It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
-- Colette, The Pure and the Impure, 1932

There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. 'You forget,' said the Devil, with a chuckle, 'that I have been evolving too.'
-- William Ralph Inge

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
-- Henry Ward Beecher

Better be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident security.
-- Edmund Burke

Be rich to yourself and poor to your friends.
-- Juvenal

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
-- Robert Service

Only in quiet waters things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
-- Hans Margolius

To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.
-- Plutarch

When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.
-- William Blake

Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
-- Miyamoto Musashi

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
-- Sallust

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.
-- Thomas J. Watson

Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
-- Albert Guerard

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
-- Alvin Toffler

Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself.
-- Plutarch

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

We are advertis'd by our loving friends.
-- William Shakespeare

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
-- Joseph Addison, The Spectator, September 26, 1712

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-- Henry Ford

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
-- William Hazlitt

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.
-- H. G. Wells

Smile and the world smiles with you.