I love quotes and I collect them like some people collect cookie jars and salt shakers. Here are some of my very favorites collected to share with you.
"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other." - Chinese proverb
"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do." - Thomas Jefferson
"To be nobody but yourself -in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." ~ E.E. Cummings
" Just a dog? Porthos dreams of being a bear, and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he's just a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That's like saying, "He can't climb that mountain, he's just a man", or "That's not a diamond, it's just a rock." Just." - J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland
"If you persevere, the Theatre, which you are learning to serve, will grace you, now and then, with the greatest exhilaration it is possible to know. " -David Mamet
“We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition. How, otherwise, to account for much of one’s life?” -Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
"The play was a great success but the audience was a total failure" -Oscar Wilde
"You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumb prints on it." - John Updike
“Nature has a funny way of breaking what does not bend.”-Jewel, in the song "Innocence Maintained"
"Promise me you'll always remember:
you're braver than you believe,
stronger than you seem,
and smarter than you think."
-Christopher Robin to Pooh (A.A. Milne)
“Oh, I wish I could, but I don’t want to.” –Phoebe from Friends
"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see." - C.S. Lewis
From the Hebrew Talmud:
"The woman came out of a man's rib,
not from his feet to be walked on,
not from his head to be superior,
but from his side to be equal,
under the arm to be protected,
and next to the heart to be loved."
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." - Charles A. Beard
"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously)
"A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you." - Marian Wright Edelman
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." - Talamud
"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her." -David Brinkley
