Random Quotations

The following quotations were randomly selected from the collections selected below .

Often we don't even realize who we're meant to be because we're so busy trying to live out someone else's ideas. But other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.
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Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ), O Magazine, November 2009
A finished person is a boring person.
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Anna Quindlen (1953 - )
If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.
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Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park
To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
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Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Sybil, 1845
Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.
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Sharon Salzberg
Hope is only the love of life.
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Henri-Frédéric Amiel
She used to drag her mattress besider her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window - or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that is was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.
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Willa Cather (1873 - 1947), The Song of the Lark
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
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John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)
Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.
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Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964)
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
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Lillian Hellman (1905 - 1984), letter to Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives, May 19, 1952
I simply cannot understand the passion that some people have for making themselves thoroughly uncomfortable and then boasting about it afterwards.
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Patricia Moyes
The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary.
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Dave Kellett, Sheldon, 02-01-09
Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please.
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Pythagoras (582 BC - 507 BC)
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
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James Thurber (1894 - 1961), New Yorker, Feb. 18, 1939 "The Shrike and the Chipmunks"
Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
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Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory", 1996
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.
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Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
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Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money. It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
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Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Speeches... in the Trial of Warren Hastings, May 5, 1789
Saying goodbye doesn't mean anything. It's the time we spent together that matters, not how we left it.
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Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Tweek Vs. Craig, 1999
Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.
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Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos, 1986
from these collections:

MM's Cynical Quotes LM's Motivational Quotes Classic Quotes
Cole's Quotables Rand Lindsly's Quotes Poor Man's College
alt.quotations Archives 20th Century Quotations Quotations by Women
The Devil's Dictionary Contributed Quotations

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