Bard of the Setting Sun: 02/25/05

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Albert Einstein

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others;
it is the only means.

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

Benjamin Franklin

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.

Bertrand Russell

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Ernest Hemingway

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best—
make it all up—but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

G.K.Chesterton

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

George Bernard Shaw

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable
but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire.
The other is to get it.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old;
We grow old because we stop playing !

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of,
he always declares that it is his duty.

You see things; and you say ‘Why?’
But I dream things that never were;
and I say ‘Why not?

George Carlin

When someone is impatient and says, “I haven’t got all day,”
I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

H.L.Mencken

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear,
simple, and wrong.

Henry David Thoreau

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream.
Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years
and have hardly made a rent in it.

Henry Miller

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

Confusion is a word we have invented
for an order which is not understood.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes.
I am the happiest man alive.

Imagination is the voice of daring.

If there is anything Godlike about God
it is that He dared to imagine everything.

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.

No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window.
Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too,
and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ.
Keep them in your heart.
But make room for the others, the coming ones,
the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.

One’s destination is never a place
but rather a new way of looking at things.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity
either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

The man who looks for security, even in the mind,
is like a man who would chop off his limbs
in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate.
It is for us to harmonize with this order.

We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories
gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers
it is useless to seek the approval of friends.
Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.

Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy;
I drop my fruits like a ripe tree.
What the general reader or the critic makes of them
is not my concern.

Henry Ward Beecher

In the morning, we carry the world, like Atlas;
at noon, we stoop and bend beneath it;
and at night, it crushes us flat to the ground.

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane
on proper occasions.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy
is that one comes from a strong will,
and the other from a strong won’t.

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

The soul without imagination
is what an observatory would be
without a telescope.

Jonathan Swift

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

When a true genius appears in this world,
you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Where I am not understood,
it shall be concluded that something very useful
and profound is couched underneath.

Josh Billings

Consider the postage stamp, my son.
It secures success through its ability
to stick to one thing till it gets there.

Don’t take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail;
then you can let go when you want to.

I don’t care how much a person talks, if they only say it in a few words.

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old
woman did her lost spectacles. Safe on her own nose all the time.

It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self,
but the most inconvenient.

Life is short, but it’s long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.

Man was kreated a little lower than tha angells and has bin gittin a little
lower ever sinse.

Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I’d try a revolver first.

Some folks are wise and some otherwise.

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the
truth without lying.

There’s a great power in words,
if you don’t hitch too many of them together.

When a feller gits a goin down hil,
it dus seem as tho evry thing
had bin greased for the okashun

Kin Hubbard

The world gets better every day —then worse again in the evening.

Lewis Carroll

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.

Lord Byron

And, after all, what is a lie?
‘Tis but the truth in masquerade.

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite
for being alone.

Marcus T Cicero

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher
has not already said it.

I am not ashamed to confess
I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Mark Twain

Always do right; this will gratify some people
and astonish the rest.

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is.
The reason we hold truth in such respect is because
we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.

Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.

Get your facts first,
and then you can distort them as much as you please.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn’t know.

Miguel De Cervantes

Alas! all music jars when the soul’s out of tune.

Every man is as heaven made him,
and sometimes a great deal worse.

Good painters imitate nature, bad ones spew it up.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool,
and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

‘Tis the only comfort of the miserable
to have partners in their woes.

True valor lies between cowardice and rashness.

Moliere

It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.

Of all follies there is none greater
than wanting to make the world a better place.

That must be wonderful: I don’t understand it at all.

Montaigne

He who is not very strong in memory
should not meddle with lying.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated
sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

I tell the truth, not as much as I would like to, but as much as I dare.
I dare more and more as I grow older.

Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea,
and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.

My life has been filled with terrible misfortune;
most of which never happened.

My reason is not framed to bend or stoop: my knees are.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

There is no conversation more boring
than the one where everybody agrees.

Napoleon Bonaparte

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Niels Bohr

A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made,
in a very narrow field.

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation,
but as a question.

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox.
Now we have some hope of making progress.

Never express yourself more clearly than you can think.

No, no, you’re not thinking; you’re just being logical.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.
But the oppositeof a profound truth may well be
another profound truth.

Your theory is crazy, but it is not crazy enough to be true.

Noel Coward

My body has certainly wandered a good deal, but I have an uneasy
suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.

Ogden Nash

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.

I do not like to get the news,
because there has never been an era
when so many things were going so right
for so many of the wrong persons.

If you don’t want to work, you have to work to earn enough money
so that you won’t have to work.

Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person
you meet reminds you of someone else.

Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used till they are seasoned.

People can be divided into two classes:
those who go ahead and do something,
and those who sit still and inquire,
why wasn’t it done the other way?

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.

Oscar Levant

So little time and so little to do.

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity.
I have erased this line.

There are two sides to every question:
my side and the wrong side.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility,
there are so few of us left.

Oscar Wilde

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing,
and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A pessimist is one who, when he has a choice of two evils,
chooses both.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

Don’t talk about action...
Its basis is the lack of imagination.
It is the last resource of those
who know not how to dream.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable
that we have to alter it every six months.

How clever you are, my dear!
You never mean a single word you say.

I always pass on good advice.
It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never of any use to oneself.

I am not young enough to know everything.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

I sometimes think that God in creating man
somewhat overestimated his ability.

If one tells the truth, one is sure,
sooner or later, to be found out..

Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton.
Nothing succeeds like excess.

Some cause happiness wherever they go;
others whenever they go.

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

The public is wonderfully tolerant.
It forgives everything except genius.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Modern life would be very tedious if it were either,
and modern literature a complete impossibility!

The well-bred contradict other people.
The wise contradict themselves.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labour they go to hell.

Nothing astonishes people so much as common sense and plain dealing.

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

Rita Mae Brown

Good judgment comes from experience,
and often experience comes from bad judgment.

Most people recognize their duty in time to avoid it.

The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.

Robert Frost

Create and stir other people to create.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on thee
and I’ll forgive thy great big joke on me.

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:
it goes on.

Robert Orben

Experience is the stuff that when you finally get enough of,
you’re too old to qualify for the job.

Time flies. It’s up to you to be the navigator.

Sam Levenson

I’m going to stop putting things off, starting tomorrow!

If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button.

It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say
and then don’t say it.

You must learn from the mistakes of others.
You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.

Samuel Butler

A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense
to know how to lie well.

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great
as that of being always right.

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that
we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

If there are two worlds at all (and that there are I have no doubt)
it stands to reason that we ought to make the best of both of them,
and more particularly of the one with which we are
most immediately concerned.

It is as immoral to be too good
as to be too anything else.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions
that are contrary to reason.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like.
Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

The one serious conviction that a man should have
is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

Samuel Johnson

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections
must first be overcome.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt
until they are too strong to be broken.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality,
and instead ofthinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

We are inclined to believe those we do not know, because they have never
deceived us.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life
itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is,
what can you make people believe that you have done?

Somerset Maugham

Excess on occasion is exhilarating.
It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of habit.

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life
than a humorous resignation.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes.
They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you,
for it was the illusion they loved.

It is funny about life: if you refuse to accept anything
but the very best you will very often get it.

What mean and cruel things men do for the love of God.

Steven Wright

It may be that your sole purpose in life
is simply to serve as a warning to others.

My theory on evolution is that Darwin was adopted.

Someone sent me a postcard picture of the earth.
On the back it said, “Wish you were here.”

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

Tom Robbins

A better world has gotta start somewhere.
Why not with you and me?

A sense of humor, properly developed,
is superior to any religion so far devised.

Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in
government and business.

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced,
not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious,
but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

If God had a bumper sticker, it would probably read:
SHINE, DON’T WHINE.

It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it’s the cyanide.

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for,
and none worth killing for.

To achieve the impossible,
it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

Using words to describe magic
is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

Victor Hugo

A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her,
still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when,
whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Common sense is in spite of, not as the result of education.

For prying into any human affairs,
non are equal to those whom it does not concern.

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins.
Which of the two has the grander view?

Vince Lombardi

Brains without competitive hearts are rudderless.

Don’t tell me how rocky the sea is, just bring in the ship.

I tend to believe in catching stars,
and have been willing to take my chances on the hernia.

In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail.

Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.

Voltaire

A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Common sense is not so common.

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

I disapprove of what you say,
but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

May God defend me from my friends;
I can defend myself from my enemies.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy;
the mad daughter of a wise mother.

Will Durant

Science tell us how to heal and how to kill.
It reduces the death rate in retail
and then kills us wholesale in war.

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing;
education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Winston Churchill

A lie gets halfway around the world
before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind
and won’t change the subject.

However beautiful the strategy,
you should occasionally look at the results.

I am always ready to learn
although I do not always like being taught.

It is well said, there is nothing wrong in change
if it is in the right direction.

Bard of the Setting Sun

Contents

RECOMMENDED READING

MISCELLANEOUS

MUSIC LINKS

JOKES

PHILOSOPHICAL QUOTES

HUMOROUS QUOTES

RECOMMENDED LINKS

PHOTOS & IMAGES

POEMS, WORDS & LYRICS