"They are able because they think they are able." —Virgil: Aeneid, 19 B.C.

"It is a great ability to be able to conceal one’s ability." —Francois De La Rochefoucauld: Maxims, 1665

"Behind an able man there are always other able men." —Chinese Proverb

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." —Floryence Kennedy

"He that fears you present will hate you absent." —Anon.

"Sin undetected is sin absolved." —Anon.

"Abundance kills more than hunger." —German Proverb

"What you can’t have, abuse." —Italian Proverb

"The abuse of a thing is no argument against the use of it." —Jeremy Collier, 1698

"Nothing under the sun is ever accidental." —G. E. Lessing, 1772

"Let your accusations be few in number, even if they be just." —Pope Xystus I, c. 120 AD

"How my achievements mock me!" —William Shakespeare: Troilus & Cressida, 1601

"The audience’s enjoyment is in direct proportion to how much your hero suffers." —Robert Tapert, Executive Producer of "Xena: Warrior Princess," 1998

"However brilliant an action, it should not be esteemed great unless the result of a great motive." —La Rochefoucauld: Maxims, 1665

"Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present." —George Washington: Early Copy-book, before 1748

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." —Benjamin Disraeli: Lothair, 1870

"As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out." —S. L. Clemens: Pudd’n-head Wilson, 1894 

"Things not understood are admired." —Thomas Fuller: Gnomologia, 1732 

"Adversity reminds men of religion." —Livy: History of Rome, V, c. 10 AD

"Prosperity getteth friends, but adversity trieth them." —Nicholas Ling: Politeuphuia, 1597

"In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that is not wholly displeasing to us." —La Rochefoucauld: Maxims, 1665

"Adversity introduces a man to himself." —Anon.

"All of us, when well, give good advice to the sick." —Terence: Andria, II, c. 160 BC

"Never give advice unless asked." —German Proverb

"Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted." —H. W. Longfellow: Evangeline, II, 1847 

"A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory." —John Keats: Letter, Feb. 18, 1819

"Abuse is an indirect species of homage." —William Hazlitt: Characteristics

"Paying alimony is like feeding hay to a dead horse." —Groucho Marx

"The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack out of him." —Henry Miller

"Admiration is our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"An amateur is a man of enthusiasm who has not settled down and is not habit-bound." —Brooks Atkinson: Once Around the Sun

"To be adult is to be alone." —Jean Rostand

"Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think." —Alexander Pope: Thoughts on Various Subjects

"Anarchy is the stepping-stone to absolute power." —Napoleon Bonaparte: Maxims

"Anger is valor’s whetstone." —Thomas Randolph: The Muse’s Looking Glass

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." —Kierkegaard

"To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile – hoping it will eat him last." —Winston Churchill, 1954

"Aristocracy: government by the badly educated." —G. K. Chesterton, 1931

"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood." —George Santayana

"Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable." —G. B. Shaw

"Art is a lie that enables us to realize the truth." —Pablo Picasso, 1923

"Art, at its most significant, . . . [is] a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it." —Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media, 1964

"Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience." —Alfred North Whitehead: Dialogues

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known." —Oscar Wilde

"Love the art in yourself; not yourself in the art." —Constantin Stanislavski

"Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs." —G. K. Chesterton: Heretics

"Artists are the antennae of a race." —Ezra Pound: ABC of Reading

"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship." —G. B. Shaw: The Shewing –Up of Blanco Posnet

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." —Fulton J. Sheen: Look, 1955

B

"A bachelor is a man who never makes the same mistake once." —Ed Wynn

"If more than ten percent of the population likes a painting it should be burned, for it must be bad." —G. B. Shaw

"A battle won is a battle in which one will not confess oneself beaten." —Ferdinand Foch

"Betrayal is the only truth that sticks." —Arthur Miller: After the Fall, 1964

"Beauty is only skin-deep, but ugly is to the bone." —Redd Foxx

"It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong – but that is the way you bet." —Damon Runyon

"Books for general reading always smell badly. The odor of common people hangs about them." —F. Nietzsche

"A bore is a person who talks when you want him to listen." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore." —La Rochefoucauld

"My wife and I tried two or three times in the last forty years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop." —Winston Churchill

"Brevity is the soul of wit." —Shakespeare: Hamlet, II, ii

C

"Calamity is virtue’s opportunity." —Lucius Annaeus Seneca: De Providentia

"Chance is the direction which thou canst not see." —Alexander Pope: Essays on Man, 1733-34

"Chance favors the well-prepared." —Anon.

"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written." —Henry Miller: Tropic of Cancer, 1934

"Character is fate." —Heraclitus

"Character is what you are in the dark." —Dwight L. Moody: Sermons

"Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions." —Aldous Huxley: Eyeless in Gaza

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." —I Corinthians XIII, 10, c. 55 AD

"Children: a torment and nothing more." —Leo Tolstoy: The Kreutzer Sonata

"Citizenship is the right to have rights." —Earl Warren, 1958

"Civilization is the art of living together with people not entirely like oneself." —Helen M. Cam: England Before Elizabeth

"Civilization is paralysis." —Paul Gaugin

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy . . . the process of setting man free from men." —Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead, 1943

"Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters." —Jules Renard: Journals

"A cocktail party is a place where you talk with a person you do not know about a subject you have no interest in." —Lin Yutang: With Love and Irony

"Comedy is the last refuge of the non-conformist mind." —Gilbert Seldes: New Republic

"Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all."—Gore Vidal, 1975

"A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours." —Milton Berle, 1954

"Commonplace: the universal subjugator." —Johann von Goethe

"Common sense is the best prophet." —Euripides: Helen

"A compliment is a thing often paid by people who pay nothing else." —Horatio Smith: The Tin Trumpet

"Conceit is God’s gift to little men." —Bruce Barton: Conceit

"Confidence is the only bond of friendship." —Publilius Syrus: Moral Sayings

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." —J. F. Kennedy, 1961

"I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except youself." —Rita Mae Brown

"Conscience is the oracle of God." —Lord Byron: The Island

"Conscience is the pulse of reason" —S. T. Coleridge: Zapola

"Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us." —Sigmund Freud: Totem and Taboo, 1913

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking." —H. L. Mencken, Chrestomathy

"Conscience is the accumulated sediment of ancestral faint-heartedness" —H. L. Mencken, Smart Set, 1921 

"Conservatism is the adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried." —Abraham Lincoln, 1860

"Consistency is a paste jewel that only cheap men cherish." —W. A. White, 1923

"In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: prisoners of addiction and prisoners of envy." —Ivan Illich

"A consumer society is about simplfying and degrading the consumer as well as the product." —William Burroughs, 1959

"Contemplation is wisdom’s best nurse." —John Milton, Comus

"Contempt is egotism in ill-humor." —S. T. Coleridge, Omniana

"Conventionality is the tacit agreement to set appearance before reality, form before content, subordination before principle." —Ellen Key, The Conventional Woman

"Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live." —R. W. Emerson, Conduct of Life

"Convictions are prisons." —F. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, 1895

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." —F. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878-9

"A corporation is an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." —Ambrose Bierce

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms . . . a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die." —G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

"Courage is doing without witnesses everything that one is capable of doing before all the world." —La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear." —S. L. Clemens, Pudd’n-head Wilson, 1894 

"A courtesan is a heretic in the religion of love." —Richard Garnett

"Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, . . . almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination." —Ernest Hemingway, Men in War

"Cricket is organized loafing." —William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury

"Crime is a left-handed form of human endeavor." —John Huston, The Asphalt Jungle, 1950 

"A critic is a legless man who teaches running." —Channing Pollock, The Green Book

"A critic is a soldier that fires on his own men." —Jean-Luc Godard

"Cult: simply an extension of the idea that everyone’s supreme aim in life is self-fulfillment and happiness and that one is entitled to wreck marriage, children and certainly one’s health and sanity in pursuit of this." —Stephen Spender, 1972

"Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world." —Matthew Arnold, Literature & Dogma

"A Culture which leaves unsatisfied and drives to rebelliousness so large a number of its members neither has a prospect of continued existence nor deserves it." —Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

"Cunning is a sinister or crooked wisdom." —Francis Bacon, Of Cunning

"Curiosity is a lust of the mind." —Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

"Cynic, n. – A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." —Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere’s Fan, 1892

"Cynicism is humor in ill-health." —H. G. Wells, The Last Trump

D

"The believer is happy; the doubter wise." —Hungarian Proverb

"Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true." —Bruce Springsteen, The River, 1980

"Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." —Thomas Carlyle: Essays/Sign of the Times, 1836

"What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might." —Cicero: De Senectute, IX

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." —Samuel Johnson

"Day, n. – A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"A day is a miniature eternity." —R. W. Emerson, Journal

"Death: the grand perhaps." —Robert Browning, Bishop Blougrams Apology

"Death, the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life." —Jean Giraudoux, Amphitryon 38

"Death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns." —Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, i

"Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality." —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Deference is the most indirect and the most elegant of all compliments." —William Sherstone, Of Men and Manners

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." —H. L. Mencken, Chrestomathy

"Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike." —Plato, The Republic, 368 BC

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time." —E. B. White, The Wild Flag

"Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim." —Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter, 1948

"Destiny, n. – A tyrant’s authority for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"Destiny is simply the relentless logic of each day we live." —Jean Giraudoux: Tiger at the Gate

"Diligence is the mother of good fortune." —Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote, 1605

"Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ till you find a rock." —Wynn Catlin

"Distrust is our only defense against betrayal." —Tennessee Williams: Camino Real

"Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom." —George Iles: Jottings

"Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy." —Luigi Pirandello: Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921

"Dreams are private myths." —Joseph Campbell, Time, 1-17-72

"Duty: whatever the day demands." —Goethe: Sprüche in Prosa

E

"Education is the best provision for old age." —Aristotle

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education." —Bertrand Russell

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." —A. H. Glasgow: Reader’s Digest, 6-74

"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity." —Frank Leahy, Look, 1-10-55

"Enmity is anger watching the opportunity for revenge." —Marcus Tullius Cicero: Tusculan Disputations, c. 48-43 BC

"Enough: to the wise, abundance." —Euripides: The Phoenissae, c. 438-408 BC

"Any enterprise of your own is a great enterprise." —Josh Becker

"Enthusiasm is the true parent of genius." —Isaac D’Israel: Literary Character of Men of Genius

"Envy is the basis of democracy." —Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1930

"Error is the discipline through which we advance." —William Channing: The Present Age

"The death of endeavor [is] the birth of disgust." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe." —W. Somerset Maugham: The Summing Up

"Evil is that which one believes of others." —H. L. Mencken: Chrestomathy

"Exaggeration is the inseparable companion of greatness." —Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary, 1764

"I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises." —Neil Armstrong

"The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us." —Quentin Crisp

"If you expect to rate as a gentleman, do not expectorate on the floor." —Proverb

"Experience is the only prophecy of wise men." —Alphonse de Lamartine: Speech, 1847

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." —Oscar Wilde: Lady Windemere’s Fan, 1892

"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you." —Aldous Huxley

"I don't have faith, I have experience." —Joseph Campbell

"I know by my own pot how the others boil." —French Proverb

"It's all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back." —Mick Jagger

"He who has been bitten by a snake is afraid of a piece of string." —Persian Proverb

"There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations." —Benjamin Disraeli

F

"Facts are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." —Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1857

"There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." —Albert Camus

"A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience." —Elbert Hubbard: Epigrams

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." —Bill Cosby

"There is no failure except in no longer trying." —Elbert Hubbard

"Faith is an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." —H. L. Mencken: Prejudices

"Faith is believing what you know ain’t so." —S. L. Clemens: Following the Equator, 1897

"It's better to be unfaithful than faithful without wanting to be." —Brigitte Bardot

"Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable." —Andre Gide

"Fame is the thirst of youth." —Lord Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1812

"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city." —George Burns

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." —Leo Tolstoy

Fans:
"It's either vilification or sanctification, and both piss me off." —Bob Geldof

"Fashion is more powerful than any tyrant." —Latin Proverb

"Whatever limits us, we call fate." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue." —Francis Bacon: Essays, V, 1625

I

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." —Bertrand Russell

J

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." —G. B. Shaw

K

"People never know each other until they have eaten a certain amount of salt together." —Aristotle, c. 340 BC

"If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well." —Alexander Smith, 1863

"A wise man knows everything; a shrewd one, everybody." —Anon.

L

"Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." —Hebrews, XII, 6, c. 65 AD

"To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible God." —Jorge Luis Borges: The Meeting in a Dream

"Loyalty is something you pay for." —Abe Lastfogel, former head of the William Morris Agency

M

"A man loves a thing, that don't mean its gotta love him back."  --James Jones, From Here to Eternity, 1952

"A man should be what he can do."  --James Jones, From Here to Eternity, 1952

"Poor man wants to be rich, rich man wants to be king, king ain't satisfied until he rules everything."  --Bruce Springsteen, Badlands, 1978

"No man has lived to much purpose unless he has built a house, begotten a son, or written a book." —Italian Proverb

"Every man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats." —H. L. Mencken

"The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it." —Carl Jung

"Mr. Atlee is a very modest man. But then he has much to be modest about." —Winston Churchill

"We do what we must, and call it by the best names." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

O

"Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal." —Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board

P

"The art of living is the art of avoiding pain." —Thomas Jefferson, 1786

"Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." —H. L. Mencken

R

"To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions." —Barbara Tuchman: The Guns of August, 1962

S

"Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded." —Anita Brookner

"Scriptures, n. – The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based." —Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." —Beverly Sills

"Sincerity is technique." —WH Auden

"I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing 'em." —'Big Bill' Broonzy

"I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances." —John Steinbeck

"I am against my brother; my brother and I are against my cousin; my cousin, brother and I are against the stranger." —Lebanese Proverb

"Summary of the World: If we could at this time shrink the Earth’s population to a village of 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this: There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the western hemisphere (North and South America), and 8 Africans. 70 would be non-white, 30 white. 70 would be non-Christian. Fifty percent of the entire world’s wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people, and all 6 would be citizens of the United States. 70 people would be unable to read. 50 would suffer from malnutrition, and 80 would live in substandard housing. Only one would have a college education." —Anon.

"They got us surrounded? Good, now we can fire in any direction." —Chesty Puller, USMC

T

"A good tale stands twice telling." —Proverb

"Tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything." —G. K. Chesterton

"Just because it's true, doesn't mean it's believable or interesting."
—Josh Becker, 2001

V

"The will to conquer is the first condition of victory." —Ferdinand Foch

W

"How much of life is lost in waiting!" —Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog." —Harry Truman

"It is better to wear out than to rust out." —Bishop Cumberland: On the Duty of Contending With the Truth

"When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it; rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened." —John Irving

"If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so." —Andre Gide