Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow – what a ride!’ — Peter Sage
Wealth is the number of things one can do without. — Feodor Dostoyevsky
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. — Mark Twain
About fame: Look at the minds of those who seek fame, observe what they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things they pursue. And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after. — Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, Book 7::34
It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. — Unknown
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything. — Samuel Johnson
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation. — André Gide
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest human battle ever and to never stop fighting. — e. e. cummings
In spiritual practice, there are only two things: You sit, and you sweep the garden. And it doesn’t matter how big the garden is. — Zen Saying
Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, at an arm’s length. It has always been watching you. It always will watch you until the day it taps you.
The thing to do when you are impatient is … to turn to your left and ask your advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just catch a feeling that your companion is there watching you. — Carlos Castaneda
Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared. — Eddie Rickenbacker (1890 – 1973)
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 (1780 – 1832), Lacon, 1820
No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such. — Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, Book Ten::16
Look down on the numberless herds of mankind, with their mysterious ceremonies, their divers voyagings in storm and calm, and all the chequered pattern of their comings and gatherings and goings. Go on to consider the life of bygone generations; and then the life of all those who are yet to come; and even at the present day, the life of the hordes of far-off savages. In short, reflect what multitudes there are who are ignorant of your very name; how many more will have speedily forgotten it; how many, perhaps praising you now, will soon enough be abusing you; and that therefore remembrance, glory, and all else together are things of no worth. — Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, Book Nine::30
Our most foolish belief is that we have time.
Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment. For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can any one take this from him? These two things then thou must bear in mind; the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that the longest liver and he who will die soonest lose just the same. For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not. — Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, Book 2::14
Don’t be consistent, but be simply true. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop doing such good. — Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, Book 11::4
Inquire of yourself as soon as you wake from sleep, whether it will make any difference to you, if another does what is just and right. It will make no difference. — Marcus Aurelius, MEDITATIONS, Book 10::14
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. — Mark Twain
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. — Mark Twain
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. — Mark Twain
Do something every day that you don’t want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain. — Mark Twain
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. — Mark Twain
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge. — Mark Twain
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t. — Mark Twain
I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t. — Mark Twain
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. — Mark Twain
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. — Mark Twain
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards. — Mark Twain
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress. — Mark Twain
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them. — Mark Twain
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. — Mark Twain
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. — Mark Twain
The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up. — Mark Twain
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. — Mark Twain
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. — Mark Twain
The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. — Mark Twain
When we do not know a person–and also when we do–we have to judge his size by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the achievements of others in his special line of business–there is no other way. — Mark Twain
Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too
great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally
abstain from total abstinence itself. — Mark Twain
It is always the way; words will answer as long as it is only a person’s
neighbor who is in trouble, but when that person gets into trouble himself,
it is time that the King rise up and do something. — Mark Twain
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up
where I needed to be. — Douglas Adams
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
— Douglas Adams
You live and learn. At any rate, you live. — Douglas Adams
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from
the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination
to do so. — Douglas Adams
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that
cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong
goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. — Douglas
Adams
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job. — Douglas Adams
It is not the fall that kills you. It’s the sudden stop at the end. —
Douglas Adams
I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer
industry. Not that that tells us very much, of course – the computer industry
didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end. — Douglas Adams
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever.
Is that good news? — Douglas Adams
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist
on coming along and trying to put things in it. — Terry Pratchett
When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.
— Terry Pratchett
Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s
why they’re called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes. — Terry
Pratchett
Too many people, when listing all the perils to be found in the search
for lost treasure or ancient wisdom, had forgotten to put at the top of the
list ‘the man who arrived just before you’. — Terry Pratchett
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are
those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this
glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world BELONGS, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s
up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse ME? This is my glass? I don’t THINK
so. My glass was full! AND it was a bigger glass! — Terry Pratchett
"So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly, then?"
He blinked at me as if I was stupid. "Well what do you think you do?"
he said. "You die of course. That’s what DEADLY means." — Douglas
Adams
Some people are heroes. And some people jot down notes. — Terry Pratchett
Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment
tended to ask themselves questions like "What is my purpose in life?"
very quickly lacked both. — Terry Pratchett
It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent
of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side.
It’s more interesting, and doesn’t take so long. — Terry Pratchett
People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that
the water’s fresh and drinkable, and in all that time never asked themselves
whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory. — Terry Pratchett
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. — Terry Pratchett
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink." — Terry Pratchett
Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don’t stop to pack. — Terry Pratchett
The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels
down, where it is still possible to get things done. — Terry Pratchett
"What’s a philosopher ?" said Brutha. "Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting," said a voice in his head. — Terry Pratchett
"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water." — Terry Pratchett
"Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it’s all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place." — Terry Pratchett