're the best team in baseball. But not by much.
— Sparky Anderson
We fought hard. We gave it our best. We did what was right and we made a difference.
— Geraldine Ferraro
Use what talents you have  the woods would have little music if no birds sang their song except those who sang best.
— Reverend Oliver G. Wilson
I'll take any way to get into the Hall of Fame. If they want a batboy  I'll go in as a batboy.
— Phil Rizzuto
Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things  but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.
— Angelique Arnauld
One must not hold one's self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one's creations.
— Ludwig van Beethoven
If I'd been a housemaid  I'd have been the best in Australia-I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me.
— Nellie Melba
When something has been perfect  there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.
— Edna O'Brien
The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.
— Eugene Delacroix
You just have to learn not to care about the dust mites under the beds.
— Margaret Mead
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word-excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
— Pearl S. Buck
Excellence encourages one about life generally  it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
— George Eliot
Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do the best.
— Marva Collins
The very pink of perfection.
— Oliver Goldsmith
There are many lovely women  but no perfect ones.
— Victor Hugo
Trifles make perfection  and perfection is no trifle.
— Michelangelo
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see. Thinks what ne'er was  nor is  nor e'er shall be.
— Alexander Pope
Grudge no expense-yield to no opposition-forget fatigue-till  by the strength of prayer and sacrifice  the spirit of love shall have overcome.
— Maria Weston Chapman
There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.
— Toni Morrison
To look back is to relax one's vigil.
— Bette Davis
There's nothing in this world that comes easy. There are a lot of people who aren't going to bother to win. We learn in football to get up and go once more.
— Woody Hayes
Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something  and that this thing  at whatever cost  must be attained.
— Marie Curie
You can do what you want to do  accomplish what you want to accomplish  attain any reasonable objective ... if you want it  if you will to do it  if you work to do it  over a sufficiently long period of time.
— William E. Holler
To persevere  trusting in what hopes he has  is courage in a man. The coward despairs.
— Euripides
There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men  but austere perseverance  harsh and continuous  may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose  for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.
— Johann von Goethe
We conquer by continuing.
— George Matheson
When you stop talking  you've lost your customer.
— Estee Lauder
To tend  unfailingly  unflinchingly  towards a goal  is the secret of success.
— Anna Pavlova
Great works are performed not by strength  but by perseverance.
— Samuel Johnson
Any man can work when every stroke of his hands brings down the fruit rattling from the tree ... but to labor in season and out of season  under every discouragement... that requires a heroism which is transcendent.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Until I die  I'm going to keep doing. My people need me. They need somebody that's not taking from them and is giving them something.
— Clara McBride Hale
Be like a postage stamp-stick to one thing until you get there.
— Josh Billings
Keep on going  and the chances are that you will stumble on something  perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.
— Charles F. Kettering
With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance  all things are attainable.
— Sir Thomas Foxwell Buxton
For me  at least  there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until  by and by  out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Nothing in the world can take place of persistence. Talent will not  nothing is more common than unsuccessful individuals with talent. Genius will not  unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not  the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
— Calvin Coolidge
In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm  in the real world  all rests on perseverance.
— Johann von Goethe
Without perseverance talent is a barren bed.
— Welsh proverb
Don't be discouraged. It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.
— Anonymous
Dear God  I pray for patience. And I want it right now!
— Oren Arnold
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs  it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.
— Jean Kerr
The way I see it  if you want the rainbow  you gotta put up with the rain.
— Dolly Parton
I am extraordinarily patient  provided I get my own way in the end.
— Margaret Thatcher
If you want your ship to come in  you must build a dock.
— Anonymous
By perseverance the snails reached the ark.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Hope: A pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.
— H. L. Mencken
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump  you may be freeing him from being a camel.
— G. K. Chesterton
Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first  the lesson afterwards.
— Anonymous
Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who put them into action are priceless.
— Anonymous
As an entrepreneur  I am often asked how I kept my perseverance. Well  persevere comes from the Latin roots purse  as in "money " and sever  as in "cut off." That's why I persevered.
— Brian Morgan
Perseverance is not a long race  it is many short races  one after another.
— Walter Elliott
The waters wear the stones.
— Anonymous
Victory belongs to the most persevering.
— Napoleon
Many strokes  though with a little axe  Hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak.
— William Shakespeare
Do what you love. Know your own bone  gnaw at it  bury it  unearth it  and gnaw it still.
— Henry David Thoreau
A fair exterior is a silent recommendation.
— Publilius Syrus
Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald  with a baldness full of grandeur.
— Matthew Arnold
But Shelley had a hyperthyroid face.
— John C. Squire
He had but one eye  and the pocket of prejudice runs in favour of two.
— Charles Dickens
His ears made him look like a taxi cab with both doors open.
— Howard Hughes
The most delightful advantage of being bald - one can hear snowflakes.
— R. G. Daniels
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity  but in being uninteresting.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Abraham Lincoln's) weathered face was homely as a plowed field.
— Stephen Vincent Benet
Every man over forty is responsible for his face.
— Abraham Lincoln
Don't blame the mirror if your face is faulty.
— Nikolai Gogol
People are like birds - from a distance  beautiful: from close up  those sharp beaks  those beady little eyes.
— Richard J. Needham
Consider the lilies of the field  how they grow  they toil not  neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you  that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
— Bible
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
— William Makepeace Thackeray
He that has a great nose thinks everybody is speaking of it.
— Thomas Fuller
There's one thing about baldness - it's neat.
— Don Herold
One's eyes are what one is  one's mouth what one becomes.
— John Galsworthy
Hair is another name for sex.
— Vidal Sassoon
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible  not the invisible.
— Oscar Wilde
Clothes and manners do not make the man  but  when he is made  they greatly improve his appearance.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.
— Charles Dickens
Why don't you get a haircut  you look like a chrysanthemum.
— P. G. Wodehouse
Her face looks as if it had worn out two bodies.
— New England saying
A man cannot dress  without his ideas get clothed at the same time.
— Laurence Sterne
Where's the man could ease the heart Like a satin gown?
— Dorothy Parker
Let me be dressed fine as I will  Flies  worms  and flowers  exceed me still.
— Isaac Watts
A pessimist is one who feels bad when he feels good for fear he'll feel worse when he feels better.
— Anonymous
How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
A pessimist? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself  and hates them for it.
— George Bernard Shaw
Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Steal the hog  and give the feet for alms.
— George Edward Herbert
I was eyes to the blind  and feet was I to the lame.
— Bible
To pity distress is but human  to relieve it is Godlike.
— Horace Mann
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men  to be seen of them.
— Matthew
When thou doest alms  let not thy left hand know what they right hand doeth.
— Matthew
In other words  apart from the known and the unknown  what else is there?
— Harold Pinter
The unrest which keeps the never-stopping clock metaphysics going is the thought that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
— William James
It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
— Alfred North Whitehead
All philosophy lies in two words  sustain and abstain.
— Epictetus
In philosophy an individual is becoming himself.
— Bernard Lonergan
Romanticism is the expression of man's urge to rise above reason and common sense  just as rationalism is the expression of his urge to rise above theology and emotion.
— Charles Yost
Science is what you know  philosophy is what you don't know.
— Bertrand Russell
Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between men  a search for their cause  a condemnation of mere opinion .. . and the discovery of a standard of judgement.
— Epictetus
Anything that comes easy  comes wrong.
— Josephine Tessier
To teach how to live with uncertainty  and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation  is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.
— Bertrand Russell
All philosophies  if you ride them home  are nonsense  but some are greater nonsense than others.
— Samuel Butler
It is easy to build a philosophy. It doesn't have to run.
— Charles F. Kettering
I've developed a new philosophy - I only dread one day at a time.
— Charles M. Schulz
A man of business may talk of philosophy  a man who has none may practise it.
— Alexander Pope
Philosophy - the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.
— T. S. Eliot
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything - for Death it has an entire set.
— Laurence Sterne
Three passions  simple but overwhelmingly strong  have governed my life: the longing for love  the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
— Bertrand Russell
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
— Alice Roosevelt Longworth
In North America there is the general belief that everything can be fixed  that life can be fixed up. In Europe  the view is that a lot can't be fixed up and that living properly is not necessarily a question of mastering the technology so much as learning to live gracefully within the constraints that the species invents.
— Jonathan Miller
Every day look at a beautiful picture  read a beautiful poem  listen to some beautiful music  and if possible  say some reasonable thing.
— Goethe
When you have only two pennies left in the world  buy a loaf of bread with one. and a lily with the other.
— Chinese proverb
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Philosophy is a good horse in the stable  but an errant jade on a journey.
— Oliver Goldsmith
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings Conquer all mysteries by rule and line  Empty the haunted air  the gnomed mine -Unweave a rainbow.
— John Keats
Adversity's sweet milk  philosophy.
— William Shakespeare
Philosophy is doubt.
— Michel de Montaigne
Be a philosopher but  amid all your philosophy be still a man.
— David Hume
The philosopher is Nature's pilot - and there you have our difference  to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
— George Bernard Shaw
For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.
— William Shakespeare
One's task is not to turn the world upside down  but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism  but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
— Sir Francis Bacon
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
— Ambrose Bierce
Queen of arts  and daughter of heaven.
— Edmund Burke
In philosophy  it is not the attainment of the goal that matters  it is the things that are met with by the way.
— Havelock Ellis
Philosophy goes no further than probabilities  and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.
— James Froude
Whence? wither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy.
— Joseph Joubert
There are more things in heaven and earth  Horatio  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
— William Shakespeare
There was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.
— William Shakespeare
The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
— George Bernard Shaw
The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.
— Voltaire
Instead of just recording reality  photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us  thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.
— Susan Sontag
The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist  but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.
— Brooks Atkinson
You see someone on the street  and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.
— Diane Arbus
If you scratch a great photograph  you find two things: a painting and a photograph.
— Janet Malcolm
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality  and eventually in one's own.
— Susan Sontag
Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face - the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited  and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.
— Edward Steichen
All I wanted was to connect my moods with those of Paris. Beauty pains and when it pained most  I shot.
— Ernst Haas
Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.
— Henri Cartier Bresson
Photographers  along with dentists  are the two professions never satisfied with what they do. Every dentist would like to be a doctor and inside every photographer is a painter trying to get out.
— Pablo Picasso
Life is not about significant details  illuminated in a flash  fixed forever. Photographs are.
— Susan Sontag
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
— Diane Arbus
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
— George Eliot
He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord  and that which he hath given will he pay him again.
— Bible
Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatesoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer.
— James Joyce
A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.
— Oscar Wilde
They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.
— Henry Burton
Most plagiarists  like the drone  have neither taste to select  industry to acquire  nor skill to improve  but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared  from the hive.
— Walter Colton
Goethe said there would be little left of him if he were to discard what he owed to others.
— Charlotte Cushman
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors  Landor replies  "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure  and pleasure my business.
— Aaron Burr
There is no pleasure without a tincture of bitterness.
— Hafiz
Fly the pleasure that bites tomorrow.
— George Edward Herbert
Follow pleasure  and then will pleasure flee  Flee pleasure  and pleasure will follow thee.
— John Heywood
We tire of those pleasures we take  but never of those we give.
— J. Petit-Senn
He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man.
— Bible
No man was ever yet a great poet  without at the same time being a profound philosopher.
— Hartley Coleridge
All men are poets at heart.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Modern poets mix too much water with their ink.
— Goethe
The man is either mad or he is making verses.
— Horace
All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them  but what is universal.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Every man is a poet when he is in love.
— Plato
Poets have a license to lie.
— Pliny the Younger
Villon  our sad bad glad mad brother's name.
— Algernon Charles Swinburne
Poetry  the eldest sister of all arts  and parent of most.
— William Congreve
Poetry is the Devil's wine.
— St. Augustine
Poetry  therefore  we will call Musical Thought.
— Thomas Carlyle
All that is not prose passes for poetry.
— George Grabbe
Oh love will make a dog howl in rhyme.
— John Fletcher
Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty.
— Gilfillan
Let your poem be kept nine years.
— Horace
With me poetry has not been a purpose  but a passion.
— Edgar Allan Poe
I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
The reader who is illuminated is  in a real sense  the poem.
— H. M. Tomlinson
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
— Voltaire
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
— Don Marquis
I was promised on a time  To have reason for my rhyme  From that time unto this season  I received nor rhyme nor reason.
— Edmund Spenser
A drainless shower of light is poesy  'tis the supreme of power  'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.
— John Keats
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe  helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
— Dylan Thomas
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved  the Inquisition might have let him alone.
— Thomas Hardy
In poetry  you must love the words  the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
— Wallace Stevens
One of Wordsworth's Lake District neighbours remarked  upon hearing of the poet's death "I suppose his son will carry on the business."
— Anonymous
Poetry is not a profession  it's a destiny.
— Mikhail Dudan
Poetry must be as new as foam  and as old as the rock.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poets and painters are outside the class system  or rather they constitute a special class of their own  like the circus people and the gypsies.
— Gerald Brenan
The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's  but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.
— G. K. Chesterton
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work  it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.
— T. S. Eliot
When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
— Robert Graves
There's no money in poetry  but then there's no poetry in money either.
— Robert Graves
The essentials of poetry are rhythm  dance and the human voice.
— Earle Birney
Colour  which is the poet's wealth  is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
— Henry David Thoreau
A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer  he approaches lucid ground warily  like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning  to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty  but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
— E. B. White
Most joyful let the Poet be  it is through him that all men see.
— William Ellery Channing
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.
— Cyril Connolly
The poet is the priest of the invisible.
— Wallace Stevens
A good poet is someone who manages  in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms  to be struck by lightning five or six times.
— Randall Jarrell
Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.
— Robert Frost
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
— Robert Penn Warren
When a great poet has lived  certain things have been done once for all  and cannot be achieved again.
— T. S. Eliot
Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.
— J. M. Synge
No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
— T. S. Eliot
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
— Marianne Moore
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry  that is  prose - words in their best order  poetry - the best words in their best order.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Science is for those who learn  poetry for those who know.
— Joseph Roux
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse  retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
— George Santayana
The poet's mind is ... a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings  phrases  images  which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.
— T. S. Eliot
Of our conflicts with others we make rhetoric  of our conflicts with ourselves we make poetry.
— William Butler Yeats
A poem begins with a lump in the throat  a homesickness or alovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression  an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
— Robert Frost
An art in which the artist by means of rhythm and great sincerity can convey to others the sentiment which he feels about life.
— John Masefield
Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.
— Phyllis McGinley
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.
— Aristotle
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
— Robert Frost
To have great poets there must be great audiences too.
— Walt Whitman
Poets aren't very useful  because they aren't consumeful or very produceful.
— Ogden Nash
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door  leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment.
— Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land  wanting to fly in the air.
— Carl Sandburg
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays  and every single one of them is right.
— Rudyard Kipling
Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind.
— Maxwell Bodenheim
For me  poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.
— Sylvia Plath
One man's meat is another's poison.
— English proverb
The man recover'd of the bite  The dog it was that died.
— Oliver Goldsmith
Don't throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery.
— Philander Johnson
He who says what he likes shall hear what he does not like.
— English proverb
Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.
— Oliver Herford
Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate  and may be offensive .
— Samuel Johnson
The opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
— Fran Lebowitz
(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects  whether moral or intellectual  shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
— Honore de Balzac
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
— Sydney Smith
If a man didn't make sense  the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation  for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity.
— J. K. Galbraith
A man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.
— Jean de la Bruyere
Ah  men do not know how much strength is in poise that he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
— James Russell Lowell
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.
— Samuel Johnson
It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
— Mrs. Patrick Campbell
There is always a best way of doing everything  if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is not a single outward mark of courtesy that does not have a deep moral basis.
— Goethe
Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm  and behave as outrageously as the world will let them.
— Logan Pearsall Smith
Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.
— Will Cuppy
I can't stand a naked light bulb  any more than I can stand a rude remark or a vulgar action.
— Tennessee Williams
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
— Eric Hoffer
Chivalry is the most delicate form of contempt.
— Albert Guirard
A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude.
— Oscar Wilde
Chivalry is a poor substitute for justice  if one cannot have both. Chivalry is something like the icing on cake  sweet  but not nourishing.
— Nellie McClung
(A gentleman) is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.
— Fred Allen
This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
— William Lyon Phelps
A gentleman is mindful no less of the freedom of others than of his own dignity.
— Livy
What is the test of good manners? Being able to bear patiently with bad ones.
— Solomon ibn Gabirol
This is the first convention of the space age - where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it.
— David Brinkley
90% of the politicians give the other 10% a bad reputation.
— Henry Kissinger
A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree  if you agree with him  he is a statesman.
— David Lloyd George
All political lives  unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture  end in failure.
— Enoch Powell
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
— Nikita Khrushchev
Probably the most distinctive characteristic of the successful politician is selective cowardice.
— Richard Harris
Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. Had he run unopposed he would have lost.
— Mort Sahl
Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate  appease  bribe  seduce  bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
— Walter Lippman
The British House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.
— Tony Bennett
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve.
— Dean Acheson
I have said what I meant and meant what I said. I have not done as well as I should like to have done  but I have done my best  frankly and forth-rightly  no man can do more  and you are entitled to no less.
— Adlai Stevenson
A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
— William F. Buckley
Greater love hath no man than this  that he lay down his friends for his political life.
— Jeremy Thorpe
I love this job. I love it to death. I love every waking minute of it.
— Joey Smallwood
Now that all the members of the press are so delighted I lost  I'd like to make a statement. As I leave you I want you to know -just think how much you'll be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because  gentlemen  this is my last press conference.
— Richard Nixon
I gave 'em a sword. And they stuck it in  and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position  I'd have done the same.
— Richard Nixon
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom  and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day.
— Abraham Lincoln
If we are strong  our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak  words will be no help.
— John F. Kennedy
Our Congressmen are the finest body of men money can buy.
— Maury Amsterdam
A politician . . . one that would circumvent God.
— William Shakespeare
I shall never ask  never refuse  nor ever resign an office.
— George Washington
I'm not a member of any organized party  I'm a Democrat.
— Will Rogers
A disposition to preserve  and an ability to improve  taken together  would be my standard of a statesman.
— Edmund Burke
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on office  a rottenness begins in his conduct.
— Thomas Jefferson
Whin a man gets to be my age  he ducks political meetin's  an' reads th' papers an' weighs th' ividence an' th' argymints - pro-argymints an' con-argymints  an' makes up his mind ca'mly  an' votes th' Dimmycratic Ticket.
— Finley Peter Dunne
He knows nothing  he thinks he knows everything - that clearly points to a political career.
— George Bernard Shaw
A councillor ought not to sleep the whole night through - a man to whom the populace is entrusted  and who has many responsibilities.
— Homer
One of the luxuries of a politican's life is that you see yourself as others see you.
— Joe Clark
If I believe in something  I will fight for it with all I have. But I do not demand all or nothing. I would rather get something than nothing. Professional liberals want the fiery debate. They glory in defeat. The hardest job for a politician today is to have the courage to be a moderate. It's easy to take an extreme position.
— Hubert Humphrey
A Liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
— Robert Frost
You do not know  you cannot know  the difficulty of the life of a politician. It means every minute of the day or night  every ounce of your energy. There is no rest  no relaxation. Enjoyment? A politician does not know the meaning of the word.
— Nikita Khrushchev
A new Member requires the experience of his first session in the House to teach him how to hang up his overcoat and take his seat in a manner befitting a gentlemen.
— John A. Macdonald
A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
— Simon Cameron
The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence.
— Talleyrand
Since a politician never believes what he says  he is surprised when others believe him.
— Charles de Gaulle
Power is a drug on which the politicians are hooked. They buy it from the voters  using the voters' own money.
— Richard J. Needham
a politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.
— e. e. cummings
A ginooine statesman should be on his guard  if he must hev beliefs  not to b'lieve 'em too hard.
— James Russell Lowell
More men have been elected between Sundown and Sunup than ever were elected between Sunup and Sundown.
— Will Rogers
Macdonald's Law: Never write a letter if you can help it  and never destroy one.
— John A. Macdonald
He is a pragmatist. He is not right wing  nor left wing  nor any wing.
— Robert Stanfield
Politicians make good company for a while just as children do - their self-enjoyment is contagious. But they soon exhaust their favourite subjects -themselves.
— Garry Wills
Your representative owes you  not his industry only  but his judgement  and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
— Edmund Burke
The most important office is that of private citizen.
— Louis D. Brandeis
I'm not an old  experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
— Adlai Stevenson
Never retract  never explain  never apologize - get the thing done and let them howl.
— Nellie McClung
A Conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon  out of respect for that ancient institution  the old one.
— Douglas Jerrold
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
— Karl Marx
The fact that a reactionary can sometimes be right is a little less recognized that the fact that a liberal can be. . . .
— Joseph Gies
An independent is a guy who wants to take the politics out of politics.
— Adlai Stevenson
Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.
— Margaret Thatcher
I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy "Dear Jack: Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide."
— John F. Kennedy
If we cannot now end our differences  at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
— John F. Kennedy
In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
— Charles de Gaulle
Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problems of wheat.
— Socrates
Politics is a blood sport.
— Aneurin Bevan
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
— Ronald Reagan
Politics is the diversion of trivial men who  when they succeed at it  become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
— George Jean Nathan
The great nations have always acted like gangsters  and the small nations like prostitutes.
— Stanley Kubrick
The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
— Plato
The Labour Party is going about the country stirring up apathy.
— William White law
The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out  the conservative adopts them.
— Mark Twain
The trouble with socialists is that they let their bleeding hearts go to their bloody heads.
— Tommy Douglas
The world is a dangerous place to live - not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
— Albert Einstein
Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.
— Mason Cooley
We're eyeball to eyeball  and I think the other fellow just blinked.
— Dean Rusk
What matters in Politics is what men actually do - sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically  and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results.
— Bernard Crick
When Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero 106-43 BC ) was in 64 BC running for consul of Rome he was reported to be advised by his "campaign manager" that the voters "had rather you lied to them than refused them."
— Anonymous
The essential ingredient of politics is timing.
— Pierre Elliott Trudeau
It was a storm in a tea cup  but in politics we sail in paper boats.
— Harold Macmillan
Party-spirit . . . which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
— Alexander Pope
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
— Henry Adams
Ultimately politics in a democracy reflects values much more than it shapes them.
— Arnold A. Rogow
Politics is not a good location or a vocation for anyone lazy  thin-skinned or lacking a sense of humour.
— John Bailey
A question which can be answered without prejudice to the government is not a fit question to ask.
— John G. Diefenbaker
I have never found  in a long experience of politics  that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
— Harold Macmillan
Politics  as a practice  whatever its professions  has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
— Henry Adams