"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. "

~Mark Twain

"Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge and through humane ways."

~ Dalai Lama XIV

"If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it is a mistake. "

~Eli Siegal

"A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses. "

~Chinese Proverb

"People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around. "

Barbara Kingsolver

" In a dark time, the eye begins to see. "

Theodore Roethke

" 'Escalation' is just a word for more people dying. They're going to be more American people, and they're going to be more Iraqi people, and they're all going to be innocent people. "

Mother of a tank driver

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the creative light of altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. "

Dr. Martin Luther King

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. "

Gandhi

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
Marcel Proust

"When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter."
Albert Camus

"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
Thomas A. Kempis

"When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person
who can live at peace with others."
Peace Pilgrim

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
~ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." ~Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1969

"The very freedom and expressiveness we find missing in life we find present in art." ~Nicholas Wolerstaff

"I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die. ~Mary Roberts Rinehart

"It's okay to doubt. It's important to test. The way to discover secrets is to be a student of your own efforts." ~Robert Genn, The Painters Keys

"After months of inward darkness, I suddenly had the everlasting conviction that any human being, even though practically devoid of natural faculties, can penetrate to the kingdom of truth reserved for genius, if only he longs for truth and perpetually concentrates all his attention upon its attainment."
~Simone Weil

"We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right" ~Mahatma Gandhi

"The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law." ~Aristotle

"Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak. Probably so we can think twice." ~Bill Watterson

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin

"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."
- Henry David Thoreau

"What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen."
- Henry David Thoreau

"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." ~ A J. Muste 1967

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

"Every great leap forward in your life comes after you have made a clear decision of some kind." ~Brian Tracy

"Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark." ~Samuel Johnson

"You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love." ~ Henry Drummond

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. " ~ Pablo Picasso

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials." ~ Lin Yutang

"The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with outstanding accuracy." ~Florence Schovel

"Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you." ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." ~Joseph Campbel

"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

"Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time." ~Betty Smith

"We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. ~Anais Nin

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. ~Winston Churchill

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present. ~Babatunde Olatunji

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell." ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food." ~Austin O'Malley

"Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it." ~Mark Twain

"Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop." ~Usman B. Asif

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there." ~Henry Miller, Sexus

"The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility." ~ Charles Caleb Colton

"I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed." ~Matthew Henry

"A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition." ~Charles Caleb Colton

"Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it." ~Author Unknown

"Those who dance are often thought mad by those who cannot hear the music." ~Tao Te Ching

"Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." ~Goethe

"Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones." ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

"The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too. ~Samuel Butler, Notebooks, 1912

"It is not so much what people do in this world as their reasons for doing it which really makes a difference. Sacrifices are not so important as the reasons for which you sacrifice, and no sacrifice is any good which remains ever present as such." May 13, 1937 ~Eleanor Roosevelt

"The time is always right to do what is right." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." ~Helen Keller

"It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the grain of sand in your shoe." ~Author Unknown

"In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds." ~Robert Green Ingersoll

"You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it." ~Faith Baldwin

"We welcome passion, for the mind is briefly let off duty." ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

"You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job." ~Laurence J. Peter

"An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes." ~Ayn Rand "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal "

"Her life was okay. Sometimes she wished she were sleeping with the right man instead of her dog, but she never felt she was sleeping with the wrong dog." ~Judith Collas "Change of Life"

"It's better to be sorry for what you did, than for what you didn't do." (Anonymous) The Artist's Keys

"Questioning our government's actions does not violate the principals of liberty, equality, and freedom of speech; it exercises them, and by exercise we grow stronger."
~Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonders

"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." ~Henry Miller

Advice to children crossing the street: "Damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody." ~Moms Mabley

"If you would revel in all the glories of Death Valley, come on a dull day. City dwellers think quite naturally, that an overcast sky is not a good omen for a motor trip, presaging gloom and even rain. Yet, it is only when the sun has buried itself in a mantle of cloud, or when a rare drizzle has begun to whisk the valley floor, that the incredible coloring of this saturnalia of hues can be fully envisioned." ~Father John J. Crowley from "Desert Padre: The Life and Writing of Father J. Crowley, 1891-1940," by Joan Brooks, 1971.