Except in cases of necessity, which are rare,
leave your friend to learn
unpleasant things from his enemies;
they are ready enough to tell them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
In individuals, insanity is rare;
but in groups, parties, nations and epochs,
it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Real friendships among men are so rare
that when they occur they are famous.
- Clarence Day
However rare true love may be,
it is less so than true friendship.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Friendship without self-interest
is one of the rare and beautiful things in life.
- James Francis Byrnes
It is curious - curious that physical courage
should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare
- Mark Twain
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious,
one should preserve it.
- Anais Nin
Go ahead. Weep for the rare,
the never seen this way again,
the excruciating, ineffable,
unmitigated beauty of love.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Friends are those rare people who ask how we are
and then wait to hear the answer.
- Anonymous
To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
If you can speak what you will never hear,
if you can write what you will never read,
you have done rare things.
- Henry David Thoreau
Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan
The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
- Henry David Thoreau
The attempt to combine wisdom and power
has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.
- Albert Einstein
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde
Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic,
for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.
- Robert Lindner
Unlike presidential administrations,
problems rarely have terminal dates.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It had long since come to my attention
that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.
- Leonardo da Vinci
People rarely succeed unless they
have fun in what they are doing.
- Dale Carnegie
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace
and those who could make a good peace
would never have won the war.
- Winston Churchill
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking.
There is an almost universal quest
for easy answers and half-baked solutions.
Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is a wonderful advantage to a man,
in every pursuit or avocation,
to secure an adviser in a sensible woman.
In woman there is at once a subtle delicacy of tact,
and a plain soundness of judgement,
which are rarely combined to an equal degree in man.
A woman, if she be really your friend,
will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute.
She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing:
for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Glory lies in the attempt to reach one's goal,
and not in reaching it.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
- Robert H. Schuller
There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation
of differences before resorting to combat.
- Jimmy Carter
Know that life is most joyful when you
neither attempt to hurry the future nor to slow it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I am still amazed at how big, how enormous
a love and mystery God is -
and how small are the minds
that attempt to corral
this life force into rules and taboos,
cults and sects.
- Bono
Moral authority is never retained by
any attempt to hold on to it.
It comes without seeking and
is retained without effort.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Do not attempt to conquer the world with force,
for force only causes resistance.
- Lao Tzu
It is useless for us to attempt to reason a man
out of a thing he has never been reasoned into.
- Jonathan Swift
If you get frustrated by some of your family,
focus on the good aspects of your relationship
and attempt to overlook the irritations.
Then give thanks for everyone who plays a part in your life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
"Fair" is not a useful concept.
Life is not "fair."
You can't make life "fair."
You can get angry.
You can complain about life not being "fair."
You can attempt revenge - perhaps violently.
You can inflict great suffering upon yourself
in the name of life being "unfair."
And Life is still not "fair."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I honor you, Hero, for you do not play to the crowd.
You play to your own soul.
An audience of one fills the house with its appreciation and applause.
Others follow you, and may attempt to emulate you,
but that is not why you are a hero.
Fame may smile upon you, or it may not.
The world may cheer your name, or you may be the unknown warrior
who rescued comrades in battle,
or taught a young girl how to shed tears of joy.
Whatever you did, you did not do for fame.
If you had, you would not be a Hero.
You are a Hero for your bold courageous inspired action.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Fly Life on Free Wings, and Sing to its Glory.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The greatest lovers are like twin blooms,
each reflecting the passion and the glory of the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it.
Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
- Epictetus
The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
- Moliere
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,
every hill and mountain shall be made low,
the rough places will be made straight
and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed
and all flesh shall see it together.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today is your day to Spread Wing and Soar.
Fly Life on Free Wings, and Sing to its Glory.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
- Thomas Jefferson
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall.
- Nelson Mandela
I have found out in later years that we were very poor,
but the glory of America is that we didn't know it then.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Know the power of choice.
Fly life on free wings,
and sing to its glory.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Look at everything as though you were seeing it
either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.
- Betty Smith
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Language... has created the word "loneliness"
to express the pain of being alone.
And it has created the word "solitude"
to express the glory of being alone.
- Paul Tillich
Our greatest glory is not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall.
- Confucius
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure about you.
We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
- Marianne Williamson
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.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand,
nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship;
it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one
when he discovers that someone else believes in him
and is willing to trust him with his friendship.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Women must pay for everything.
They do get more glory than men for comparable feats,
but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.
- Amelia Earhart
You might have seen a housefly, maybe even a superfly,
but I bet you ain't never seen a DONKEY fly!
- the movie Shrek (2001)
There's no reason to become alarmed,
and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight.
By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?
- the movie Airplane!
Dumbo! C'mon, fly! Open them ears!
The magic feather was just a gag!
You can fly! Honest, you can!
- Timothy Q. Mouse in the movie Dumbo
Do not use a hatchet to remove
a fly from your friend's forehead.
- Chinese Proverb
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste
the sky as well as the earth.
- Henry David Thoreau
Twinkle, twinkle little bat
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
- Lewis Carroll
Choose to soar. Choose to fly your dreams.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe,
just so you're sincere.
- Linus Van Pelt in Charles M. Schulz' Go Fly A Kite, Charlie Brown
Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.
- Gilbert (G. K.) Chesterton
If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice,
I would have English Channels round every country.
And the atmosphere would be such that
anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
- Winston Churchill
Our opportunity is to Soar our Spirit.
To see Light and Joy in everything.
To spread our wings and fly boldly.
To give thanks for rainbows and butterflies -
our symbols of renewal and rebirth.
To offer daily Thanksgiving - for ourselves, our family,
our friends, our community, for the whole world.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I was thinking that I might fly today.
Just to disprove all the things you say...
please be careful with me, I'm sensitive,
and I'd like to stay that way.
- Jewel
I won't give up 'til goats sing and walruses fly.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
- Langston Hughes
Friends are angels who lift us to our feet
when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.
- Anonymous
Love is a bird, she needs to fly.
- Madonna
In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.
- Douglas Adams
We are each of us are angels with only one wing,
and we can only fly by embracing one another.
- Lucretius
When I Come To The Edge of the Familiar,
I Spread My Wings and Fly.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
True friends are those who lift you up
when your heart's wings forget how to fly.
- Anonymous
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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.