c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It is always darkest just before .the day dawneth.
— Thomas Fuller
My son is my son till he have got him a wife  But my daughter's my daughter all the days of her life.
— Thomas Fuller
If thy daughter marry well  thou hast found a son  if not  thou hast lost a daughter.
— Francis Quarles
Tis of the tears which stars weep  sweet with joy.
— Francis Bailey
Every dew-drop and raindrop had a whole heaven within it.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Think that day lost whose (low) descending sun Views from thy hand no noble action done.
— Jacob Bobart
For mem'ry has painted this perfect day. With colors that never fade  And we find at the end of a perfect day  The soul of a friend we've made
— Carrie Jacobs Bond
What a day may bring a day may take away.
— Thomas Fuller
Monday for wealth  Tuesday for health  Wednesday the best day of all: Thursday for crosses  Friday for losses  Saturday no luck at all.
— Old English Rhyme
One glance of Thine creates a day.
— Isaac Watts
Death twitches my ear. "Live " he says  "I am coming".
— Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
To die is a debt we must all of us discharge.
— Euripides
Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damndest.
— Harry S. Truman
As long as I have a want  I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
— George Bernard Shaw
For death begins with life's first breath And life begins at touch of death.
— John Oxenham
As men  we are all equal in the presence of death.
— Publilius Syrus
At last God caught his eye.
— Harry Secombe
Death - the last voyage  the longest  the best.
— Thomas Wolfe
Death is a delightful hiding-place for weary men.
— Herodotus
Death is just a distant rumour to the young.
— Andy Roomy
For three days after death  hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
— Johnny Carson
He mourns the dead who lives as they desire.
— Edward Young
He that dies pays all debts.
— William Shakespeare
Honest listening is one of the best medicines we can offer the dying and the bereaved.
— Jean Cameron
I believe that the struggle against death  the unconditional and self-willed determination to live  is the mode of power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.
— Hermann Hesse
I care not  a man can die but once  we owe God a death.
— William Shakespeare
I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
— Robert Frost
In Heaven  all the interesting people are missing.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
In Spain  the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.
— Fedirico Garcia Lorca
It is a far  far better thing that I do  than anything I have ever done  it is a far  far  better rest that I go to  than I have ever known.
— Charles Dickens
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath  And after many a summer dieth the swan.
— Alfred Lord Tennyson
It may be that we have all lived before and died  and this is Hell.
— A. L. Prusick
If there is another world  he lives in bliss. If there is none  he made the best of this.
— Robert Burns
Most persons have died before they expired - died to all earthly longings  so that the last breath is only  as it were  the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
One short sleep past will wake eternally And death shall be no more  Death thou shalt die.
— John Donne
Rather suffer than die is man's motto.
— Jean de la Fontaine
The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.
— Epicurus
The only truly dead are those who have been forgotten.
— Jewish saying
The question is whether suicide is the way out  or the way in.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy  the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
— Samuel Butler
I will be dead in a few months. But it hasn't given me the slightest anxiety or worry. I always knew I was going to die.
— B. F. Skinner
Do not go gentle into that good night Old age should burn and rave at close of day  Rage  rage against the dying of the light.
— Dylan Thomas
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch  Which hurts and is desired.
— William Shakespeare
Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it.
— William Shakespeare
Things have a terrible permanence when people die.
— Joyce Kilmer
A solemn funeral is inconceivable to the Chinese mind.
— Lin Yutang
At its most basic root  the death or disintegration of one's parents is a harsh reminder of one's own mortality.
— Janet Harris
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
— Woody Allen
Mausoleum  n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.
— Ambrose Bierce
No  'tis not so deep as a well  nor so wide as a church door  but 'tis enough  'twill serve: ask for me tomorrow  and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered  I warrant  for this world.
— William Shakespeare
Epitaph  n: an inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
— Ambrose Bierce
Human life consists in mutual service. No grief  pain  misfortune  or 'broken heart' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over  when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death  it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.
— Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Poisons pain you  Rivers are damp  Acid stains you  And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful  Nooses give  Gas smells awful  You might as well live.
— Dorothy Parker
Dying is a wild night and a new road.
— Emily Dickinson
And I looked  and behold  a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.
— Bible
There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.
— Marcus Aurelius
There may be little or much beyond the grave  But the strong are saying nothing until they see.
— Robert Frost
All human things are subject to decay And when fate summons  monarchs must obey.
— John Dryden
When Andrew Jackson died someone asked a friend if he thought Old Hickory would go to heaven. 'He will if he wants to ' was the reply. On his death bed Disraeli declined a visit from Queen Victoria. 'No  it is better not'  he said  'she would only ask me to take a message to Albert.' I am a broken machine. I am ready to go.
— Woodrow Wilson
Let the tent be struck.
— Robert E. Lee
You can lose a man like that by your own death  but not by his.
— George Bernard Shaw
Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me - The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality.
— Emily Dickinson
When a man dies  he does not just die of the disease he has: he dies of his whole life.
— Charles Peguy
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
— Thomas Browne
Most people would die sooner than think  in fact  they do.
— Bertrand Russell
One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.
— Michel de Montaigne
Who never caused others to die Seldom rates a statue.
— Anonymous
Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die  which is man's charter of nobility.
— George Santayana
After sixty years the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal about it.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Death be not proud  though some have called Thee Mighty and dreadful  for thou art not so.
— John Donne
Toward the person who has died we adopt a special attitude: something like admiration for someone who has accomplished a very difficult task.
— Sigmund Freud
You have to learn to do everything  even to die.
— Gertrude Stein
I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
— Woody Allen
Oh death  you can wait  keep your distance.
— Andre Chenier
Body and mind  like man and wife  do not always agree to die together.
— Charles Caleb Colton
The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.
— William Shakespeare
A thousand goodbyes come after death - the first six months of bereavement.
— Alan Gregg
You don't die in the United States  you underachieve.
— Jerzy Kosinski
Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
— Vladimir Nabokov
If life must not be taken too seriously - then so neither must death.
— Samuel Butler
Death is terrible to Cicero  desirable to Cato  and indifferent to Socrates.
— Anonymous
In nature  there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.
— Edwin Way Teale
A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.
— Thomas Mann
I hate funerals  and would not attend my Own if it could be avoided  but it is well for every man to stop once in a while to think of what sort of a collection of mourners he is training for his final event.
— Robert T. Morris
If this is dying  I don't think much of it.
— Lytton Strachey
Men use one another to assure their personal victory over death.
— Ernest Becker
Any man's death diminishes me  because I am involved in mankind  and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls  it tolls for thee.
— John Donne
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour  and survival a thing not beyond the bounds of possibility.
— Aldous Huxley
I cannot forgive my friends for dying: I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
— Logan Pearsall Smith
Make sure to send a lazy man for the Angel of Death.
— Jewish proverb
It cost me never a stab nor squirm To tread by chance upon a worm. 'Aha  my little dear' I say  'Your clan will pay me back one day.'
— Dorothy Parker
Around  around the sun we go: The moon goes round the earth. We do not die of death: We die of vertigo.
— Archibald MacLeish
There is no such thing as death  In nature  nothing dies: From each sad moment of decay Some forms of life arise.
— Charles Mackay
I am going to seek a great Perhaps.
— Frangois Rabelais
Call no man happy till he is dead.
— Aeschylus
Though this may be play to you  Tis death to us.
— Aesop
Earth to earth  ashes to ashes  dust to dust  in sure and certain hope of the resurrection.
— Anonymous
In the midst of life we are in death.
— Anonymous
Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live  and is full of misery. He cometh up  and is cut down  like a flower  he fleeth as it were a shadow  and never continueth in one stay.
— Anonymous
Death  so called  is a thing which makes men weep  And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep.
— Lord Byron
Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.
— Charles Frohman
Now I am about to take my last voyage  a great leap in the dark.
— Thomas Hobbes
Is death the last sleep? No  it is the last final awakening.
— Walter Scott
The Lord gave  and the Lord hath taken away  blessed be the name of the Lord.
— Anonymous
We begin to die as soon as we are born  and the end is linked to the beginning.
— Marcus Manilius
There is no death! the stars go down To rise upon some other shore  And bright in Heaven's jeweled crown  They shine for ever more.
— John L. McCreery
Strange - is it not? - that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through  Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.
— Omar Khayyam
I am dying  Egypt  dying.
— William Shakespeare
Yet a little sleep  a little slumber  a little folding of the hands to sleep.
— Anonymous
I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade.
— Alan Seecer
Till tired  he sleeps  and life's poor play is o'er.
— Alexander Pope
To die: - to sleep: No more  and  by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to  'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.
— William Shakespeare
Death lies on her  like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
— William Shakespeare
First our pleasures die - and then Our hopes  and then our fears - and when These are dead  the debt is due  Dust claims dust - and we die too.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
God's finger touched him  and he slept.
— Lord Alfred Tennyson
Sunset and evening star  And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea.
— Lord Alfred Tennyson
Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.
— Walt Whitman
For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.
— Oscar Wilde
A church debt is the devil's salary.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you want the time to pass quickly  just give your note for 90 days.
— R. B. Thomas
Owe no man anything.
— Romans
A national debt  if it is not excessive  will be to us a national blessing.
— Alexander Hamilton
Debt is the worst poverty.
— M. G. Lichtwer
Hood an ass with reverend purple. So you can hide his two ambitious ears  and he shall pass for a cathedral doctor.
— Ben Jonson
Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.
— Plato
We are never deceived  we deceive ourselves.
— Goethe
All charming people have something to conceal  usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
— Cyril Connolly
You k'n hide de fier  but what you guine do wid de smoke?
— Joel Chandler Harris
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself.
— John Milton
Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what they are not.
— E. R. Beadle
What we need is a rebirth of satire  of dissent  of irreverence  of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.
— Arthur Schlesinger
If the world will be gulled  let it be gulled.
— Robert Burton
I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless: the poison is in the sugar.
— Stanislaw Lee
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance  any day in the week  if there is anything to be got by it.
— Charles Dickens
One should seek for the salutary in the unpleasant: if it is there  it is after all nectar. One should seek for the deceitful in the pleasant: if it is there it is after all poison.
— Panchatantra
Deceive not thy physician  confessor  nor lawyer.
— George Herbert
Frank and explicit - this is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the mind of others.
— Benjamin Disraeli
A delusion  a mockery  and a snare.
— Lord Denman
Which I wish to remark  -  And my language is plain  -  That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain  The heathen Chinese is peculiar.
— Bret Harte
Hateful to me as are the gates of hell  Is he who  hiding one thing in his heart  Utters another.
— Homer
You can fool some of the people all of the time  and all of the people some of the time  but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.
— Abraham Lincoln
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
— Jean de la Fontaine
"Will you walk into my parlour?" Said the spider to a fly: '"Tis the prettiest little parlour That ever you did spy."
— Mary Howitt
One is easily fooled by that which one loves.
— Moliere
Men and women everywhere must exercise deliberate selection to live wisely.
— Robert Grant
Decision and determination are the engineer and fireman of our train to opportunity and success.
— Burt Lawlor
The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances  to choose one's own way.
— Viktor Frankl
Choice of attention ... is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases  a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences  whatever they may be.
— W. H. Auden
You are the one who must choose your place.
— James Lane Allen
Man does not simply exist  but always decides what his existence will be  what he will become in the next moment.
— Viktor Frankl
Full maturity ... is achieved by realizing that you have choices to make.
— Angela Barron McBride
Wherever you see a successful business  someone once made a courageous decision.
— Peter Drucker
Life is just a series of trying to make up your mind.
— Timothy Fuller
Life is just an endless chain of judgements. . . . The more imperfect our judgement  the less perfect our success.
— B. C. Forbes
To know just what has do be done  then to do it  comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
— Sir William Osier
Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism  the way you play it is free will.
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.
— Jose Ortega
Life is the sum of all your choices.
— Albert Camus
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
— Samuel Butler
The difficulty of life is in the choice.
— George Moore
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
— George Eliot
As a man thinketh  so is he  and as a man chooseth  so is he.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Decisions determine destiny.
— Frederick Speakman
Choices are the hinges of destiny.
— Edwin Markham
Many of life's circumstances are created by three basic choices: the disciplines you choose to keep  the people you chose to be with  and the laws you choose to obey.
— Charles Millhuff
You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
— Joan Baez
Look for your choices  pick the best one  then go with it.
— Pat Riley
Rules of society are nothing  one's conscience is the umpire.
— Madame Dudevant
No matter how lovesick a woman is  she shouldn't take the first pill that comes along.
— Dr. Joyce Brothers
Form the habit of making decisions when your spirit is fresh ... to let dark moods lead is like choosing cowards to command armies.
— Charles Horton Cooley
One must either accept some theory or else believe one's own instinct or follow the world's opinion.
— Gertrude Stein
Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one  because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed  or exempt from danger.
— Niccolo Machiavelli
A problem clearly stated is a problem half solved.
— Dorothea Brande
We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.
— Thomas Merton
Choose always the way that seems the best  however rough it may be  custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.
— Pythagoras
Where an opinion is general  it is usually correct.
— Jane Austen
Once the "what" is decided  the "how" always follows. We must not make the "how" an excuse for not facing and accepting the "what."
— Pearl S. Buck
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past  present and future state  and at others whom it affects  and see the relation of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
— Blaise Pascal
One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background  and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
— Arthur Christopher Benson
Not all of your decisions will be correct. None of us is perfect. But if you get into the habit of making decisions  experience will develop your judgment to a point where more and more of your decisions will be right. After all  it is better to be right 51 percent of the time and get something done  than it is to get nothing done because you fear to reach a decision.
— H. W. Andrews
Decide on what you think is right  and stick to it.
— George Eliot
Continually one faces the horrible matter of making decisions. The solution ... is  as far as possible  to avoid conscious rational decisions and choices  simply to do what you find yourself doing  to float in the great current of life with as little friction as possible  to allow things to settle themselves  as indeed they do with the most infallible certainty.
— Christopher Morley
When making a decision of minor importance  I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters  however  such as the choice of a mate or a profession  the decision should come from the unconscious  from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life  we should be governed  I think  by the deep inner needs of our nature.
— Sigmund Freud
Pick battles big enough to matter  small enough to win.
— Jonathan Kozel
Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful.
— Niccolo Machiavelli
I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst  take the risk.
— Dr. Joyce Brothers
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.
— Charles Caleb Colton
When one bases his life on principle  99 percent of his decisions are already made.
— Anonymous
The best we can do is size up the chances  calculate the risks involved  estimate our ability to deal with them  and then make our plans with confidence.
— Henry Ford
In case of doubt  decide in favor of what is correct.
— Karl Kraus
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong  which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor  both to yourself and to your country  let men label you as they may.
— Mark Twain
People "died" all the time. ... Parts of them died when they made the wrong kinds of decisions-decisions against life. Sometimes they died bit by bit until finally they were just living corpses walking around. If you were perceptive you could see it in their eyes  the fire had gone out ... you always knew when you made a decision against life. ... The door clicked and you were safe inside- safe and dead.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
What I emphasize is for people to make choices based not on fear  but on what really gives them a sense of fulfillment.
— Pauline Rose Chance
We lose the fear of making decisions  great and small  as we realize that should our choice prove wrong we can  if we will  learn from the experience.
— Bill W.
History is a stern judge.
— Svetlana Alliluyeva
I get a little angry about this highhanded scrapping of the look of things. What else have we to go by? How else can the average person form an opinion of a girl's sense of values or even of her chastity except by the looks of her conduct?
— Margaret Culkin Banning
You wouldn't want to be caught wearing cheap perfume  would you? Then why do you want to wear cheap perfume on your conduct?
— Margaret Culkin Banning
The difference between weakness and wickedness is much less than people suppose  and the consequences are nearly always the same.
— Lady Marguerite Blessington
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge  fitter to bruise than to polish.
— Anne Bradstreet
One faces the future with one's past.
— Pearl S. Buck
Our deeds still travel with us from afar  and what we have been makes us what we are.
— George Eliot
You must not change one thing  one pebble  one grain of sand  until you know what good and evil will follow on that act.
— Ursula K. LeGuin
The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.
— George Eliot
The Pilgrims didn't have any experience when they landed here. Hell  if experience was that important  we'd never have anybody walking on the moon.
— Doug Rader
Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language  when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.
— Anna Deavere Smith
There is no data on the future.
— Laurel Cutler
The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: an instruction book didn't come with it.
— R. Buckminster Fuller
Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation  and without being allowed the preliminary trials  the failures and botches  that are essential for the training of a mere beginner.
— Lewis Mumford
Time has told me less than I need to know.
— Gwen Harwood
Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
— Samuel Butler
We don't have enough time to premeditate all our actions.
— Vauvenargues
Every year  if not every day  we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Faith ... acts promptly and boldly on the occasion  on slender evidence.
— John Henry Cardinal Newman
A decision is an action you must take when you have information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.
— Arthur Radford
She knew in her heart that to be without optimism  that core of reasonless hope in the spirit  rather than the brain  was a fatal flaw  the seed of death.
— Anne Perry
When faith is supported by facts or by logic it ceases to be faith.
— Edith Hamilton
How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?
— Harry S. Truman
Better to be without logic than without feeling.
— Charlotte Bronte
The will to be totally rational is the will to be made out of glass and steel: and to use others as if they were glass and steel.
— Marge Piercy
In the three years I played ball  we won six  lost seventeen and tied two. Some statistician ... calculated that we won 75 percent of the games we didn't lose.
— Roger M. Blough
Imagination took the reins  and Reason  slow-paced  though surefooted  was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion.
— Fanny Burney
Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.
— Sydney J. Harris
How dangerous can false reasoning prove!
— Sophocles
The tendency of modern science is to reduce proof to absurdity by continually reducing absurdity to proof.
— Samuel Butler
Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people  you would be perfectly comfortable.
— Bobby Bragan
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
— Joseph Wood Krutch
Reason  with most people  means their own opinions.
— William Hazlitt
Logic pervades the world  the limits of the world are also the limits of logic.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
Man is a reasoning  rather than a reasonable  animal.
— Alexander Hamilton
False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.
— Horace Mann
If you do everything you should do  and do not do anything you should not do  you will  according to the best available statistics  live exactly eighteen hours longer than you would otherwise.
— Dr. Logain Clendening
Decisions  particularly important ones  have always made me sleepy  perhaps because I know that I will have to make them by instinct  and thinking things out is only what other people tell me I should do.
— Lillian Hellman
Statistics are no substitute for judgement.
— Henry Clay
It is the heart always that sees before the head can see.
— Thomas Carlyle
Facts are stubborn things  but statistics are more pliable.
— Laurence J. Peter
A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the result of sudden impulse and accident than of that reason of which we so much boast.
— Peter Cooper
It is always thus  impaled by a state of mind which is destined not to last  that we make our irrevocable decisions.
— Marcel Proust
A power greater than any human being helped make this decision.
— Herbert J. Steifel
He who reflects too much will achieve little.
— J. C. F. von Schiller
The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.
— Publilius Syrus
The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in long-drawn-out vacillations  and the effect of decisiveness itself "makes things go" and creates confidence.
— Anne O'Hare McCormick
Deliberation often loses a good chance.
— Latin proverb
The mania of thinking renders one unfit for every activity.
— Anatole France
When possible make the decisions now  even if action is in the future. A revised decision usually is better than one reached at the last moment.
— William B. Given
We spend our days in deliberating  and we end them without coming to any resolve.
— L'Estrange
If you think too long  you think wrong.
— Jim Kaat
You decide you'll wait for your pitch. Then as the ball starts toward the plate  you think about your stance. And then you think about your swing. And then you realize that the ball that went past you for a strike was your pitch.
— Bobby Murcer
The soul of dispatch is decision.
— William Hazlitt
The moment a question comes to your mind  see yourself mentally taking hold of it and disposing of it. In that moment... you learn to become the decider and not the vacillator. Thus you build character.
— H. Van Anderson
So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up  start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties  it may be too late.
— Lee Iacocca
Often greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision.
— Harry A. Hopf
Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions.
— Brendan Francis
Do not wait for ideal circumstances  nor the best opportunities  they will never come.
— Janet Erskine Stuart
There comes a time when you've got to say  "Let's get off our asses and go ..." I have always found that if I move with 75 percent or more of the facts I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.
— Lee Iacocca
Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.
— William Feather
Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard  but takes the one before it and plays the game.
— Wendell Phillips
He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
— Horace
If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.
— Ben Nicholas
Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
— Samuel Johnson
It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Alternatives  and particularly desirable alternatives  grow only on imaginary trees.
— Saul Bellow
The more one does and sees and feels  the more one is able to do  and the more genuine may be one's own appreciation of fundamental things like home  and love  and understanding companionship.
— Amelia Earhart
Our danger is not too few  but too many options ... to be puzzled by innumerable alternatives.
— Sir Richard Livingstone
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
— Henry Kissinger
I couldn't claim that I have never felt the urge to explore evil  but when you descend into hell you have to be very careful.
— Kathleen Raine
If decisions were a choice between alternatives  decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives.
— Kenneth Burke
You cannot have your cake and eat it.
— Anonymous
It is better to arm and strengthen your hero  than to disarm and enfeeble your foe.
— Anne Bronte
You cannot sell the cow and sup the milk.
— Anonymous
There is only one answer to destruc-tiveness and that is creativity.
— Sylvia Ashton-Warner
A door must either be shut or open.
— Anonymous
Here's a rule I recommend. Never practice two vices at once.
— Tallulah Bankhead
You cannot serve God and Mammon.
— Bible
Between two stools one sits on the ground.
— French proverb
When you cannot make up your mind between two evenly balanced courses of action  choose the bolder.
— W. J. Slim
When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one  then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and cancelling them out  one against the other  I take the course indicated by what remains.
— Benjamin Franklin
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
— Edith Wharton
You cannot have it both ways.
— Anonymous
I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal  I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.
— Katharine Butler Hathaway
Of two evils  choose the less.
— Anonymous
Of two evils  choose the prettier.
— Carolyn Wells
Where bad's the best  bad must be the choice.
— Anonymous
Both choices are painful  but only one is therapeutic.
— Albert M. Wells
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please-you can never have both.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.
— Vauvenargues
When you have to make a choice and don't make it  that is in itself a choice.
— William James
A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself  he is as a wave of the sea  or a feather in the air which every breeze blows about.
— John Foster
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision  and nothing is so futile.
— Bertrand Russell
Not to decide is to decide.
— Harvey Cox
Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight  indecision  a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.
— Gordon Graham
In not making the decision  you've made one. Not doing something is the same as doing it.
— Ivan Bloch
There is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow  or the relentless drift of events will make the decision for us.
— Herbert B. Prochnow
You can only predict things after they've happened.
— Eugene Ionesco
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable  in retrospect.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
No one knows what he can to do until he tries.
— Publilius Syrus
Of all paths a man could strike into  there is  at any given moment  a best path which  here and now  it were of all things wisest for him to do. To find this path  and walk in it  is the one thing needful for him.
— Thomas Carlyle
After a battle is over people talk a lot about how decisions were methodically reached  but actually there's always a hell of a lot of groping around.
— Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher
No question is ever settled until it is settled right.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light  odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.
— Sir Arthur Helps
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
— Agnes de Mille
A man must be able to cut a knot  for everything cannot be untied.
— Henri Frederic Amiel
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide ... And the choice goes by forever t'wixt that darkness and that light.
— James Russell Lowell
Necessity is not an established fact  but an interpretation.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
— Dag Hammarskjold
Optimism is an intellectual choice.
— Diana Schneider
The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one ... the more active and swift the latter is  the further he will go astray.
— Francis Bacon
Nothing is more difficult  and therefore more precious  than to be able to decide.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
There is one quality more important than know-how.... This is know-how by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes  but what our purposes are to be.
— Norbert Weiner
Destiny is not a matter of chance  it is a matter of choice  it is not a thing to be waited for  it is a thing to be achieved.
— William Jennings Bryan
What must be  shall be  and that which is a necessity to him that struggles is little more than choice to him that is willing.
— Marcus Annaeus Seneca
A wiser rule would be to make up your mind soberly what you want  peace or war  and then to get ready for what you want  for what we prepare for is what we shall get.
— William Graham Sumner
We have resolved to endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable.
— Emperor Hirohito
Once a decision was made  I did not worry about it afterward.
— Harry S. Truman
The last  if not the greatest  of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstance.
— Bruno Bettelheim
He who has a choice has trouble.
— Dutch proverb
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done  and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
— Anonymous
Little deeds of kindness  little words of love  Make our earth an Eden like the heaven above.
— Julia F. Carney
Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
— Lord Chesterfield
Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
— Giuseppe Garibaldi
Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
— Pascal
Heaven ne'er helps the man who will not help himself.
— Sophocles
Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.
— Henry Ward Beecher
To lose Is to learn.
— Anonymous
We have fought this fight as long  and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us  as a Christian people  there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.
— Robert E. Lee
I let the American people down  and I have to carry that burden for the rest of my life. My political life is over. I will never again have an opportunity to serve in any official position. Maybe I can give a little advice from time to time.
— Richard Nixon
What is defeat? Nothing but education  nothing but the first step toward something better.
— Wendell Phillips
Who  apart From ourselves  can see any difference between Our victories and our defeats?
— Christopher Fry
They were never defeated  they were only killed.
— French Foreign Legion
The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
— Rabindranath Tagore
It is defeat that turns bone to flint  it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle  it is defeat that makes men invincible.
— Henry Ward Beecher
What is defeat? Nothing but education  nothing but the first step to something better.
— Wendell Phillips
Defeat should never be a source of discouragement but rather a fresh stimulus.
— Robert South
Demagogues and agitators are very unpleasant  but they are incidents to a free and constitutional country  and you must put up with these inconveniences or do without many important advantages.
— Benjamin Disraeli
In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.
— Macaulay
Every one that was in distress  and every one that was in debt  and every one that was discontented  gathered themselves unto him  and he became a captain over them.
— I Samuel
A wise fellow who is also worthless always charms the rabble.
— Euripides
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
In a democracy  the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional  but must be maintained because it is indispensable.
— Walter Lippmann
It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
— Winston Churchill
Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity  as well as the inalienable right  to govern himself with reason and justice.
— Harry S. Truman
If you want to understand democracy  spend less time in the library with Plato  and more time in the buses with people.
— Simeon Strunsky
Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement  surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.
— James Bryant Conant
People often say that  in a democracy  decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course  that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.
— Walter H. Judd
Democracy means government by the uneducated  while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
— G. K. Chesterton
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
— Adlai Stevenson
It is the greatest good to the greatest number which is the measure of right and wrong.
— Jeremy Bent ham
The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis  our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
— Bernard Baruch
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
— E. B. White
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
— Aristotle
What men value in the world is not rights  but privileges.
— H. L. Mencken
As I would not be a slave  so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
— Abraham Lincoln
Democracy is a festival of mediocrity.
— E. M. Cioran
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.
— Gunter Grass
It would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it  they pay the penalty  but compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant.
— Calvin Coolidge
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
— Harry Emerson
The world must be made safe for democracy.
— Woodrow Wilson
Democracy is the government of the people  by the people  for the people.
— Abraham Lincoln
Democracy means not "I am as good as you are " but "You are as good as I am."
— Theodore Parker
All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
— Alfred E. Smith
I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.
— Woodrow Wilson
While democracy must have its organization and controls  its vital breath is individual liberty.
— Charles Evans Hughes
People may live as much retired from the world as they please  but sooner or later  before they are aware  they will find themselves debtor or creditor to somebody.
— Goethe
He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much  but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.
— La Rochefoucauld
It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.
— Benjamin Franklin
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
— George Bernard Shaw
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
— Samuel Johnson
He who desires naught will always be free.
— E. R. Lefebvre Laboulaye
Ah love! could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire  Would not we shatter it to bits - and then Re-mold it nearer to the heart's desire!
— Omar Khayyam
Ail hope abandon  ye who enter here.
— Dante Alighieri
Despair is the conclusion of fools.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Despair doubles our strength.
— English proverb
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
— Thomas Jefferson
Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
— Walter Colton
I will believe in the right of one man to govern a nation despotically when I find a man born unto the world with boots and spurs  and a nation with saddles on their backs.
— Algernon Sidney
We are but as the instrument of Heaven. Our work is not design  but destiny.
— Owen Meredith
Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
— Wendell Phillips
There is a divinity that shapes our ends  Rough-hew them how we will.
— William Shakespeare
Here is the devil-and-all to pay.
— Miguel de Cervantes
Resist the Devil  and he will flee from you.
— Bible
The devil was sick  the devil a monk would be  The devil was well  the devil a monk was he.
— Anonymous
How art thou fallen from heaven  O Lucifer  son of the morning!
— Bible
Get thee behind me  Satan.
— Bible
He will give the devil his due.
— William Shakespeare
The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
— William Shakespeare
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
— William Shakespeare
Everyone gets their rough day. No one gets a free ride. Today so far  I had a good day. I got a dial tone.
— Rodney Dangerfield
Thy fate is the common fate of all  Into each life some rain must fall  Some days must be dark and dreary.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Some days you tame the tiger. And some days the tiger has you for lunch.
— Tug McGraw
Some days the dragon wins.
— Anonymous
The one law that does not change is that everything changes  and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow  and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.
— Louis L'Amour
Experience cold or heat  pleasure or pain. These experiences are fleeting  they come and go. Bear them patiently.
— Sri Krishna
To everything there is a season  A time for every purpose under heaven.... A time to weep  and a time to laugh  A time to mourn  and a time to dance.
— Bible
Let nothing disturb thee  Let nothing affright thee  All things are passing  God changeth never.
— Teresa of Avila
This  too  shall pass.
— William Shakespeare
The present will not long endure.
— Pindar
We do not live an equal life  but one of contrasts and patchwork  now a little joy  then a sorrow  now a sin  then a generous or brave action.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once  when I was number one on the bestseller list  I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes.
— Jacqueline Briskin
Sadness and gladness succeed each other.
— Anonymous
Sadness flies away on the wings of time.
— Jean de la Fontaine
I don't think that ... one gets a flash of happiness once  and never again  it is there within you  and it will come as certainly as death....
— Isak Dinesen
Life comes in clusters  clusters of solitude  then clusters when there is hardly time to breathe.
— May Sarton
If winter comes  can spring be far behind?
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
Human misery must somewhere have a stop  there is no wind that always blows a storm.
— Euripides
No winter lasts forever  no spring skips its turn.
— Hal Borland
There are trees that seem to die at the end of autumn. There are also the evergreens.
— Gilbert Maxwell
Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection  not in books alone  but in every leaf in springtime.
— Martin Luther
For  lo  the winter is past  the rain is over and gone  the flowers appear on the earth.
— Bible
If matters go badly now  they will not always be so.
— Horace
Pain is never permanent.
— Teresa of Avila
You will suffer and you will hurt. You will have joy and you will have peace.
— Alison Cheek
Pain is part of being alive  and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever  nor is it necessarily unbearable  and we need to be taught that.
— Rabbi Harold Kushner
Pain is hard to bear.... But with patience  day by day  Even this shall pass away.
— Theodore Tilton
I've been failing for  like  ten or eleven years. When it turns  it'll turn. Right now I'm just tryin' to squeeze through a very tight financial period  get the movie out  and put my things in order.
— Francis Ford Coppola
I've never been poor  only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation.
— Mike Todd
He that can't endure the bad will not live to see the good.
— Yiddish proverb
Our toil is sweet with thankfulness  Our burden is our boon  The curse of earth's gray morning is The blessing of its noon.
— John Greenleaf Whittier
Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches  perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are moments when something new has entered into us  something unknown.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
We may draw good outof evil  we must not do evil  that good may come.
— Maria Weston Chapman
You will find a joy in overcoming obstacles.
— Helen Keller
What we call the beginning is often an end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
— T. S. Eliot
Death is a door life opens.
— Adela Rogers St. John
The world is round  and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.
— Ivy Baker Priest
Perhaps someday it will be pleasant to remember even this.
— Virgil
One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
— Sigmund Freud
Sometimes I found that in my happy moments I could not believe that I had ever been miserable.
— Joanna Field