Destiny is no 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.Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance, And toss them on the wheels of Chance.-Juvenal.It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.-Jean Nidetch.Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.-Ovid.In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.-Louis Pasteur said at/in lecture 1854.Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.-Franklin D. Roosevelt said at/in Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939.The sufferings that fate inflicts on us should be borne with patience, what enemies inflict with manly courage.-Thucydides.
What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile.-George Asaf.No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least five minutes every hour, you'd be more productive.-Dr. Joyce Brothers.During [these] periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.-Fritjof Capra said at/in physicist.We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things [but] there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.-James Carr.We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things [but] there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.-James Carroll.Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.-Charlie Chaplin.I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.-Joseph Conrad.Acquire inner peace and a multitude will find their salvation near you.-Catherine de Hueck Doherty.Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.-Anatole France said at/in The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard.Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important.-Natalie Goldberg.
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.-Euripides.The only cure for grief is action.-George Henry Lewes.I just realized that there's going to be a lot of painful times in life, so I better learn to deal with it the right way.-Trey Parker and Matt Stone said at/in South Park, Raisins, 2003.The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.-Sophocles said at/in Oedipus Rex.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.-Anthony Burgess.People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.-Leo J. Burke.If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.-Dale Carnegie.Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.-Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[Sleep is] the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.-Thomas Dekker.It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward.-Baltasar Gracian.Not being able to sleep is terrible. You have the misery of having partied all night... without the satisfaction.-Lynn Johnston said at/in For Better or For Worse, 07-22-06.To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.-Joan Klempner.Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.-Fran Lebowitz.
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.-Napoleon Bonaparte.History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.-Sir Winston Churchill.Some people make headlines while others make history.-Philip Elmer-DeWitt said at/in in Time Magazine.History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we made today.-Henry Ford said at/in Interview in Chicago Tribune, May 25th, 1916.History never looks like history when you are living through it.-John W. Gardner said at/in quoted by Bill Moyers.History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.-Edward Gibbon.If you write a post and put it on a blog, that's a historical document. If you change your template, then that entry looks completely different. It's the same words, but not the same meaning. This all depends on what historical questions that people will be asking and we can't know what they will want.-Josh Greenberg said at/in Digital Preservation and Blogs, SXSW 2006.History is the short trudge from Adam to atom.-Leonard Louis Levinson.Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.-George Santayana said at/in The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905.For four-fifths of our history, our planet was populated by pond scum.-J. W. Schopf.
Learn as much by writing as by reading.-Lord Acton.After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity.-George Ade said at/in "Fables in Slang", 1899.Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.-Rhys Alexander said at/in Writing Gooder, 12-09-05.Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing.-Heather Armstrong said at/in Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006.You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.-Isaac Asimov.The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.-Walter Bagehot.The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.-Russell Baker.I am a galley slave to pen and ink.-Honore de Balzac.Not every story has explosions and car chases. That's why they have nudity and espionage.-Bill Barnes said at/in Unshelved, 09-14-08.There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.-Saul Bellow.
What a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.-Margot Asquith.I just want to say this. I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly: There is a tendency for the world to say to America, "the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out," and then to worry when America wants to sort them out.-Tony Blair.There's the country of America, which you have to defend, but there's also the idea of America. America is more than just a country, it's an idea. An idea that's supposed to be contagious.-Bono said at/in Oprah Winfrey Show, 2002.America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.-Louis D. Brandeis.By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.-George Bush said at/in Speech to the United Nations, September 12, 2002.By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand.-George W. Bush said at/in Speech to the United Nations, September 12, 2002.Our American values are not luxuries but necessities, not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself. Our common vision of a free and just society is our greatest source of cohesion at home and strength abroad, greater than the bounty of our material blessings.-Jimmy Carter.In a country as big as the United States, you can find fifty examples of anything.-Jeffery F. Chamberlain.I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential.-Shirley Chisholm.There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.-Bill Clinton.
My toughest fight was with my first wife.-Muhammad Ali.I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.-Jane Austen said at/in Mansfield Park.I used to believe that marriage would diminish me, reduce my options. That you had to be someone less to live with someone else when, of course, you have to be someone more.-Candice Bergen.If there was strife and contention in the home, very little else in life could compensate for it.-Lawana Blackwell said at/in The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter, 1998.A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.-Pearl Buck.There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.-Clint Eastwood.Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.-Euripides said at/in Alcestis, 438 B.C..We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years.-Nick Faldo.I know nothing about sex because I was always married.-Zsa Zsa Gabor.Happiness just wasn't part of the job description back then. You tried to find a helpmate to keep the cold wind and dogs at bay. Happiness just wasn't part of the equation. Survival was.-Robin Green said at/in Northern Exposure, Burning Down the House, 1992.
Learn as much by writing as by reading.-Lord Acton.Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.-W. H. Auden.Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?-Henry Ward Beecher.Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.-Harold Bloom said at/in O Magazine, April 2003.Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?-Cher.A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.-G. K. Chesterton.Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.-Charles Caleb Colton said at/in Lacon, 1820.To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.-Robertson Davies said at/in "The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks".A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.-Robertson Davies.I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage.-Charles De Secondat.
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."-Sir Arnold Bax said at/in Farewell my Youth (1943).Dance is the hidden language of the soul.-Martha Graham.The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.-Mata Hari.Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.-H. P. Lovecraft.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.
A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check; we've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there. There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.