Quotes N-T


"Never could any increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty."
- Hilaire Belloc
"Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river."
- Cordel Hull
"Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting."
- Billy Rose
"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."
- Sandra Carey
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will suprise you with their ingenuity."
- General George S Patton, Jr.
"No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve...."
- Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, scene I, William Shakespeare
"No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind."
- W. Somerset Maugham
"No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy."
- Lyman Beecher, American clergyman (1775-1863)
"No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting."
- Murray Kempton
"No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach."
- William Cowper, English poet (1731-1800)
"No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself."
- Thomas Mann, German author (1875-1955)
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
"No one has ever bet enough on a winning horse."
- Richard Sasuly
"No one really knows enough to be a pessimist."
- Norman Cousins
"Nonchalance is the ability to remain down to earth when everything else is up in the air."
- Earl Wilson
"Nostalgia is the realization that things weren't as unbearable as they seemed at the time"
- Anonymous.
"Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet."
- Pericles
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors."
- Beethoven
"Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, that we readily believe."
- Demosthenes, Athenian orator and statesman (385?-322 B.C.)
"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples' habits."
- Mark Twain
"Often it is fatal to live too long. "
- Racine
"Often you must turn your stylus to erase, if you hope to write anything worth a second reading."
- Horace
"One disadvantage of having nothing to do is you can't stop and rest."
- Franklin P. Jones
"One martini is alright, two is too many, three is not enough."
- James Thurber, American humorist (1894-1961)
"One of the few rules of Evolution is that extreme specialization results in eventual extinction."
- Hardin
"One should never make one's debut in a scandal. One should reserve that to give interest to one's old age."
- Oscar Wilde
"One thing the world needs is popular government at popular prices."
- George Barker
"One way to prevent conversation from being boring is to say the wrong thing."
- Frank Sheed
"Opinion says hot and cold, but the reality is atoms and emty space."
- Democritus, Greek philosopher (460?-370? B.C.)
"Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners."
- William Shakespeare
"Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
- Vladimir Nabokov
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found."
- Kathleen Norris, American author (1880-1960)
"Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility.
Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill."
- Richard Aldington, English poet, novelist, critic (1892-1962)
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding"
- Albert Einstein
"Peace may cost as much as war, but it is a better buy."
- Anonymous
"Pedestrians never seem to realize that they are a threat to the safety of cars."
- Thomas Sowell
"People who feel well are sick people neglecting themselves."
- Jules Romains
"People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it."
- Ogden Nash, American humorist and poet (1902-1971)
"People who never get carried away should be."
- Malcolm S. Forbes, American publisher.
"People will sleep better not knowing how their sausage and politics are made."
- Bismarck
"Perfection, then, is finally achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de St. Exupéry
"Pessimists have already begun to worry about what is going to replace automation."
- John Tudor
"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even where there are no rivers."
- Nikita Khrushchev
"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery."
- Democritus, Greek philosopher (460?-370? B.C.)
"Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Prejudice is the reason of fools."
- Voltaire
"Probably all laws are useless; for good men do not want laws at all, and bad men are made no better by them"
- Demonax (c 150 A.D.)
"Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind."
- W. R. Alger
"Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath."
- Solon
"Rainbows apologize for angry skies."
- Sylvia A. Viorol
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
- Confucius
"Real love stories never have endings."
- Richard Bach
"Really, we create nothing. We merely plagiarize nature."
- Jean Baitaillon
"Remember: the average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top."
- Anonymous
"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time"
- Sir J. Lubbock
"Resting on one's laurels makes for an uncomfortable bed, and only crushes the laurels."
- A. Cygni, Philospher
"Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Rivers in the United States are so polluted that acid rain makes them cleaner."
- Andrew Malcolm
"Say what you will about the ten commandments; you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them."
- H. L. Mencken
"Scripture teaches us to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. All too often, [we] are as wise as doves and as harmless as serpents."
- Moishe Rosen
"Seeing consists of the grasping of structural features rather than the indiscriminate recording of detail."
- Rudolf Arnheim
"Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering the Farmer's Daughter."
- Julius H. Comroe.
"Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him."
- Charles de Gaulle
"Sleep is conducive to beauty. Even velvet looks worn when it loses its nap."
- Joan L. Zielin
"Smart is when you believe only half of what you hear. Brilliant is when you know which half to believe."
- Orben's Current Comedy
"So far, I haven't heard of anybody who wants to stop living on account of the cost."
- Kin Hubbard
"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."
- Mark Twain
"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun."
- Pablo Picasso
"Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly."
- Julie Andrews
"Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are."
- John W. Gardner
"Some people want to achieve immortality through their works or their descendants. I prefer to achieve immortality by not dying."
- Woody Allen.
"Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards."
- Fred Hoyle
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
- Ambrose Bierce
"Suicide is cheating the doctors out of a job."
- Billings
"Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Take from me the hope that I can change the future and you will send me mad."
- Israel Zangwill
"Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in."
- Andrew Jackson.
"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
- Albert Einstein
"Tell the truth and run."
- Yugoslav proverb
"The alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. They will trust the written characters and not remember themselves."
- Socrates
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."
- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876
"The art of acting consists of keeping people from coughing."
- Sir Ralph Richardson
"The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."
- Voltaire
"The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name."
- Aldous Huxley
"The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because the average man can see better than he can think"
- anonymous
"The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it."
- Benjamin Disraeli
"The bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go."
- Galileo
"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."
- Robert Frost
"The budget should be balanced, the treasury refilled, public debt reduced, the arrogance of officialdom tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt."
- Cicero, Roman statesman (106 B.C.-43 B.C.)
"The coward regards himself as cautious; the miser, as thrifty."
- Publilius Syrus
"The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty steps in advance; but if he is a thousand steps in front of them, they do not see and do not follow him, and any literary freebooter who chooses may shoot him with impunity."
- Georg Brandes, Danish liter
"The despot, be assured, lives night and day like one condemned to death by the whole of mankind for his wickedness."
- Xenophon
"The difference between a rich man and a poor man is this: the former eats when he pleases, the latter when he can get it."
- Sir Walter Raleigh
"The dogs bark, but the caravan passes."
- Near East proverb
"The English certainly and fiercely pride themselves in never praising themselves."
- Wyndham Lewis
"The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems."
- Roger Levian
"The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion."
- Arnold H. Glascow
"The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of women who love me."
- George Bernard shaw
"The first condition of immortality is death."
- Stanislaw Lec
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
- Shakespeare: Henry VI, Part 2, act ii
"The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to it's absurdity."
- Proust
"The flush toilet is the basis of western civilization."
- Alan Coult
"The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only more expensive."
- John Sladek
"The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs."
- Francis Bacon
"The good Lord set definite limits on man's wisdom, but set no limits on his stupidity--and that's just not fair!"
- Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of Germany
"The great artist is the simplifier."
- Henri Frédéric Amiel, Swiss poet, philosopher (1821-1881)
"The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."
- William James
"The greatness of a man can nearly always be measured by his willingness to be kind."
- G. Young
"The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable."
"The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind."
- John Burroughs, American essayist (1837-1921)
"The ladder of life is full of splinters, but they always prick hardest when you're sliding down."
- William Brownell
"The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends. It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right."
- William J. Brennan, Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice (1906-)
"The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week."
- Voltaire
"The man who has nothing to boast of but his ancestry is like a potato. The only good belonging to him is underground."
- Sir Thomas Overbury
"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
- J. Paul Getty
"The middle class is always a firm champion of equality when it concerns a class above it; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it."
- Orestes A. Brownson
"The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out."
- Tennessee Williams
"The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation."
- Plato
"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."
- Reverend Hesburgh
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
- Albert Einstein.
"The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
- H. P. Lovecraft
"The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."
- H. L. Mencken
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr
"The polar ice cap is melting and all you can do is look at reruns of Barney Miller?"
- 'What A Guy', by Bill Hoest
"The pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy."
- D. H. Laurence
"The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there is only one other choice."
- Doug Larson
"The religion of one seems madness unto another."
- Thomas Browne, English physician, writer (1605-1682)
"The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead."
- Luther Burbank, American horticulturist (1849-1926)
"The shortest distance between two points is under construction"
- Noelie Altito
"The Show-off is always shown up in a showdown."
- fortune cookie.
"The smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen."
- Aldous Huxley
"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."
- Paul Valéry
"The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people."
- E. B. White
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."
- Lily Tomlin
"The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything by his art."
- George Bernard Shaw
"The two most important tools an architect has are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledge hammer on the construction site."
- Frank Lloyd Wright
"The universe is looking less and less like a great machine and more and more like a great thought."
- Ortega y Gasset
"The unnatural, that too is natural."
- Göthe
"The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that operates with perfect equality."
- Andrew Jackson
"The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants."
- Omar N. Bradley, American general (1893-1981)
"The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence"
- Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri, Syrian Poet (973-1057)
"The world stands aside to let anyone pass who know where he is going."
- David Starr Jordan
"The worst of madmen is a saint run mad."
- Alexander Pope
"There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce
"There are no friends at cards or world politics."
- F. P. Dunne
"There are no second acts in American lives."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, American Author (1896-1940)
"There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
- Thoreau
"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking."
- Alfred Korzybski
"There is a capacity of virtue in us, and there is a capacity of vice to make your blood creep."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."
- Booker T. Washington
"There is no country and no people who can look forward to the age of leisure and abundance without dread."
- John Maynard Keynes, English economist (1883-1946)
"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know."
- Ambrose Bierce
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
- Red Smith
"There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."
- Salvador Dali
"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
- Mark Twain, American Writer (1835-1910)
"There was never a good war or a bad peace."
- Benjamin Franklin
"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."
- Oscar Levant
"There's nothing to match curling up with a good book when there's a repair job to be done around the house."
- Joe Ryan
"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
- Andy Warhol, American pop artist (1928-1987)
"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London's society is full of women who have of their free choice remained thirty-five for years."
- Oscar Wilde
"This world is comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."
- Horace Walpole
"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."
- Edgar Allan Poe
"Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant or an enemy, must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves."
- Aesop, Greek fabulist (620-560 B.C.)
"Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up."
- Wilson Mizner
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it within us or we will find it not."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do."
- Thomas Aquinas, Italian theolgian (1255-1274)
"Throw a lucky man in the sea, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth."
- Arab proverb
"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."
- Hector Berlioz
"Time is what we want most, but alas, what we use worst."
- William Penn
"Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles."
- Frank Lloyd Wright
"To be seen is the ambition of ghosts, and to be remembered is the ambition of the dead."
- Norman O. Brown
"To define a thing is to substitute the definition for the thing itself."
- Georges Braque, French artist (1882-1963)
"To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer."
- anonymous
"To generalize is to be an idiot."
- William Blake, English poet, artist (1757-1827)
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men."
- Abraham Lincoln
"To tyrants, indeed, and bad rulers, the progress of knowledge among the mass of mankind is a just object of terror; it is fatal to them and their designs."
- Henry Peter Brougham, Scottish statesman and historian (1778-1868)
"Too much of a good thing is wonderful."
- Mae West.
"Trapped, like a trap in a trap."
- Dorothy Parker
"Truth above all, even when it upsets and overwhelms us."
- Henri Frédéric Amiel, Swiss poet, philosopher (1821-1881)
"Truth as a way of shifting under pressure."
- Curtis Bok, U. S. federal judge (1897-1962)
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather, try to become a man of value."
- Albert Einstein.
"Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five."
- Jame McNeil Whistler

Return to Quotes index


Web pages maintained by Adrian Hilton