Just A Few of My Favorite Quotes
by Steven Craig
Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing.
It includes neglect of responsibility, but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost.
It includes gaps in intelligence that, like a string of pearls too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give t those who need it.
It includes the alarm that fails to work, but also includes that alarm that gone off so often it has been disconnected.
It includes the unalert watchman, but also the one who knows he will be chewed out by his superior if he gets higher authority out to bed.
It includes the contingencies that occur to no one, but also those that everyone else assumes somebody else is taking care of.
It includes straight-forward procrastination, but also decisions protracted by internal disagreement.
It includes, in addition, the inability of individual human beings to rise to the occasion until they are sure it is the occasion which is nearly always too late.
Finally, as at Pearl Harbor, surprise may include some measure of genuine novelty introduced by the enemy,
And possibly some sheer bad luck.
Thomas C. Schelling
Author of The Strategy of Conflict 1962
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
R. Frost
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and, tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. 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: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing
William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
I will submit to my fate, yet grant me a little favor, let me feast my mind with the dream as day dreamers are in the habit of feasting themselves, when they are walking alone; for before they have discovered any means of effecting their wishes, - that is a matter which never troubles them - they would rather not tire themselves by thinking about possibilities, but rather assuming that what they desire is already granted to them, they proceed with their plans and delight in detailing what they mean to do when their wish has come true - that is a way which they have of not doing good to a capacity, which was never good for much.
Plato.
There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible; the latter on small ones and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us; in one case we are forced, in the other we are flattered, into compliance.
- Edmund Burke
Woman is least herself when she talks in her own person. Give her a mask, and she will tell the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
The awful daring of a moments surrender, which in an age of prudence, can never retract. By this and only this, we have existed.
- T S Elliott
That god forbid that made me first your slave, I should in thought, control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand thaccount of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure...
-W. Shakespeare
Good timber does not grow with ease, the stronger the wind, the stronger the timber
- Lee Lopez
You would love to be a wanton wench for at least a night and know the distillery floor in great detail....
Lee Lopez
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit, that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
- R. W Emerson
Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
- Victor Hugo
Nothing is enough for the woman to whom enough is too little.
- Epicurus
We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity.
Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
Nothing is impossible; there are ways which lead to everything; and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means.
- F. De la Rocheoucauld
Were that we were kids again and had the whole day to play,
Then we could lay there then in bed and idly sleep away.....
- Lee Lopez
Dignity does not consist of possessing honors, but in deserving them
- Aristotle
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the difference between dog and man.
- Mark Twain
Those who make their dress a principle part of them selves will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
- William Hazlitt
It is easier to go down the hill than up, but the view is from the top.
- Arnold Bennett
Remember, when lifes path is steep, to keep your mind even.
- Horace
How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.
- Alfred de Musset
Moderation is a fatal thing; nothing succeeds like excess.
- Oscar Wilde.
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing, though the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.
- William Congreve
We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
- Samuel Smiles
You can protect your liberties in this world only by protecting the other mans freedom. You can only be free only if I am free.
- Clarence Darrow
The essential elements of giving are power and love - activity and affection - and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.
- Mark Hopkins
The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the later accidentally hits upon; but even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents to him; it is the lapidary who gives value to the diamond which the peasant has dug up without knowing its value.
- Abbe Guillaume Raynal
The man of true greatness never loses his childs heart.
- Mencius
A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
- Mark Twain
There are heroes in evil as well as in good.
- Francquis De La Rochefoucauld
Ideas are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring men on the desert of waters, you chose them as your guides, and following them reach your destiny.
- Carl Schurz
Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.
- Dr. Alexis Carrel
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries. There is no discovery so limited as not to illuminate something beyond itself.
- John Tyndall
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a mans life to know them the little that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
- Ernest Hemingway
The first man get s the oyster, the second gets the shell.
- Andrew Carnegie
A Good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while... he knows something.
- Wilson Mizner
A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
- Dr., Samuel Johnson
Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.
- Epictetus
It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.
-Arnold Bennett
The time is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A promise is the child of the understanding and the will; the understanding begets it, the will brings it forth. He that performs delivers the mother; he that breaks it murders the child. If the child be begotten in the absence of the understanding it is a bastard, but the child must be kept. If thou mistrust thy understanding, promise not; if thou has promised, break it not; it is better to maintain a bastard than to murder a child.
- Francis Quarles
Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence... and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.
- Andre Maurois
No person was ever honored for what he received. honor has been the reward for what he gave.
- Calvin Coolidge
There never was a person that did anything worth doing who did not really receive more than he gave.
- Henry Ward Beecher
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
- Johathan Swift
Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy.
- William Gilmore Simms
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
- William Shakespeare
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone.... forever.
- Horace Mann
Titles of honor are like the impressions on coins, which add no value to gold or silver, but do render brass current.
- Laurence Sterne
Trouble is only opportunity ... in work clothes.
- Henry Kaiser
In every tyrants heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
- Aeschylus
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile
- Albert Einstein
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment ... Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
- Leanardo Da Vinci
Seek not proud wealth; but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and love contentedly.
- Francis Bacon
Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he who has much, and wants more.
- Charles C. Colton
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly; but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sink to rest.
- Marcus Aurelius
You know you have done well when no one knows your name in Washington.
- Cmdr Charles H. Pollow
Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn.
-Augustus Hare
Of all the wonders that I have yet heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it comes...
- Sherwin B. Nuland
In all the world, nothing exceeds desires for that which a woman needs, not the wealth of jewels or the bread of the fields. In all the nights when thinking of what it is she searches for, she prepares for the day that in the clear and present space of her life, it is suddenly there.
- Lee Lopez
Those who will not reason, Perish for that act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
- Mr. A.
Never do too much of one thing before you do everything with the other.
- Lee Lopez
The worst sin, perhaps the only sin passion can commit, is to be joyless.
- Dorothy L. Sayers
50 plumbers apply for a programming job ... I discard 47 plumbers and hire 3 programmers. - Lee Lopez
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.
~Blais Pascal
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
~Antoine de Sanit-Exupery
The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.
~Cameroonian saying
Life is not always what one wants it to be, but to make the best of it as it is, is the only way of being happy.
~Jennie Churchill
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
~Margaret Lee Runbeck
Many search for happiness as we look for a hat we wear on our heads.
~Nikolaus Lenau
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
~Bertrand Russell
He is richest who is content with the least; for content is the wealth of nature.
~Socrates
The more passions and desires one has, the more ways one has of being happy.
~Charlotte-Catherine
. . . happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.
~Dale Carnegie
Learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.
~Marian Wright Edelman
There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
-Norman Mailer
"Most welcome, bondage, for thou art a way, I think, to liberty."
- William Shakespeare
"I will show you fear in just a handful of dust"
-T S Eliot
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”
— Albert Einstein
She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. 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. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
---- Shakespeare
UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
5
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson. 1850–1894
10/20/2007
