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Motivational Quotes:
Failure and Success


Success doesn't come to you . . . you go to it.
- Marva Collins
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Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.
- Fred Shero
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Eighty percent of success is showing up.
- Woody Allen
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Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
- William Feather
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Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.
- Augustus Hare
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The road to success is lined with many tempting parking spaces.
- Unknown
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If you stop every time a dog barks, your road will never end.
- Arabian Proverb
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Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein
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In order for you to profit from your mistakes, you have to go out and make some.
- Unknown
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Success doesn't mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives. It means winning the war, not every battle.
- Edward Bliss
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Failure is success if we learn from it.
- Malcolm Forbes
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Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making them a second time.
- George Bernard Shaw
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The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
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Get up one more time than you're knocked down.
- Peter's Principle of Success
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Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
- B.R. Hayden
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If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
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We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
- Douglas MacArthur
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The true measure of your worth includes all the benefits others have gained from your success.
- Cullen Hightower
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To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one's self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived--this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
- Robert Schuller
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" Many risks fail because they were not taken in time. Too many risks are postponed until unnecessarily elaborate preparations are made. This does not mean that one should say, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" That is foolish and self-destructive.... But don't sit back waiting for the perfect moment. It almost never comes."
David Viscott

A Site to Behold!Quotes about Leadership, Knowledge, Success, and Personal Motivation


"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."

"Nobody's perfect. But unless we constantly strive for perfection, we'll never know how close we can come."

"Do what's good for you, or you're not good for anybody." -Billy Joel

"It doesn't matter what I believe, it only matters what I can prove!" -A Few Good Men

"I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own." -Billy Joel

"You can see the stars but still not see the light." -The Eagles

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -Einstein

"The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen, but thinking what no one else has." -Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"Never let your studies interfere with your education."

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." -Henry Ford

"I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom." -General Patton

"When you stop getting better, you stop being good."

"Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives."

"Some people think it's holding on that makes one strong. Sometimes it's letting go." -Sylvia Robinson

"Ani ve'ata, neshane et ha'olam. You and I will change the world."

"When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target." -George Fisher

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, nothing can be changed until it's faced." -James Baldwin

"Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse." -African proverb

"The only thing achieved without effort is failure."

"I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it. I believe in god even when he is silent."

"All glory comes from daring to begin."

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

"It is not what you know that counts, it's what you think of in time."

"'I tried, but it didn't work.' is better than 'I wish I tried.'"

"Do what you do so well that people can't resist telling others."

"You never know what a single word of encouragement can do to change someone's life."

"Lead your life, don't follow it around."

"Behind the clouds is the sun -- still shining." -Longfellow

"Knowledge is knowing it's a one-way street; wisdom is looking both ways before you cross it."

"Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can." -John Wesley

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." -Anatole France

"It is by acts and not by ideas that people live." -Anatole France

"We are constantly invited to be who we are." -Thoreau

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?" -Hillel

"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get." -H. Jackson Brown (Emory alum)

"Hold onto yesterday, but not too tightly; let loose just enough to reach tomorrow."

"Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will travel twice a far."

"Im tirtzu ein zo agada - if you will it, it is no dream." -Theodor Herzl

"We're on the verge of all things new." -Billy Joel

"Man can only survive by using the reason of the mind, the light of the heart, and the integrity of the soul."

"People think it's fun being a super genius but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the real idiots in the world." -Calvin & Hobbes

"Opportunity always involves risk. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first."

"Don't burn bridges. You'll be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river."

"Difficult things take a long time. The impossible takes a little longer."

"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings." -William Blake/Nike

"All gave some, but some gave all."

"Still I would not be here now if I never had the hunger..." -Billy Joel

"I really wish I was less of a thinking man, and more a fool who's not afraid of rejection." -Billy Joel

"Either I'm wrong or I'm perfectly right every time..." -Billy Joel

"And isn't it a kind of madness to be living by a code of silence when you've really got a lot to say." -Billy Joel

"You're not the only one who's made mistakes but they're the only things that you can truly call your own." -Billy Joel

"They turned our power down, and drove us underground, but we went right on with the show." -Billy Joel

"But the key to our happiness, to our being able to find pleasure in our work, is the sense that we are using our abilities, not wasting them, and that we are being appreciated for it. 'Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might.'" -Rabbi Harold Kushner

"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world." -G.B. Shaw

"You will never 'find' time for anything. If you want time you must make it." -Charles Buxton

"The man who feels no enthusiasm for his work will never accomplish anything worthwhile." -Sir William C. Van Home

"There was never a person who did anything worth doing that did not receive more than he gave." -Henry Ward Beecher

"No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life." -Samuel Goldwyn

"I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem." -Ashleigh Brilliant

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." -Mark Twain

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." -Elbert Hubbard

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." -Chuck Reid

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." -Ben Hecht

"The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions." -Claude Levi-Strauss

"Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Praise youth and it will prosper." -Irish proverb

"You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself." -Harry Firestone

"The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside." -Dag Hammarskjold

"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way." -Franklin P. Adams

"But here you are in the ninth, two men out and three men on. Nowhere to look but inside, where we all respond to pressure." -Billy Joel

"Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless." -Hosea Ballou

"Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding." -Emerson

"People do not lack strength, they lack will." -Victor Hugo

"Fear grows out of the things we think; it lives in our minds. Compassion grows out of the things we are, and lives in our hearts." -Barbara Garrison

"Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success." -Swami Sivanada

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve." -Albert Schweitzer

"Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fastly misled us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no timepieces so effectually deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right." -Colton

"Our own heart, and not other men's opinion, form our true honor." -Samuel Coleridge

"Q: What's one of the best ways to judge a leader? A: Look at his followers." -Marilyn vos Savant

"To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to each easily and successfully." -Tryon Edwards

"It is better either to be silent or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words but a great deal in few." -Pythagoras

"Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind you have failed." -Jan de Hartog

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events...It is from numberless acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped." -Robert F. Kennedy

"There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the highest creed." -Albert Schweitzer

"It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." -W. Somerset Maugham

"The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward." -Igor Sikorsky

"Be patient and kind to yourself."

"Today's opportunities erase yesterday's failures." -Gene Brown

"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome." -Samuel Johnson

"Always, always, always be true to yourself."

"Certainly luck plays a part, but a major reason capable people fail to advance is that they don't work well with their colleagues. Working well with people is 100% communication." -Lee Iacocca

"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after awhile, he knows something." -Wilson Mizner

"Problems are something I can do something about - if I can't, it's not a problem but a fact of life."

"The sense of obligation to continue is present in all of us. A duty to strive is the duty of us all. I felt a call to that duty." -Abraham Lincoln

"The path was worn and slippery. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other out of the way...but I recovered and said to myself, 'It's a slip and not a fall.'" - Abraham Lincoln

"Leadership is intangible. It is a performing art. It is an encounter. Leadership is something we experience in an interaction with another human being." -James Kouzes and Barry Pozner

"Leaders thrive on change; exercise 'control' by means of a worthy and inspiring vision of what might be, arrived at jointly with their people; and understanding that empowering people by expanding their authority rather than standardizing them by shrinking their authority is the only course to sustain relevance and vitality." -James Kouzes and Barry Pozner

"To the leadership mind, greatness matters, specifically, a leader is a person who is truly effective in achieving worthy results in any field, no matter what the obstacles and with unfailing regard for human beings. A leader is a person of unimpeachable character, an individual thoroughly to be trusted. Leaders are open-minded, good listeners, flexible, secure in the knowledge that they alone do not have all the answers." -Peter Koestenbaum

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming." -Goethe

"Ability has nothing to do with opportunity." -Napoleon

"People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there." -Bob Edwards

"What I need is someone who will make me do what I can." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner." -English proverb

"The ultimate high: A man's abilities equaling his opinion of 'em." -Malcolm Forbes

"There are few, if any, jobs in which ability alone is sufficient. Needed, also, are loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm, and team play." -William B. Given, Jr.

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm." -Publilius

"Keep a definite goal of achievement constantly in view. Realize that work well and worthily done makes life truly worth living." -Grenville Kleiser

"The most important part of every business is to know what ought to be done." -Lucius Columella

"It is good to dream, but it is better to dream and work. Faith is mighty, but action with faith is mightier. Desiring is helpful, but work and desire are invincible." -Thomas Robert Gaines

"The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions. A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life." -John Hancock

"We must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary to us than thought." -William Hazlitt

"When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see." -Baltasar Gracian

"Follow your honest convictions and be strong." -William Makepeace Thackeray

"The dissemination of information is one of the cornerstones of modern civilization." -John F. Budd

"Progressiveness is looking forward intelligently, looking within critically, and moving on incessantly." -Waldo Pondray Warren

"A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew." -Herb Caen

"Modesty is a shining light; it prepares the mind to receive knowledge, and the heart for truth." -Guizot

"It is with many enterprises as with striking fire; we do not meet with success except by reiterated efforts and often at the instant when we despaired of success." -Francoise de Maintenon

"It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it." -Goethe

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience." -Goethe

"The earnest desire of succeeding is almost always a prognostic of success." -Leszczynski Stanislaus (1677-1766)

"Truth is always the strongest argument." -Sophocles

"Success - to rise from the illusion of pursuit to the disillusion of possession." -Elbert Hubbard

"Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom." -Thomas Jefferson

"Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigor three hours a day will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe." -Johnson

"We sometimes learn more from the sight of evil than from an example of good; and it is well to accustom ourselves to profit by the evil which is so common, while that which is good is so rare." -Pascal

"Self-control is the best of all vows. Sweetness of speech, benevolence, absence of malice, anger, and hatred, forgiveness, patience, forbearance, non-violence, modesty, courtesy, good behavior, truth, straight-forwardness, and firmness - the combination of all these constitutes self-control." -Sivananda

"The glue that holds all relationships together - including the relationship between the leader and the led is trust, and trust is based on integrity." -Brian Tracy

"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe." -Marilyn vos Savant

"Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish. High expectations are the key to everything." -Sam Walton

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage." -Ayn Rand

"The minute you start talking about what you are going to do if you lose, you have lost." -George Schultz

"Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind." -Buddha

"There are no secrets to success: Don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for who you work, and persistence." -General Colin Powell

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." -Mark Twain
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Life and Death

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...I want to achieve it through not dying."

Woody Allen

"Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminuation of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty."

Amiel, Journal

"Death is beautiful. It alone gives love its true habitat."

Jean Anouilh, Eurydice

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it."

J.M. Barrie, Golden Book

"One should try everything once, except incest and folk-dancing."

Arnold Bax

"They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant then it's night once more."

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

"If it was raining soup, we'd be out with forks."

Brendan Behan

"Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die."

Bible, Isaiah 22:13

"There is no time for hatred, only questions: What is love? Where is happiness? What is life? Where is peace?"

Jeff Buckley, Eternal Life

"Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on."

Samuel Butler

"In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land."

Albert Camus, Thanks Rosie / Manics

"For the unhappy man death is the commutation of a sentence of life imprisonment."

Alexander Chase

"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort - to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires, too soon, too soon - before life itself."

Joseph Conrad, Youth

"My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought how every day each of us experiences a few moments that have just a bit more resonance that other moments - we hear a word that sticks in our mind - or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly - we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen - or we have an episode like the one that I had with the M & M cars back at the husky station.

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether, one we didn't even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real - this clumsy day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives."

Douglas Coupland, Life After God

"The past isn't real. It's just a dream."

Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

"Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence."

Jules Feiffer

"Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence."

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

"We're alive, you know, but we live this only once. We open our arms and declare that we exist, but then we are swept aside and trust into the depths of history."

Jostein Gaarder, The Solitaire Mystery

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

J.K. Galbraith

"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."

Graham Greene

"You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry. Don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way."

Walter C. Hagen

"You need as much ballast as possible to stop you floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? I've got to get more stuff, more clutter, more detail in here, because at the moment I'm in danger of falling off the edge."

Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

"Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them."

Ed Howe

"Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole represents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children."

David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

"My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me."

Thomas Jefferson, Letter, March 1801

"When making you choice in life, do not neglect to live."

Samuel Johnson

"A man who has nothing can whistle in a robbers face."

Juvenal, Satires

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

Sören Kierkegaard, Life

"I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for he isn't fit to live."

Martin Luther King, Speech

"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

John Lennon

"Life's a long headache in a noisy street."

John Masefield, The Widow in the Bye Street

"She said that was all there was in this world, people who let you down."

Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy

"Whom the gods love dies young."

Menander, Dis Exapaton

"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore."

H.L. Mencken

"It is not true that life is one damned thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over."

Edna St. Vincent Millay

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

"The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that's left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbour, as cold and lonely as itself."

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

"Man is born to live, not to prepare for life."

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

"'I meant,' said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?' Death thought about it 'Cats,' he said eventually, 'Cats are nice.'"

Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

"One of these days in your travels a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in you ear. But son, do not bet this man, for sure as you stand there, you are going to wind up with an earful of cider."

Damon Runyon

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."

Bertrand Russell, Autobiography

"Life is not a spectacle or feast; it is a predicament."

George Santayana, Articles and Essays

"Don't be misled into believing that somehow the world owes you a living. The boy who believes that his parents or the government, or anyone else owes him his livelihood and that he can collect it without labour will wake up one day and find himself working for another boy who did not have that belief and, therefore, earned the right to have others work for him."

David Sarnoff

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

"Not to be born is best. The second best is to have seen the light and then to back quickly whence we came."

Sophocles

"Life is a gamble at terrible odds - if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it."

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

"Death is fortunate for the child, bitter to the youth, too late for the old."

Publilius Syrus, Sententioe

"God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly."

Paul Valéry, Tel Quel 1

"We'll smile, but only for seconds - for to be caught smiling is to acknowledge life - A brave but useless show of compassion, and that is forbidden in this drab and colourless world."

Paul Weller, Wasteland Thanks Ross

"You are eight years old. It is Sunday evening. You have been granted an extra hour before bed. The family is playing Monopoly. You have been told that you are big enough to join them. You lose. You are losing continuously. Your stomach cramps with fear. Nearly all of your possessions are gone. Your brothers are snatching all of the houses from your streets. The last street is being sold. You have to give in. You have lost. And suddenly you know that it is only a game. You jump up with joy and you knock the big lamp over. It falls on the floor and drags the teapot with it. The others are angry with you, but you laugh and go upstairs. You know you are nothing and you know you have nothing. And you know that not-to-be and not-to-have give immeasurable freedom."

Janwillem Van De Wetering

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.

Tennessee Williams

"You are not merely here to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand."

Woodrow Wilson

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Life & Death, Dying & Not Dying



Life & Death
"If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?"
- Charles de Lint, Svaha

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
- A. Sachs

"It gets under your skin, life. ... It's a habit that's hard to give up. One puff of breath is never enough. You'll find you want to take another."
- Terry Pratchet, Hogfather

"I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel."
- Gloria Naylor

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov

"Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you."
- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"My time is probably short in the larger scheme of things, but the day is long."
- Rev. Webster "Kit" Howell

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on."
- Robert Frost

"Life is just one damned thing after another."
- Elbert Hubbard




Death & Dying
"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
- Woody Allen

"When life has become futile, meaningless, unendurable -- it must be allowed to end."
- Q, Star Trek: Voyager

"There is a good way to die, and a right time to do it. An odd thought for this time of year -- this is the point where the world has meandered back into spring, back into life. The sun is pulling fresh green from the ground again. An odd time to think about death, but as good time as ever to die."
- James Lileks, columnist

"Modern death is a matter of bright rooms and hard machines. Live long enough, and you might be filed away in a nursing home, your history scoured away, your life winnowed down to a few items on the table and some pictures of people who don't come around enough.
When you are about to pass on, there is no quiet to attend you: busy fuss and professional zeal strive to bring you back, nail you to the soft cross of the rented bed."
- James Lileks

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;
it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"Remember where you came from, where you are going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.
Take your dying with some serious, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy."
- Richard Bach, Illusions

"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
- Sir James M. Barrie

"Firstly, there no such person as Death.
Second, Death's this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass and a big white horse and a penchant for playing chess with Scandinavians.
Third, he doesn't exist either."
- Neil Gaiman, The High Cost of Living

"Dying is a part of living -- a natural progression. Should I ignore the natural order of my life, twist it to MY liking and thereby become something I was not meant to be?"
- Charles de Lint, The Little Country

"This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot."
- John Cleese/Monty Python, Episode 8

"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts
and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more."
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

"Clearly, I would want all my children to die in a state of joy. I mean, what more could I ask for? I would prefer it was not at age 7 but, God, she went with her joy and her passion, and her life was in her hands."
- Lisa Blair Hathaway, whose daughter died trying to become the youngest cross-country pilot

"If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this."
- Robert Burns

"Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished:
If you're alive, it isn't."
- Richard Bach, Illusions

"Death is a tragedy ... but only for the living. We who have died go on to other things."
- Charles de Lint, Into the Green

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!"
- William Shakespeare, Othello

"Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live."
- Dorothy Parker, "Resume"

"They say such nice things about people at funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days."
- Garrison Keillor

"Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said 'Thank God, I'm still alive.' But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again."
- Rep. Barbara Boxer, D-California

"Do not go gentle into that good night. ... Rage, rage against
the dying of the light."
- Dylan Thomas

"Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it."
- William Somerset Maugham

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokeswoman for a federal anti-smoking campaign

"Sometimes I think I'd be better off dead. No, wait. Not me, you."
- Jack Handey

"Defeat is worse than death because you have to live with defeat."
- Bill Musselman

"Without death and decay, how would life go on?" - John Burroughs

"Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me."
- John Donne

"It is death that causes this blinding show of color, but it is a fierce and flaming death."
- Charles Kuralt




Self-Preservation
"Laughing in the face of danger is not a survival strategy."
- Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

"Come not between the dragon and his wrath."
- William Shakespeare, King Lear

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."
- J.R.R. Tolkein

"You didn't jump in the river. How sensible of you."
- Mrs. Banks to Mr. Banks, Mary Poppins

"It was kind of boring for me to have to eat. I would know that I had to, and I would."
- Kate Moss

"You can live to be 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be 100."
- Woody Allen

"Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home."
- Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."
- Charles Schulz




Age & Immortality
"The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever."
- Herb Caen

"The tree remains, but not the hand that planted it."
- Irish saying

"If you live to the age of 100 you have it made because very few people die past the age of 100."
- George Burns

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work;
I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
- Woody Allen

"Every decade, people get exactly 10 years older."
- Harold Hodgkinson, educational demographer

"Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind. You are as old as your doubt, your fear, your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self-confidence young. Keep your hope young."
- Luella F. Phean

"Immortality consists largely of boredom."
- Zefrem Cochrane, Star Trek

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up our enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."
- Samuel Ullman

"Shame on the body for breaking down while the spirit perseveres."
- John Drybred

"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day."
- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne

"Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked."
- Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune

"Retirement at 65 is ridiculous. When I was 65 I still had pimples."
- George Burns

Question: "If you could live forever, would you and why?"
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever,
because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever,
but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
- Miss Alabama, 1994 Miss Universe contestant

"I've always found that the best way to be immortal is not getting yourself killed, like the best way to avoid divorce is not getting married."
- Tom Holt, Paint Your Dragon

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
- Abraham Lincoln

"You and I are past our dancing days."
- William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey."
- Stephen Covey

"There are no happy endings. There are no real endings ever -- happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just a part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others' stories -- perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years -- and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on."
- Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot



Life After Death
"Unitarians may disagree about life after death and life before birth.
But we all know there is life after birth. That's what we've got to focus on."
- Rev. Webster "Kit" Howell, Unitarian minister

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell -- you see, I have friends in both places."
- Mark Twain

"He had been dead a long time.
With a profound sense of shock he realized he was no longer dead.
Beyond an increasingly vivid sense of self he was still aware of the tender network from which he was being separated. From its fabric those who were dear to him reached out, calling to him, seeking one more communion.
Do not abandon me! he cried to them. Follow me, find me!
Tightening around him, existence throbbed with the pulsing of a giant heart. He was expelled into lightlessness, he was tumbled into the unknown.
Down and down he spun.
Gradually he began recalling long-forgotten concepts such as direction and distance and time. Concentrating on them, he found himself spiraling amid stars. Constellations bloomed around him like flowery meadows.
He reached out, hungry for the suddenly remembered sensation of touch ... and slipped and slid and came to rest in a warm chamber lit by a dim red glow.
There he lay dreaming. Sheltered and content, he was suspended between worlds, floating on tides regulated by the rhythms of a universe. In this building-time he sorted among his memories, deciding which to keep. So few could be retained and it was hard to anticipate which he might need most. Yet a voiceless command urged him to remember, remember....
He drifted and dreamed until the pounding began. Shocked, he tried to fight back, but he was seized and squeezed and ultimately ejected into a place of hard surfaces. A burning flood poured into his nostrils and open mouth.
The infant used that first breath to scream his outrage."
- Morgan Llywelyn, Druids

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