Archive - 2017 - quotes

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend ... if you have one."
- George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

"Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."
- Churchill's response

Before man to blow to right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong:
It hadn't found the place to blow;
It blew too hard - the aim was song.
And listen - how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth,
And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be -
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song - the wind could see.

"Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature."
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Choose only one master - Nature."
~ Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

"True wisdom consists in not departing from nature and in molding our conduct according to her laws and model."
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief." - Marcus Tullius Cicero

"I know what things are good: friendship and work and conversation. These I shall have." - Rupert Brooke

"My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake." - Aristotle

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."

"For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."

~ John F. Kennedy

"Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour."
- Thomas Jefferson

"Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he."
- Publilius Syrus

"I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy."
- George Bernard Shaw

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.