Franklin P. Jones on Punctuality

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.
--Franklin P. Jones

Carrie Fisher on Resentment

Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
--Carrie Fisher

Churchill on Hell

If you are going through hell, keep going.
--Winston Churchill

(Sometimes sucky people have good things to say.)

Anonymous Japanese Poem

The stones they threw at me--when I
picked it up, one of them
was a jewel.
--Japanese poem, anonymous

Sartre on Freedom

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
--Sartre

Nietzsche on Action

Understanding kills action, for in order to act we require the veil of illusion.
--Nietzsche

Chief Seattle on Man's Part in the World

Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
--American Chief Seattle

Sufi Saying on the Moment

This is the breath that counts.
--Sufi saying

Steinbeck on Rejection

...and once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even
where it does not exist -- or, worse, will draw it forth from people
simply by expecting it.
--John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Nin on Courage

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
--Anaïs Nin

Sojcher on Chance

And I forgot the element of chance introduced by circumstances, calm or haste, sun or cold, dawn or dusk, the taste of strawberries or abandonment, the half-understood message, the front page of newspapers, the voice on the telephone, the most anodyne conversation, the most anonymous man or woman, everything that speaks, makes noise, passes by, touches us lightly, meets us head on.
--Jacques Sojcher

Bergson on What Is

There are no things, there are only actions.
--Bergson

cummings on Love

pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing, and itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin
--e.e. cummings

Burroughs on Control Addicts

The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy...
--William S. Burroughs

Horkheimer and Adorno on Fear

Man imagines himself free from fear when there is no longer anything unknown.
--Horkheimer and Adorno

Gide on Possibility

...reality interests me inasmuch as it is plastic, and [...] I care more--infinitely more--for what may be than for what has been. I lean with a fearful attraction over the depths of each creature's possibilities and weep for all that lies atrophied under the heavy lid of custom and morality.
--Andre Gide

On the Effects of Computer Games

Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.
--Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989

Shakespeare on Being True

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
--Shakespeare

Long Chen Pa on Taking it Light

Since everything is but an apparition, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.
--Long Chen Pa

Isadora Duncan on Interpreting Her Work

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.
--Isadora Duncan

Goethe on Action

Do not hurry; do not rest.
--J.W. von Goethe

T. Roosevelt on Criticism of the President

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt