My Favourite Quotations - collected over the last 10 years

A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road your trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint on the clouds of doubt,
And you can never tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar.
So, stick to the fight when you're hardest hit
It's when things go wrong that you mustn't quit.

A dog thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... They must be Gods!
A cat thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... I must be a God!

BIRTHDAY BELIEF SYSTEMS
Idealism: Happy Birthday.
Capitalism: I shopped all day for your birthday.
Atheism: I can't believe it's your birthday.
Hinduism: Holy Cow! Is it your birthday?
Taoism: It's everybody's birthday.
Buddhism: If your birthday party was held in the forest and nobody came... would it make a sound?
Existentialism: Your birthday means nothing to me.
Sarcasm: You don't look half bad for someone twice your age.

Even Popeye didn't eat his spinach until he absolutely had to.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It is not how busy you are, but why you are busy- the bee is praised, the mosquito is swatted

It is OK to let your mind go blank, but please turn off the sound

I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose

I was going to waste, but Jesus recycled me

May your life be long and useful like a roll of toilet paper.

Morning people: "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
Night people: "Anybody who goes to bed the same day they got up is a quitter."

When your outgo exceeds your income your upkeep will be your downfall.

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. (Henry J. Kaiser)

If you are never scared, embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take chances.

Some people are bitter, some sour, others are sweet. Who you hang out with depends on your taste

Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.

We could accomplish a lot more if we'd get rid of our ifs and and's; and get off our butts

We live in a society where pizza gets to your house before the police.

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, have been asked to do so much with so little for so long that we are now capable of doing anything with nothing.

Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood.

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort." - Herm Albright

"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing." -- Robert Benchley

"We humans are a curious sort... Little girls like dolls and little boys like soldiers. When we grow up, women like soldiers and men like dolls." - Monee C. Kidd

"Reality is for people who can't handle fantasy."

"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work." - Gustave Flaubert

"I was an atheist, until I found out I was God."

"Writing is like Prostitution: First you do it for the love of it. Then you do it for a few friends. And finally you do it for money." -- Moliere

"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master." -- Ayn Rand

"What's another word for thesaurus?" - Steven Wright

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." - Mark Twain

"I never entertain wicked thoughts...Wicked thoughts entertain me."

"Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none." -- Jules Renard

Trust the computer industry to shorten "Year 2000" to Y2K. It was this kind of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.

Arthur Evans
"Nothing, not love, not greed, not passion or hatred, is stronger than a writer's need to change another writer's copy."

Bobby Knight
"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things."

Clarissa Pinkola Estes
"To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of though, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression or message that carries moment, passion and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being."

Richard Bach
"I'm a writer as rarely as possible, when forced by an idea too lovely to let die unwritten"

Thomas Berger
"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."

The only thing some people can achieve on their own is dandruff.

You don't marry someone you can live with; you marry the person with whom you cannot live without.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Gandhi)

The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.

Great Rules for writing from William Safire in the New York Times.
1. Do not put statements in the negative form.
2. And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
3. It is incumbent on one to avoid archaisms.
4. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
5. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
6. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
7. De-accession euphemisms.
8. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
9. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
10. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
11. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
12. Last, but not least, avoid cliche’s like the plague.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power

The meek shall inherit the Earth after we're done with it.

When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better. Mae West

Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.

A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine.

There is no gravity. The Earth sucks.

Those of you who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do.

It's not that you and I are so clever, but that the others are such fools.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."


EARTH
smog | bricks

AIR – mud -- FIRE

Soda | tequila
WATER


Trust: Just as you would not want to do business with someone you can't trust, this law simply stated is: When you can completely trust the process of the universe and life, you will be supplied abundantly and you will be able to make your life work just the way you want it. And the trust you give and have must be 100% or it is zero. It cannot be given under one condition and not under another. There are many things we trust with our lives and have no concern about. Such as: the sun will come up every day; the law of gravity works all the time; the pilot who pilots the plane we fly on, is competent; our garbage is picked up on certain days. If we could not trust the things we take for granted will occur without any effort on our part, the fear for our well being would be so great we would not be able to enjoy our lives. Can you imagine what the world would be like, if we could not trust the food we buy, the water we drink or that the people we depend on would not manipulate or harm us? But the only way we can expect others to trust us is, we need to be trustworthy ourselves, and especially to ourselves. Unfortunately, many people don't trust themselves and the judgments and decisions they make. Therefore, they experience disharmony with their lives and their world.
Sidney Madwed

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
Seneca (3 BC - 65 AD)

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
Robert Heinlein

"I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams or childhood trauma -- that becoming a writer is a direct result of conscious will. Of course there has to be some talent involved, but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing."
Stephen King

“I’m not a poet, nor a prophet, but I dream from time to time.
I'm an artist of illusion and I sketch a strange design.”
- Did a Verse End? by Common Rotation