c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Poverty is uncomfortable  as I can testify: but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.
— James A. Garfield
Anytime you play golf for whatever you've got  that's pressure. I'd like to see H.L. Hunt go out there and play for $3 billion.
— Lee Trevino
There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice  because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return.
— Dag Hammarskjold
Even now we can draw back. But once we cross that little bridge  we must settle things by the sword.
— Julius Caesar
You don't know what pressure is until you play for $5 with only $2 in your pocket.
— Lee Trevino
The fixed determination to have acquired the warrior soul  to either conquer or perish with honor  is the secret of victory.
— General George S. Patton
In war there is no substitute for victory.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Victory at all costs  victory in spite of all terror  victory however long and hard the road may be  for without victory there is no survival.
— Winston Churchill
Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored. Better to die than to live in slavery.
— Emmeline Pankhurst
I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is  but it does not admit of holidays.
— Abraham Lincoln
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
— General William T. Sherman
If you start to take Vienna  take Vienna.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
The worth of every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is held.
— Jane Adams
The moment one definitely commits oneself  the Providence moves  too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred. A stream of events issues from the decision  raising unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance  which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.
— WH. Murray
There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you don't wake up with something in your stomach every day that makes you think  "I want to make this movie " it'll never get made.
— Sherry Lansing
We can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed- one doesn't always want to make it-does one? ... But what else can be done? What's the alternative? What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself  in the face of difficulties.
— Katherine Mansfield
I am a stranger to half measures.
— Marita Golden
Perform without fail what you resolve.
— Benjamin Franklin
To say yes  you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no  even if saying no means death.
— Jean Anouilh
What one has  one ought to use  and whatever he does  he should do with all his might.
— Cicero
Nothing's far when one wants to get there.
— Queen Marie of Rumania
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do  do it with thy might.
— Bible
He that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Stay up and really burn the midnight oil. There are no compromises.
— Leontyne Price
Nothing of worthy or weight can be achieved with half a mind  with a faint heart  and with a lame endeavor.
— Isaac Barrow
Don't ask me to give in to this body of mine. I can't afford it. Between me and my body there must be a struggle until death.
— Saint Margaret of Cortona
Morality  like physical cleanliness  is not acquired once and for all: it can only be kept and renewed by a habit of constant watchfulness and discipline.
— Victoria Ocampo
Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character  and one of the best instruments of success. Without it  genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies.
— Lord Chesterfield
My face is set  my gait is fast  my goal is Heaven  my road is narrow  my way is rough  my companions are few  my guide is reliable  my mission is clear. I cannot be bought  compromised  detoured  lured away  turned back  diluted  or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice  hesitate in the presence of adversity  negotiate ... at the table of the enemy  ponder at the pool of popularity  or meander in a maze of mediocrity. I won't give up  shut up  let up  or slow up.
— Robert Moorehead
To have no loyalty is to have no dignity  and in the end  no manhood.
— Peter Taylor Forsyth
If you are ashamed to stand by your colors  you had better seek another flag.
— Anonymous
Great minds have purposes  others have wishes.
— Washington Irving
I don't want people who want to dance  I want people who have to dance.
— George Balanchine
What a man wants to do he generally can do  if he wants to badly enough.
— Louis L'Amour
Never grow a wishbone  daughter  where your backbone ought to be.
— Clementine Paddleford
Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.
— L. J. Cardinal Suenens
He turns not back who is bound to a star.
— Leonardo da Vinci
One advantage of marriage  it seems to me  is that when you fall out of love with him  or he falls out of love with you  it keeps you together until you maybe fall in love again.
— Judith Viorst
You can't try to do things  you simply must do them.
— Ray Bradbury
I am in earnest  I will not equivocate  I will not excuse  I will not retreat a single inch  and I will be heard.
— William Lloyd Garrison
If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing  then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing  let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on.
— Lou Holtz
When I stand before God at the end of my life  I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left  and could say  "I used everything you gave me."
— Erma Bombeck
It seems safe to say that significant discovery  really creative thinking  does not occur with regard to problems about which the thinker is lukewarm.
— Mary Henle
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for  he isn't fit to live.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
Moderation in war is imbecility.
— Admiral John Fisher
Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake  and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.
— Louisa May Alcott
Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent  but with great inner drive  go much further than people with vastly superior talent.
— Sophia Loren
The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers  got hungry  scolded God  were egotistical or impatient in their turns  made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven.
— Phyllis McGinley
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times  always with the same person.
— Mignon McLaughlin
Winners are men who have dedicated their whole lives to winning.
— Woody Hayes
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
— Simone Weil
Unless you can find some sort of loyalty  you cannot find unity and peace in your active living.
— Josiah Royce
Sometimes success is due less to ability than zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.
— Charles Buxton
Now I am steel-set: I follow the call to the clear radiance and glow of the heights.
— Henrik Ibsen
Love me  please  I love you  I can bear to be your friend. So ask of me anything ... I am not a tentative person. Whatever I do  I give up my whole self to it.
— Edna Saint Vincent Millay
I don't care a damn for your loyal service when you think I am right  when I really want it most is when you think I am wrong.
— General Sir John Monash
One's lifework  I have learned  grows with the working and the living. Do it as if your life depended on it  and first thing you know  you'll have made a life out of it. A good life  too
— Theresa Helburn
If you don't stand for something  you'll fall for anything.
— Michael Evans
If you deny yourself commitment  what can you do with your life?
— Harvey Fierstein
The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
— Cecil B. DeMille
Theirs is not to reason why  theirs is but to do or die.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Either do not attempt at all  or go through with it.
— Ovid
If you aren't going all the way  why go at all?
— Joe Namath
You can be an ordinary athlete by getting away with less than your best. But if you want to be a great  you have to give it all you've got-your everything.
— Duke P. Kahanamoku
Put your heart  mind  intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
— Swami Sivananda
It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
— General Douglas MacArthur
Men  like snails  lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
— Walter Savage Landor
It is by losing himself in the objective  in inquiry  creation  and craft  that a man becomes something.
— Paul Goodman
The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.
— William F. Scolavino
The dedicated life is the life worth living.
— Annie Dillard
The secret of living is to find a pivot  the pivot of a concept on which you can make your stand.
— Luigi Pirandello
There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.
— Jim Hightower
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous  you get knocked down by traffic from both sides.
— Margaret Thatcher
He who walks in the middle of the road gets hit from both sides.
— George P. Shultz
I never liked the middle ground-the most boring place in the world.
— Louise Nevelson
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who  in a period of moral crisis  maintain their neutrality.
— Dante Alighieri
The man who sees both sides of an issue is very likely on the fence or up a tree.
— Anonymous
The middle of the road is where the white line is  and that's the worst place to drive.
— Robert Frost
The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception  and  except under very special circumstances  it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.
— John Foster Dulles
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
— Aneurin Bevan
Show me a person who is not an extremist about some things  who is a "middle-of-the-roader" in everything  and I will show you someone who is insecure.
— G. Aiken Taylor
We should not permit tolerance to degenerate into indifference.
— Margaret Chase Smith
Most people are not for or against anything  the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow  to overcome inertia.
— Mary Parker Follett
There is nothing harder than the softness of indifference.
— Juan Montalvo
I could not  at any age  be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never  for whatever reason  turn his back on life.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.
— Bess Myerson
Science may have found a cure for most evils  but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all-the apathy of human beings.
— Helen Keller
The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.
— Ellen Glasgow
We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.
— Nathalie Sarraute
The only place you can win a football game is on the field. The only place you can lose it is in your heart.
— Darrell Royal
I am seeking  I am striving  I am in it with all my heart.
— Vincent van Gogh
He did it with all his heart  and prospered.
— Bible
Wars may be fought with weapons  but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow  and of the man who leads  that gains the victory.
— General George S. Patton
It was my tongue that swore  my heart is unsworn.
— Euripides
Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands  for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.
— B. C. Forbes
Nothing is so common as unsuccessful men with talent. They lack only determination.
— Charles Swindoll
The will to conquer is the first condition of victory.
— Marshal Ferdinand Foch
Strength is a matter of the made-up mind.
— John Beecher
Your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.
— Abraham Lincoln
Common sense is very uncommon.
— Horace Greeley
Common sense is in spite of  not the result of  education.
— Victor Hugo
Common sense is instinct  and enough of it is genius.
— H. W. Shaw
What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings For equal division of unequal earnings  Idler or bungler  or both  he is willing  To fork out his copper and pocket your shilling.
— Ebenezer Elliott
The Communist is a Socialist in a violent hurry.
— G. W. Gough
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.
— Karl Marx
Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In communism  inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
— Proudhon
If you want to read about love and marriage you've got to buy two separate books.
— Alan King
When you are in love with someone you want to be near him all the time  except when you are out buying things and charging them to him.
— Miss Piggy
A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.
— Andre Maurois
The first duty of love is to listen.
— Paul Tillich
You don't marry someone you can live with - you marry the person who you cannot live without.
— Anonymous
Behind every successful man is a surprised woman!
— Maryon Pearson
Love is an act of endless forgiveness  a tender look which becomes a habit.
— Peter Ustinov
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
— Winston Churchill
Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades  but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day  ah  now that's a real treat.
— Joanne Woodward
Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long  intricate  intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.
— Amy Bloom
Love does not consist in gazing at each other  but in looking outward together in the same direction.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
— Aristotle
I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children  they just about throw up.
— Barbara Bush
Love: Two minds without a single thought.
— Philip Barry
Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons  longing  as all individuals do  to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals  can participate in a relationship that  for the moment  is not of two isolated selves but a union.
— Rollo May
I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.
— David Bissonette
You can't put a price tag on love  but you can on all its accessories.
— Melanie Clark
When you love someone  all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
— Elizabeth Bowen
No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is NOT saying.
— Anonymous
"The whole world loves a lover" is an interesting theory  but a very bad legal defense.
— Keith Sullivan
They say love is blind . . . and marriage is an insritution. Well  I'm nor ready for an instirurion for rhe blind just yet.
— Mae West
I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and boughr jewelry.
— Rita Rudner
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her . . . but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
— W. Somerset Maugham
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have  the older she gets  the more interested he is in her.
— Agatha Christie
So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it  and sometimes three.
— Alexandre Dumas
In olden times sacrifices were made at the altar  a custom which is still continued.
— Helen Rowland
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage  half shut afterwards.
— Benjamin Franklin
In the race for love  I was scratched.
— Joan Davis
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for  go live with a car battery.
— Erma Bombeck
To keep the fire burning brightly there's one easy rule: Keep the two logs together  near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart - about a finger's breadth - for breathing room. Good fire  good marriage  same rule.
— Marnie Reed Crowell
Look for a sweet person. Forget rich.
— Estee Lauder
Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
— Mark Twain
One of the silliest lines ever said in a feature film came from Love Story  the 1970s hit  which immortalized the phrase  "Love means never having to say you're sorry." There are few people who would actually want to share a life with someone who held that concept near and dear.
— Marge Kennedy
Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford  as smart as Henry Kissinger  as noble as Ralph Nader  as funny as Woody Allen  and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen  as smart as Jimmy Connors  as funny as Ralph Nader  as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway.
— Judith Viorst
Without love  what are we worth? Eighty-nine cents! Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely.
— Benjamin Franklin
Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.
— Ben Hecht
Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame  very pretty  often hot and fierce  but still only light and flickering. As love grows older  our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals  deep-burning and unquenchable.
— Bruce Lee
We waste time looking for the perfect lover  instead of creating the perfect love.
— Tom Robbins
Men love because they are afraid of themselves  afraid of the loneliness that lives in them  and need someone in whom they can lose themselves as smoke loses itself in the sky.
— V. F. Calverton
When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody  you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
— Harry Burns
[Being in love] is something like poetry. Certainly  you can analyze it and expound its various senses and intentions  but there is always something left over  mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.
— Muriel Spark
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.
— Jonathan Swift
When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always.
— Rita Rudner
What is there in the vale of life Half so delightful as a wife When Friendship  love and peace combine To stamp the marriage bond divine?
— William Cowper
Marrying for love may be a bit risky  but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
— Josh Billings
Love is moral even without legal marriage  but marriage is immoral without love.
— Ellen Key
A virtuous wife is a man's best treasure.
— Muhammad
A wife is the joy of a man's heart.
— Talmud
I thought I was in love once  and then later I thought maybe it was just an inner-ear imbalance.
— Benton Fraser
When love is strong  a man and a woman can make their bed on a sword's blade. When love grows weak  a bed of 60 cubits is not large enough.
— Talmud
Of all the paths [that] lead to a woman's love Pity's the straightest.
— Francis Beaumont
To see her is to love her  And love but her forever  For Nature made her what she is  And never made another.
— Robert Burns
We have lived and loved together Through many changing years  We have shared each other's gladness  And wept each other's tears.
— Charles Jefferys
Being in therapy is great. I spend an hour just talking about myself. It's kinda like being the guy on a date.
— Caroline Rhea
Whenever you want to marry someone  go have lunch with his ex-wife.
— Shelley Winters
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers and they are going to make a game out of it.
— Woody Allen
I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First  let her think she's having her own way. And second  let her have it.
— Lyndon B. Johnson
Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows - marriage does.
— Groucho Marx
Someone asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do  and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact  women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
— Gloria Steinem
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
— Henny Youngman
I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book.
— Gloria Swanson
Americans  who make more of marrying for love than any other people  also break up more of their marriages  but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it.
— Morton Hunt
The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.
— Normal Mailer
Love is what makes two people sit in the middle of a bench when there is plenty of room at both ends.
— Anonymous
A man loves his sweetheart the most  his wife the best  but his mother the longest.
— Irish proverb
No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of him than he deserves.
— Edgar Watson Howe
The bravest thing that men do is love women.
— Mort Sahl
A woman has to love a bad man once or twice in her life  to be thankful for a good one.
— Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Love is passion  obsession  someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that  what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart.
— William Parrisb
One of the things my life has taught me is how important it is to try to say  "I love you" in ways that can be preserved  looked at  and read when you are alone or when there is adversity or when circumstances bring separation. In any case  . . . saying "I love you" is one of the "secrets" of the happy marriage that Ronnie and I have shared. Ronnie's letters move me to this day. They are his gift to me across the years  and throughout the decades of love.
— Nancy Reagan
The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth  beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing  it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident  and the most wonderful of all things in life.
— Hugh Walpole
Tell me thy company and I will tell thee what thou art.
— Miguel de Cervantes
Two's a company  three's a crowd.
— English proverb
We are in the same boat
— Pope Clement
The right hands of fellowship.
— Galatians
Comparisons are odious.
— Archbishop Boiardo
Some say  compared to Bononcini  That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny  Others aver  that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a candle: Strange all this difference should be  'Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!
— John Byrom
The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.
— Pietro Metastasio
If the poor man cannot always get meat  the rich man cannot always digest it.
— Henry Giles
Tis always morning somewhere in the world.
— Richard Hengest Horne
Nothing is pure and entire of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.
— David Hume
The prickly thorn often bears soft roses.
— Ovid
Those who complain most are most to be complained of.
— Matthew Henry
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
— Samuel Johnson
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.
— Jonathan Swift
Compliments are only lies in court clothes.
— Anonymous
When two people compliment each other with the choice of anything  each of them generally gets that which he likes least.
— Alexander Pope
Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply  for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is  in fact  a subtle detraction.
— Henry David Thoreau
All government - indeed  every human benefit and enjoyment  every virtue and every prudent act - is founded on compromise and barter.
— Edmund Burke
Compromise makes a good umbrella  but a poor roof  it is a temporary expedient  often wise in party politics  almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
— James Russell Lowell
No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself.
— Charles C. Grevvile
The art of making much show with little substance.
— Macaulay
Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.
— Bible
The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything.
— Lee lacocca
It is only when I dally with what I am about  look back and aside  instead of keeping my eyes straight forward  that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.
— Sir Walter Scott
A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
— Andre Gide
Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well  maybe once.
— Isaac Asimov
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
— Bertrand Russell
If there is anything that can be called genius  it consists chiefly in the ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind  till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.
— Thomas Reid
If you don't concentrate  you'll end up on your rear.
— Tai Babilonia
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries  it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
— Isaac Newton
For him who has no concentration  there is no tranquility.
— Bhagaved Gita
The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration.
— Kurt Vonnegut
The secret of concentration is the secret of self-discovery. You reach inside yourself to discover your personal resources  and what it takes to match them to the challenge.
— Arnold Palmer
Beware of dissipating your powers  strive constantly to concentrate them.
— Johann von Goethe
One arrow does not bring down two birds.
— Turkish proverb
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused  dedicated  disciplined.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of everything.
— Samuel Johnson
Concentrate your energies  your thoughts and your capital. ... The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
— Andrew Carnegie
One man  two loves. No good ever comes of that.
— Euripides
One cannot both feast and become rich.
— Ashanti proverb
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
— G. K. Chesterton
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
— Henry Kissinger
The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
To do two things at once is to do neither.
— Publilius Syrus
I like to laugh  but on the court  it is my work. I try to smile  but it is so difficult. I concentrate on the ball  not on my face.
— Steffi Graf
Successful minds work like a gimlet  to a single point.
— Christian Bovee
A bird can roost but on one branch. A mouse can drink no more than its fill from a river.
— Chinese proverb
Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several  he will fail to achieve distinction in any.
— Plato
This one thing I do ... I press toward the mark.
— Bible
All good is gained by those whose thought and life are kept pointed close to one main thing  not scattered abroad upon a thousand.
— Stephen McKenna
The first law of success ... is concentration: to bend all the energies to one point  and to go directly to that point  looking neither to the right nor the left.
— William Matthews
Give me a man who says this one thing I do  and not these fifty things I dabble in.
— Dwight L. Moody
A single idea  if it is right  saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
— Jacques Maritain
One thought driven home is better than three left on base.
— James Liter
Purity of heart is to will one thing.
— Soren Kierkegaard
A man should remove not only unnecessary acts  but also unnecessary thoughts  for then superfluous activity will not follow.
— Marcus Aurelius
No man will swim ashore and take his baggage with him.
— Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Many people who wonder why they don't amount to more than they do have good stuff in them  and are energetic  persevering  and have ample opportunities. It is all a case of trimming the useless branches and throwing the whole force of power into the development of something that counts.
— Walter J. Johnston
A great man is one who seizes the vital issue in a complex question  what we might call the jugular vein of the whole organism  and spends his energies upon that.
— Joseph Rickaby
While the work or play is on ... don't constantly feel you ought to be doing the other.
— Franklin P. Adams
When one is learning  one should not think of play  and when one is at play  one should not think of learning.
— Lord Chesterfield
The immature mind hops from one thing to another  the mature mind seeks to follow through.
— Harry A. Overstreet
If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus  you must not be thinking about yourself and  equally  you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
The difference in men does not lie in the size of their hands  nor in the perfection of their bodies  but in this one sublime ability of concentration: to throw the weight with the blow  to live an eternity in an hour.
— Elbert Hubbard
I go at what I am about as if there was nothing else in the world for the time being.
— Charles Lingsley
Choice of attention  to pay attention to this and ignore that  is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.
— W. H. Auden
Concentration is everything. On the day I'm performing  I don't hear anything anyone says to me.
— Luciano Pavarotti
The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
— Walter Bagehot
You can't ring the bells and  at the same time  walk in the procession.
— Spanish proverb
I've learned ruthless concentration. I can write under any circumstances ... street noises  loud talk  music  you name it.
— Sylvia Porter
The effectiveness of work increases according to geometrical progression if there are no interruptions.
— Andre Maurois
Other people's interruptions of your work are relatively insignificant compared with the countless times you interrupt yourself.
— Brendan Francis
If you direct your whole thought to work itself  none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
— Quintilian
A full mind is an empty baseball bat.
— Branch Rickey
There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing at once  but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.
— Lord Chesterfield
Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.
— Lady Bird Johnson
Attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it.
— Tyron Edwards
I can't concentrate on golf or bowling. Those bowling pins aren't going to hurt me. I can concentrate in the ring because someone is trying to kill me.
— Carmen Basilio
When I come into a game in the bottom of the ninth  bases loaded  no one out and a one-run lead ... it takes people off my mind.
— Tug McGraw
Concentrate on finding your goal  then concentrate on reaching it.
— Colonel Michael Friedman
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.
— Logan Pearsall Smith
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight  it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
— Samuel Johnson
Be swift to hear  slow to speak  slow to wrath.
— Bible
The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct  not by their professions.
— Junius
Open confession is good for the soul.
— Scottish proverb
To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.
— Syrus
The confidence which we have in ourselves gives birth to much of that which we have in others.
— La Rochefoucauld
Society is built upon trust.
— Robert South
Be courteous to all  but intimate with few  and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
— George Washington
Every man in it is a great man  an orator  a critic  a statesman  and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory  his criticism  and his political abilities.
— John Adams
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
— S. L. Clemens
Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to jail. It is the same thing  after all.
— Eugene Field
How grand is victory  but how dear!
— Anonymous
He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below.
— Lord Byron
I came  I saw  I conquered.
— Julius Caesar
To rejoice in conquest is to rejoice in murder.
— Lao-Tsze
Self-conquest is the greatest of victories.
— Plato
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
— H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a cur that will let you get past it but that you cannot keep from barking.
— Anonymous
Conscience is but a word that cowards use  Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
— William Shakespeare
Conscience reigns but it does not govern.
— Paul Valery
A man's vanity tells him what is honour  a man's conscience what is justice.
— Walter Savage Landor
Conscience does make cowards of us all.
— William Shakespeare
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred  and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
— Samuel Butler
Conscience is a coward  and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent  it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
— Oliver Goldsmith
I feel bad that I don't feel worse.
— Michael Frayn
Shame arises from the fear of man  conscience from the fear of God.
— Samuel Johnson
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell The tortures of that inward hell!
— Lord Byron
The only incorruptible thing about us.
— Henry Fielding
Liberty of conscience (when people have consciences) is rightly considered the most indispensable of liberties.
— Haddon Chambers
There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.
— French proverb
Conscience is a sacred sanctuary where God alone may enter as judge.
— Felicite Robert de Lamennais
I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope  self.
— Martin Luther
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all  And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought  And enterprises of great pith and moment  With this regard  their currents turn awry  And lose the name of action.
— William Shakespeare
The soft whispers of the God in man.
— Edward Young
A statesman who is enamored of existing evils  as distin-quished from the Liberal  who wishes to replace them with others.
— Ambrose Bierce
We are reformers in spring and summer  in autumn and winter we stand by the old  reformers in the morning  conservers at night. Reform is affirmative  conservatism negative  conservatism goes for comfort  reform for truth.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried  against the new and untried?
— Abraham Lincoln
Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.
— Horace Smith
Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.
— Joseph Addison
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
— W. Somerset Maugham
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds  adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again  though it contradict everything you said today.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
— Oscar Wilde
Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force.
— Thorstein Veblen
There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue  and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.
— Mark Twain
People who honestly mean to be true  really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
The only man who can change his mind is the man who's got one.
— Edward Noyes Westcott
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds  adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shoemaker  stick to your last.
— Pliny
Constitutions should consist only of general provisions  the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent  and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.
— Alexander Hamilton
We are under a Constitution  but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.
— Charles Evans Hughes
In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man  but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
— Thomas Jefferson
A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.
— Macaulay
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
— Marquis de Condorcet
I earn that I eat  get that I wear  owe no man hate  envy no man's happiness  glad of other men's good  content with my harm.
— William Shakespeare
He is well paid that is well satisfied.
— William Shakespeare
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment.
— Robert Southey
No great advance has ever been made in science  politics  or religion  without controversy.
— Lyman Beecher
If a cause be good  the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defense of it by its friends.
— Walter Colton
Conversation is the fine art of mutual consideration and communication about matters of common interest that basically have some human importance.
— Ordway Tead
Great talkers are trying to fill the gap between themselves and others  but only widen it.
— Mason Cooley
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
— Robert Frost
Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we have been ignorant of their value.
— Buckminster Fuller
Speech is civilization itself.
— Thomas Mann
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
— Walter Bagehot
The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
— Henry S. Haskins
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues. That is all.
— Rebecca West
He was one of those men whose constitutional inability to make small talk forfeits all one's sympathy  and makes one think that social grace is sometimes a moral duty.
— James Morris
He (Macaulay) has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful.
— Sydney Smith
As I got warmed up  and felt perfectly at home in talk  I heard myself boasting  lying  exaggerating. Oh  not deliberately  far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk  and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.
— Bernard Berenson
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers.
— G. K. Chesterton
Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
— Alfred North Whitehead
Communication is and should be hell fire and sparks as well as sweetness and light.
— Aman Vivian Rakoff
The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.
— Peter F. Drucker
You never say a word of yourself  dear Lady Grey. You have that dreadful sin of anti-egotism.
— Sydney Smith
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
— Dorothy Nevill
Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf.
— American Indian proverb
People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking  though even that is beyond most of our powers  it means taking a vigorous  human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.
— Alice Duer Miller
A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.
— Agnes Repplier
When I think over what I have said  I envy dumb people.
— Seneca
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition  no vanity  but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.
— Samuel Johnson
John Wesley's conversation is good  but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.
— Samuel Johnson
She had lost the art of conversation  but not  unfortunately  the power of speech.
— George Bernard Shaw
Too much agreement kills a chat.
— Eldridge Cleaver
You can never hope to become a skilled conversationalist until you learn how to put your foot tactfully through the television set.
— M. Dale Baughman
Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence.
— Margaret Halsey
While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom  the necessity of listening is what makes the right important.
— Walter Lippmann
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing  a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward  and we want to sit in their radius. When we are listened to  it creates us  makes us unfold and expand.
— Karl Menninger
A ceremony of self-wastage - good talkers are miserable  they know that they have betrayed themselves  that they have taken material which should have a life of its own  to disperse it in noises upon the air.
— Cyril Connolly
Wit is the salt of conversation  not the food.
— William Hazlitt
Debate is masculine  conversation is feminine.
— Louisa May Alcott
Never hold any one by the button or the hand in order to be heard out  for if people are unwilling to hear you  you had better hold your tongue than them.
— Lord Chesterfield
Conversation enriches the understanding  but solitude is the school of genius.
— Edward Gibbon
Silence is one great art of conversation.
— William Hazlitt
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
— La Rochefoucauld
The less men think  the more they talk.
— Charles Montesquieu
A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.
— Lynwood L. Giacomini
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for  the evidence of things not seen.
— Bible
Genuine blasphemy  genuine in spirit and not purely verbal  is the product of partial belief  and is as impossible to the complete atheist as to the perfect Christian.
— T. S. Eliot
I believe in the gods. Or rather  I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us  I believe they are completely absent-minded.
— Jean Giraudoux
I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.
— Claude Levi-Strauss
What is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme  but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause  but what they say about their opponents.
— Robert F. Kennedy
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for'  they do not feel like fighting.
— Eric Hoffer
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity  never of the correctness of a belief.
— Arthur Schnitzler
Belief is better than anything else  and it is best when rapt - above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever.
— Robert Frost
The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened with convictions.
— Alexander Chase
A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses  it is an idea that possesses the mind.
— Robert Bolton
Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it  and therefore makes me uneasy  and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
— Samuel Johnson
Penetrating so many secrets  we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless  calmly licking its chops.
— H. L. Mencken
Believe not your own brother - believe  instead  your own blind eye.
— Russian proverb
I love an opposition that has convictions.
— Frederick the Great
Every man  wherever he goes  is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions  which move with him like flies on a summer day.
— Bertrand Russell
Convictions are the mainsprings of action  the driving powers of life. What a man lives are his convictions.
— Bishop Francis Kelly
The best lack all conviction  while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
— William Butler Yeats
(Conviction) is possible only in a world more primitive than ours can be perceived to be. A man can achieve a simply gnomic conviction only by ignoring the radical describers of his environment  or by hating them  as convinced men have hated  say  Darwin and Freud  as agents of some devil.
— John Ciardi
Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest  and they are rare.
— Simone Weil
The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand  as in what direction we are moving.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Orthodoxy is my doxy - heterodoxy is another man's doxy.
— William Warburton
Every dogma has its day.
— Abraham Rotstein
A man can believe in a considerable deal of rubbish  and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.
— Norman Douglas
Every life is a possession of faith  and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda.
— Henri Frederic Amiel
Soon after a hard decision something inevitably occurs to cast doubt. Holding steady against that doubt usually proves the decision.
— R. I. Fitzhenry
I may have faults but being wrong ain't one of them.
— Jimmy Hoffa
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
— Anthelme Brillat Savarin
We may live without friends  we may live without books  But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
— English proverb
God sends meat  and the Devil sends cooks.
— John Taylor
The more corrupt the state  the more laws.
— Tacitus
Just for a handful of silver he left us  Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If the chief party  whether it be the people  or the army  or the nobility  which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity  be corrupt  you must follow their humor and indulge them  and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.
— Machiavelli
I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country 
— Louisa May Alcott
The town is man's world  but this (country life) is of God.
— William Cowper
In Chinese  the word for crisis is weiji  composed of the character wei  which means danger  and ji  which means opportunity.
— Jan Wong