Old and New Sayings and Quotes

[lessisbest]

I have clipped and recorded on paper a number of old and new saying and quotes I find useful, interesting, funny, engaging.....

Share your favorites, these are some of mine.

-We, the unwilling, lead by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful.

-Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes that reason is you're stupid and make bad choices.

-"The best things in life aren't things." ~Art Buckwald

-"You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy." ~Eric Hoffer

-"By sowing frugality we reap liberty, a golden harvest." ~Agesilaus

-"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." ~Albert Einstein

-"He who does not economize will have to agonize." ~Confusius

-Not weird ---- differently normal.

[Sad Eyed Lady]

"We have met the enemy and he is us" Albert the Alligator (Pogo comics)

"True evil has a face you know and a voice you trust" (Not sure who to attribute this to)

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." Henry David Thoreau

"You're either on the bus or off the bus." Ken Kessy


Just to name a few...........

[Gardenarian]

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” ~Zen proverb

There are a lot of quotations floating around that are misattributed. This greatly annoys my librarian soul! A good source for finding quotes with accurate attribution is Bartleby. (http://www.bartleby.com/)

[Mrs. Hermit]

My Step-mother's favorite: Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not soon be bent out of shape.

[frugal-one]

No guts, no glory.

I like the quote in yesterday's paper:

"I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation."

[IshbelRobertson]

I live my life by a comment from the author, who wrote Superwoman in the late 60s/early 70s


'Life is too short to stuff a mushroom' :)

[awakenedsoul]

My dad was always quoting old sayings when we were growing up. In my opinion the funniest one was, "Misery loves company." I love that. I just think it's so true. I don't know who said it.
Here are some of the others he taught us: "Any fool can spend money," "A fool and his money are soon parted," "Advice is worth what you pay for it," and "It's very easy to criticize."

[SteveinMN]

I've got a bunch of 'em. At work I used to have a whiteboard on which I put a different quote each day. I'm still doing that, via email. I love quotes. Here are some which have sustained me for a long time:


"You miss 100% of the shots you never take." -- Wayne Gretzky

"The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea." -- Isak Dinesen

"A change is something people do and a fad is something people talk about." -- Peter Drucker

"You did then what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better." -- Maya Angelou

"To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top." -- Robert Pirsig

"Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." -- Anatole France

"You can't drive into the future on cruise control." - Michael Berry, VP at Disney

[Polliwog]

"It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end."

"You can bomb the world to pieces; but can you bomb the world to peace?" (I found this quote on the old boards years ago)

[JaneV2.0]

"The best way out is always through." - Robert Frost

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." - Aristotle

“Indeed the state of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but the most wretched are those who are toiling not even at their own preoccupations, but must regulate their sleep by another’s, and their walk by another’s pace, and obey orders in those freest of all things, loving and hating. If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.” --Seneca

"How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks." - Marcus Aurelius

“It is easier to crack an atom than established 'truths.' " --Albert Einstein

"What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's response is always right," --Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas." --Marie Curie

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. To understand the true nature of the universe, one must think it terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” --Nikola Tesla

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." - Ernest Hemingway

"The Catholic church has spent the past 2,000 years making us feel shame about our bodies. That's why I shower in a bathing suit while wearing one of those dog cones. The shower is over when I start to drown." -- Stephen Colbert

“I advise you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!”--Frederick Nietsche

“...‘See here, I began my practice as a cardiologist in 1921 and never saw a myocardial infarction patient until 1928. Back in the MI-free days before 1920, the fats were butter, whole milk and lard, and I think we would all benefit from the kind of diet that we had when no one had ever heard of corn oil.’ --"Cardiologist to the stars" Paul Dudley White, as quoted by Duane Graveline MD

“Logic and rationality has to be held on a leash. Totally Logical people are more dead than alive. Only the Higher Virtues can take you away from a narrow view of things. Life is bigger than any Science." ~ Anthoney Mahateva

"Disgusting. Cavorting around your own home with your own family? At Christmas time? I can't think of anything more decadent except maybe murdering a tree and dressing it up like a whore." --Stephen Colbert

"To have another language is to possess a second soul."
‒Charlemagne

"I have two doctors, my left leg and my right." --G. M. Trevelyan

"Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $7000 per month." –unattributed

"There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse." Quentin Crisp

"You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave." Ibid

"It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style." Ibid (the story of my career)

"The art of medicine consists of keeping the patient amused while nature heals the disease." – Voltaire

"I don't think I'll get married again. I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house."
Lewis Grizzard

I could go on for days--I have 192 pages of this stuff...

[Gregg]

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endlesss sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Man can never be free until the last king is hung with the entrails of the last priest." Louisa Mae Alcott

"If you're afraid of butter, use cream." Julia Child

[LDAHL]

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
- William F. Buckley

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
- John Adams

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
- GK Chesterton

A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.
- WC Fields

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
- HL Mencken

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They're just braver five minutes longer.
- Ronald Reagan

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln

[ApatheticNoMore]

"You have to decide whether you want to make money or to make sense because the two are mutually exclusive." - Buckminster Fuller

Stuffing mushrooms though, I have mushrooms to use up, and I am sorely tempted ..... stop me before I stuff a mushroom.

[Rogar]

"Ed, you're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good." (Northern Exposure)

"So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me...which is nice."

"Suppose you were an idiot. Suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." (Mark Twain)

"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for'tis better to be alone than with bad company." (George Washington)

[awakenedsoul]

I got a good chuckle from those, Rogar. I just remembered another one. "You are as happy as you make up your mind to be." Abraham Lincoln.

I used to have a mug with this saying: "If it's going to be it's up to me." I don't know who wrote it. I've found it to be true. I had a friend at the time who said, "If God wants me to be a dancer, I'll be a dancer." "Yeah, but you really have to go to auditions," I answered. (She thought it was just going to happen while she stayed home.) She started auditioning and got hired in several shows.

[SteveinMN]

I had a friend at the time who said, "If God wants me to be a dancer, I'll be a dancer." "Yeah, but you really have to go to auditions," I answered. (She thought it was just going to happen while she stayed home.) She started auditioning and got hired in several shows.
Jerry Seinfeld: "It's not easy becoming a stand-up comic. It's like becoming a murderer. No matter how much people try to talk you out of it, you're going to do it."

[Gardenarian]

"Man can never be free until the last king is hung with the entrails of the last priest." Louisa Mae Alcott


Louisa May Alcott? Surely not!

[ToomuchStuff]

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof, is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
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.
Both are Douglas Adams
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
We are all born ignorant. One must work hard to remain stupid.
I didn't fail the test, I found 100 ways to do it wrong (later modified by Edison)
All by Ben Franklin (and he had a lot more).

[catherine]

Well, I'm too lazy to go look my favorites up out of a book, so just let me post what's on my home office "inspiration wall":

"No commonplace achievement will satisfy the great obligations you have of excelling." St. Ignatius

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep." --Robert Frost

"We cannot all do great things on this earth; we can only do little things with great love." --Mother Teresa

"Until we go beyond our notions regarding the true nature of life, we will never realize how totally secure we really are, and how all the fighting for individual survival and self-security is a waste of energy." --Bernadette Roberts

"Do you work so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will say, 'here lived a man who did his job as if God Almighty called him at this particular time in history to do it." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

"This is my secret. I don't mind what happens." Krishnamurti

"The one who bows into service is an artist. To see work as sacred is to bow into service to it, and thus become its instrument." --Charles Eisenstein

"Waking up this morning I smile. 24 brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment, and to look at all beings with the eyes of compassion." Thich Nhat Hanh

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." --John Lennon

AMN: I love the Buckminster Fuller quote.
LDAHL: I love the G.K. Chesterton quote.

This is a fun thread.

ETA: I forgot that I also have this poem by Mary Oliver on my wall:


The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

[Gardenarian]

Thanks for the poem Catherine. That feels so true to me.

In our new house I'm installing a blackboard and I'm going to put up a "poem a day." (Though it turn out to be "poem a week".) It's something I always wanted to do at the libraries I've worked at, but no one would buy into it.

[Lainey]

"Enough is as good as a feast."

attributed to Joshua Sylvester, English poet, 1500s.

[Gregg]

Louisa May Alcott? Surely not!

I always get her and Voltaire confused...

[pinkytoe]

I like a lot of the quotes attributed to Einstein; I think he got it:
"Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible.
I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for every one, best both for the body and the mind."