No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.
- James Allen
Urgent? Why?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life's most urgent question is:
what are you doing for others?
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life's most persistent and urgent question is,
'What are you doing for others?'
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem.
It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
- Albert Einstein
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
People disparage knowing and the intellectual life,
and urge doing.
I am content with knowing, if only I could know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
True art is characterized by an irresistible
urge in the creative artist.
- Albert Einstein
Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it,
while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill.
The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation
is the same as in the life of the individual.
Pessimism kills the instinct that
urges men to struggle against poverty,
ignorance and crime, and dries up
all the fountains of joy in the world.
- Helen Keller
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
An optimist is one who makes the best
of what he gets the worst of.
- Anonymous
An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere,
while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight.
The truly wise person is colorblind.
- Albert Schweitzer
I am an optimist.
It does not seem too much use being anything else.
- Winston Churchill
If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.
I have become my own version of an optimist.
If I can't make it through one door,
I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door.
Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.
- Rabindranath Tagore
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
- Mark Twain
A pessimist is never disappointed.
- Jack Cleary
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars,
or sailed to an uncharted land,
or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
- Helen Keller
Be careful not to do your good deeds
when there's no one watching you.
- Tom Lehrer
No one can have a higher opinion of you than I have,
and I think you're a slimy, contemptible sewer rat!
- the movie The Great Mouse Detective
No matter how much cats fight,
there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I eventually met Mr. Right
I had no idea that his first name was Always.
- Rita Rudner
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
- the movie National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
And you just gotta remember, Sparky -
no matter what they tell you - you can NEVER have too much sugar.
- the movie Michael (1996)
Marriage has no guarantees.
If that's what you're looking for,
go live with a car battery.
- Erma Bombeck
A honeymoon should be like a table:
four bare legs and no drawers.
- Anonymous
Oh no, I can't do anything to the death.
Doctor's orders. You see, I have this ulcer condition,
and death is the worst thing for it.
- the movie Love and Death
A man's friendships are, like his will,
invalidated by marriage -
but they are also no less invalidated
by the marriage of his friends.
- Samuel Butler
One cannot have everything the way he would like it.
A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment,
anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.
- Mark Twain
I have no fear of the gallows ... They're going to shoot me.
- the movie Love and Death
No man is truly married until he understands
every word his wife is NOT saying.
- Anonymous
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
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!
No one knows what's next, but everybody does it.
- George Carlin
Television has a real problem. They have no page two.
- Art Buchwald
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do;
the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.
- Mary Wilson Little
If at first you don't succeed,
try, try, and try again.
Then give up.
There's no use being a damned fool about it.
- W. C. Fields
Some people are so heavenly minded
that they are no earthly good.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Computers are like Old Testament gods;
lots of rules and no mercy.
- Joseph Campbell
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
- Oscar Wilde
The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect
if there is, at bottom, no design,
no purpose, no evil, no good,
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Charles Darwin
An excellent man;
he has no enemies;
and none of his friends like him.
- Oscar Wilde
A clever man commits no minor blunders.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I find that principles have no real force
except when one is well fed.
- Mark Twain
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind
and proving that there is no need to do so,
almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
There is no such thing as public opinion.
There is only published opinion.
- Winston Churchill
It is the things for which there is no evidence
that are believed with passion.
- Bertrand Russell
When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.
- Walter Lippmann
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
- Mark Twain
Random chance seems to have operated in our favor ...
there was no deity involved.
- Spock character in the Star Trek television series
The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken
As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero,
he no longer is.
- George Carlin
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears,
for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
- Albert Einstein
Some things will never seem adequate
no matter how hard we try.
- from the movie White Man's Burden
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
- Laurence J. Peter
The most difficult phase of life
is not when no one understands you,
it is when you don't understand yourself.
- Anonymous
Every one desires to live long,
but no one would be old.
- Abraham Lincoln
I am no longer young enough to know everything.
- Oscar Wilde
There is no use whatsoever trying to help
people who do not help themselves.
You cannot push anyone up a ladder
unless he is willing to climb himself.
- Andrew Carnegie
You have no values. With you its all nihilism,
cynicism, sarcasm, and orgasm.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
Clothes make the man.
Naked people have little or no influence on society.
- Mark Twain
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices, have very few virtues.
- Abraham Lincoln
He who loves 50 people has 50 woes;
he who loves no one has no woes.
- The Buddha
Experience keeps a dear school,
but fools will learn in no other.
- Benjamin Franklin
The man who does not read good books
has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
- Mark Twain
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure,
till you know there is no hook beneath it.
- Thomas Jefferson
No problem is so formidable that
you can't walk away from it.
- Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts
Less is only more where more is no good.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
It's not the men in your life that counts,
it's the life in your men.
- Mae West, in the movie I'm No Angel
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice there is.
- Yogi Berra
I once had a rose named after me
and I was very flattered.
But I was not pleased to read
the description in the catalogue:
no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
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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.