Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.-- Saskya Pandita
ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example begins somewhat like this:-- Unknown (can you tell me?)
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.-- Louis Pasteur
I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.-- Stephen Colbert
Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.-- George Eliot
Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.-- William Shakespeare
I really do believe I can accomplish a great deal with a big grin, I know some people find that disconcerting, but that doesn't matter.-- Beverly Sills
I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear ... that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.-- Rabbi Harold Kushner
Sigmund Freud once said, "What do women want?" The only thing I have learned in fifty-two years is that women want men to stop asking dumb questions like that.-- Bill Cosby
History, n. An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.-- Ambrose Bierce
I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are creatures of despair.-- Joseph Conrad
My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.-- Ronald Reagan
LL.D. Letters indicating the degree _Legumptionorum....
LL.D. Letters indicating the degree _Legumptionorum Doctor_, one learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast upon this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly _LL.d._, and conferred only upon gentlemen distinguished for their wealth. At the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place of the old D.D. -- _Damnator Diaboli_. The new honor will be known as _Sanctorum Custus_, and written _$$c_. The name of the Rev. John Satan has been suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who points out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the advantage of a degree.-- Ambrose Bierce
What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.-- George Bernard Shaw
I used to think of all the billions of people in the world, and of all those people, how was I going to meet the right ones? The right ones to be my friends, the right one to be my husband. Now I just believe you meet the people you're supposed to meet.-- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
As a man can drink water from any side of a full tank, so the skilled theologian can wrest from any scripture that which will serve his purpose.-- Bhagavad Gita
A slipping gear in your M203 grenade launcher can cause it to fire when you least expect it. This could make you very unpopular with what is left of your unit.-- Unknown
We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear-brought experience.-- George Washington
You need to learn to see and compose. The more time you waste worrying about your equipment the less time you'll have to put into creating great images. Worry about your images, not your equipment.-- Ken Rockwell
The first duty to children is to make them happy, If you have not made them so, you have wronged them, No other good they may get can make up for that.-- Charles Buxton
PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic.-- Ambrose_Bierce/"
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!-- Henry David Thoreau
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge. . . observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.-- Denis Diderot
The holy passion of Friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.-- Mark Twain
Non Judgment: In our world where it seems we are taught to judge everything all around and about us and we spend so much of our time doing just that, it might be wise to ask if we can judge anything. To judge anything with any degree of clarity and accuracy we would need all the information past, present and future and how it will affect all concerned to make a perfect judgment. Since no one has that skill, ability or information, you might agree, it may be unwise to judge. This idea may be hard to accept, but when you look back over your life and the judgments you made, ask yourself. How many of your judgments, when you made them, were you perfectly sure they were correct, would you want to change now with the benefit of 20-- Sidney_Madwed/"
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.-- Samuel Butler
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.-- Sir Winston Churchill
Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed: for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.-- Rene Descartes
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.-- Charles F. Kettering
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinions in good men is but knowledge in the making.-- John Milton
Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.-- Henri-Frederic Amiel
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.-- Albert Einstein
We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.-- Marilyn Manson
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like....
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.-- C. S. Lewis
All in all, I am not surprised that the people who want to unravel the social contract start with young adults. Those who are urged to feel afraid, very afraid, have both the greatest sense of independence and the most finely honed skepticism about government.-- Ellen Goodman
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.-- Douglas Adams
There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over... Faint to my ears came the gathered rumour of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone.-- J. R. R. Tolkien
Man has six organs to serve him and he is master only of three. He cannot control his eye, ear or nose, but he can his mouth, hand and foot.-- Leone Levi
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.-- John Stuart Mill
Strange new problems are being reported in the growing generations of children whose mothers were always there, driving them around, helping them with their homework - an inability to endure pain or discipline or pursue any self-sustained goal of any sort, a devastating boredom with life.-- Betty Friedan
It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.-- Pythagoras
A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.-- Rose Kennedy
The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.-- John Maynard Keynes
That is what marriage really means: helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous beings who do not run away from life.-- Paul Tournier
When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.-- Bob Dylan
What are man and woman if not members of two very different and warring tribes? Yet decade after decade, century after century, they attempt in marriage to reconcile and forge a union. Why? I don't know. Biological imperative? Divine law? Or just a desire to connect to that mysterious other? In any case, it's always struck me as a hopeful thing.-- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
ICONOCLAST, n. A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in place of those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But the iconoclast saith: "Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not; and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it."-- Ambrose Bierce
Freedom, then, lies only in our innate human capacity to choose between different sorts of bondage, bondage to desire or self esteem, or bondage to the light that lightens all our lives.-- Sri Madhava
We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck... But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.-- Ellen Goodman
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.-- James A. Garfield
Almost everything all external expectations,....
Almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.-- Steve Jobs
MAD, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that themselves are sane. For illustration, this present (and illustrious) lexicographer is no firmer in the faith of his own sanity than is any inmate of any madhouse in the land; yet for aught he knows to the contrary, instead of the lofty occupation that seems to him to be engaging his powers he may really be beating his hands against the window bars of an asylum and declaring himself Noah Webster, to the innocent delight of many thoughtless spectators.-- Ambrose Bierce
Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: What is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it's right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.-- Oprah Winfrey
GHOUL, n. A demon addicted to the reprehensible habit of devouring the dead. The existence of ghouls has been disputed by that class of controversialists who are more concerned to deprive the world of comforting beliefs than to give it anything good in their place. In 1640 Father Secchi saw one in a cemetery near Florence and frightened it away with the sign of the cross. He describes it as gifted with many heads an an uncommon allowance of limbs, and he saw it in more than one place at a time. The good man was coming away from dinner at the time and explains that if he had not been "heavy with eating" he would have seized the demon at all hazards. Atholston relates that a ghoul was caught by some sturdy peasants in a churchyard at Sudbury and ducked in a horsepond. (He appears to think that so distinguished a criminal should have been ducked in a tank of rosewater.) The water turned at once to blood "and so contynues unto ys daye." The pond has since been bled with a ditch. As late a
SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing it.-- Ambrose Bierce
I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.-- Matt Groening
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.--
A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and that he build the furnace, besides.-- Ayn Rand
REFUGE, n. Anything assuring protection to one in peril. Moses and Joshua provided six cities of refuge -- Bezer, Golan, Ramoth, Kadesh, Schekem and Hebron -- to which one who had taken life inadvertently could flee when hunted by relatives of the deceased. This admirable expedient supplied him with wholesome exercise and enabled them to enjoy the pleasures of the chase; whereby the soul of the dead man was appropriately honored by observations akin to the funeral games of early Greece.-- Ambrose Bierce
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head.-- Jean Cocteau
Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.-- G. K. Chesterton
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.-- Albert Einstein
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.-- Quentin Crisp
For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.-- Sir Thomas More
When I say altitude, I'm not referring to my jet. It's my own interpretation of the word attitude. I like flying because it gets me where I'm going, fast. Likewise, if you have the right attitude, you can get where you're going, fast.-- Donald Trump
It is no good asking for a simple religion. Real things are not simple. They look simple, but they are not. The table I'm sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of - all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to my optic nerve and what it does to my brain - and, of course, you'll find that what we call 'seeing a table' lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a child's prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not - and the modern world usually is not - if you want to go on and ask what is really happening - then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something is not more simple.-- C. S. Lewis
All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.-- George Bernard Shaw
GRACES, n. Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing.-- Ambrose Bierce
I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.-- Sir Winston Churchill
I respect every soldier, from every country, who serves beside us in the hard work of history. America is grateful, and America will not forget.-- George W. Bush
PYRRHONISM, n. An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.-- Ambrose Bierce
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