While civilization has been improving our houses,
it has not equally improved
the men who are to inhabit them.
It has created palaces, but it was
not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
- Henry David Thoreau
Know first that you have absolutely no power to change the world,
and then address all your energies and intent toward improving it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings,
so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.
- Socrates
Let the refining and improving of your own life
keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
The way for a young man to rise is
to improve himself in every way he can,
never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
- Abraham Lincoln
If you want to improve,
be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
- Epictetus
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
before starting to improve the world.
- Anne Frank
Improve what you can
and accept all the rest of life
just as it comes.
Know that fear is your worst enemy -
perhaps your only enemy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To improve is to change;
to be perfect is to change often.
- Winston Churchill
There is just this moment.
We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things.
They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is more cheerful than talking
about our friends' shortcomings.
- Mason Cooley
A relationship, I think, is like a shark.
You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies.
And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall (1977)
Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed.
But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.
Uh, depending on the breaks.
- the movie Dr. Strangelove
I personally think we developed language
because of our deep need to complain.
- Lily Tomlin
In all matters of opinion,
our adversaries are insane.
- Oscar Wilde
I will far rather see the race of man extinct
than that we should become less than beasts
by making the noblest of God's creation,
woman, the object of our lust.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives
as much as if we had never married at all.
- Lord Byron
The claim "I was only following orders" has been used
to justify too many tragedies in our history.
- Captain Picard of the television series
STAR TREK: The Next Generation
If it's true that our species is alone in the universe,
then I'd have to say that the universe
aimed rather low and settled for very little.
- George Carlin
Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems,
in my opinion, to characterize our age.
- Albert Einstein
We make our friends; we make our enemies;
but God makes our next-door neighbor.
- Gilbert (G. K.) Chesterton
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything
save our modes of thinking
and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
- Albert Einstein
All our dreams can come true,
if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde
All people know the same truth.
Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
- John Lennon
Unless they share our opinions,
we seldom find people sensible.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
- Henry David Thoreau
Random chance seems to have operated in our favor ...
there was no deity involved.
- Spock character in the Star Trek television series
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson
The means by which we live have outdistanced
the ends for which we live.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is our choices ... that show what we truly are,
far more than our abilities.
- J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets)
We are a puny and fickle folk.
Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody
who shall make us do what we can.
Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Morality which depends upon the helplessness
of a man or woman has not much to recommend it.
Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Each of us dwells in a cathedral of our own BEing
that is created vast enough to encompass Unity with all creation.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe,
our class, and our nation;
and this means we must develop a world perspective.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The world is perfect. It's a mess.
It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.
- Joseph Campbell
Miracles are the natural way of the Universe -
our only job is to move our doubting minds aside
and let the miracles flow.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up
in our politics and say definite things which mean something,
or whether we shall always go on using generalities
to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
We have only this moment,
sparkling like a star in our hand -
and melting like a snowflake.
- Marie B. Ray
The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
"Hurry up" ranks right up there with "you need to"
as a destroyer of our humanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Those who won our independence...
valued liberty as an end and as a means.
They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness
and courage to be the secret of liberty.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Our honorable and worthy ancestors knew that the world was flat,
motionless, and the center of the universe.
They knew the human body could not withstand
the forces of traveling faster than 19 mph.
They knew that the way to salvation was
exorcising witches and slaying non-believers.
They knew that it was a mortal sin to marry
someone of a different skin color.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
As we work to create light for others,
we naturally light our own way.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our Joy comes from living our own lives simply -
never from demanding that others live simply -
or from ever making any demands whatsoever upon others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.
I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends
and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that.
That's what's insane about it.
- John Lennon
We all live with the objective of being happy;
our lives are all different and yet the same.
- Anne Frank
We cannot choose our external circumstances,
but we can always choose how to respond to them.
- Epictetus
Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife.
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways,
We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days.
Hearts full of youth,
Hearts full of truth,
Six parts gin to one part vermouth.
- Tom Lehrer - song: Bright College Days,
album: An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer
Our faith gives us knowledge of something better.
- E. F. Schumacher
What we think, we become.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
- The Buddha
Time, like life itself, has no inherent meaning.
We give our own meaning to time as to life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
When the vast cathedral of our being
becomes a sanctuary for all creation,
we become the face of God.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
There is some good in the worst of us
and some evil in the best of us.
When we discover this,
we are less prone to hate our enemies.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our desires always disappoint us;
for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction,
yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.
- Elbert Hubbard
If we like what we do, if we always do our best,
then we are really enjoying life.
We are having fun, we don't get bored,
we don't have frustrations.
- don Miguel Ruiz
When we lose one we love,
our bitterest tears are called forth
by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
- Maurice Maeterlinck
Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
- Robert Browning
Most of us spend our lives as if
we have another one in the bank.
- Ben Irwin
We all have our thorns. We, and Life, have our moments.
Life occurs before our morning coffee.
Life occurs in our bathrobe with our hair uncombed.
Bless and give thanks for All of Life - the bloom and the thorns.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To a very young child, mommy and daddy are gods.
We spend our lives looking to regain
that sense of being cared for and protected.
Thus religion.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Our stories are the window to our emotions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men.
- Robert E. Lee
Not what we have,
but what we enjoy,
constitutes our abundance.
- Epicurus
The world just IS, and we all have our stories about it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.