“Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you’ll be a mile from them, and you’ll have their shoes.”
— Jack Handey
“A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.”
— Steven Wright
“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”
— Mae West, in the film Klondike Annie (1936)
“My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.”
— Erma Bombeck
“In fact, not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible.”
— Brendan Gill,
1975 memoir, Here at The New Yorker
“It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
— Grace Hopper
“I have found at my age going bra-less pulls all the wrinkles out of my face.”
— Anonymous
“For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.”
— Bob Wells
“I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.”
— Tom Stoppard
“A closed mouth gathers no feet.”
— Bob Cooke,
sports editor of the New York Herald Tribune, around 1956.
“If you look like your passport photo, in all probability you need the journey.”
— Earl Wilson
“Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
“Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.”
— Steven Wright
“A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.”
— Steven Wright
“Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.”
— Anonymous
“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”
— George Carlin
“No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.”
— Anonymous
“A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.”
— Barbara Johnson
“Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist begin to change places.”
— E. Joseph Cossman
“Opportunity always looks bigger going than coming.”
— Orison Swett Marden
“Junk is something you throw away three weeks before you need it.”
— Anonymous
“There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.”
— Anonymous
“Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.”
— Anonymous quip commonly attributed to Albert Einstein.
“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”
— Billy Sunday
“Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.”
— Franklin P. Jones
“About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.”
— Herbert Hoover
“Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.”
— Anonymous “11th commandment”
“Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.”
— Anonymous
“The only time the world beats a path to your door is when you’re in the bathroom.”
— Anonymous,
from the humorous piece “The Senility Prayer.”
“Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.”
— Anonymous,
“One of the unrecorded Beatitudes”
“It takes many elements to make a great man, many to make a great teacher, writer, and practitioner… Great genius is not by any means a necessary ingredient of these qualities. To accomplish great ends demands patience, perseverance, unwearying application, order and system, and a definite aim—in a word, talent rather than genius. Genius invents; talent applies. The only genius I possess is the genius of industry; if I have any other, I have not been able to discover it. The position which I have attained in my profession has been achieved by hard blows, by no special intellectual endowment, by no special gifts from God, by no special favor from man…”
— Samuel D. Gross,
Autobiography of Samuel D. Gross, M.D., With Sketches of His Contemporaries, ed. Samuel W. Gross and A. Haller Gross (Philadelphia: George Barrie, 1887), 169.
“The study of medicine has a very great influence upon the acquisition of the virtues and of the knowledge of God… Therefore, its study and acquisition are pre-eminently important religious activities, and must not be ranked in the same class with the art of weaving, or the science of architecture.” (Sefaria)
— Attributed to Maimonides in Harry Friedenwald,
“Moses Maimonides, the Physician,” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 3 (1935): 555–84; cf. Eight Chapters, ch. 5, for the underlying passage.
“As coagulation is the first change which the blood undergoes, when out of the vessels, and as it even coagulates while in them, under certain circumstances, we shall consider this process first. Though fluidity is necessary to enable the blood to circulate, yet coagulation is no less necessary, when it is to be disposed of out of the circulation, even within the body, and therefore deserves to be considered with no less attention. There is, I think, more to be learned of the use of blood in the animal economy, from its coagulation, than from its fluidity. The coagulation of the blood, when out of the circulation, would seem to be unconnected with life, yet life could not go on without it…”
— John Hunter,
A Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-shot Wounds (London: George Nicol, 1794), 17.
To set the cause above renown,
To love the game beyond the prize,
To honour, while you strike him down,
The foe that comes with fearless eyes;
To count the life of battle good,
And dear the land that gave you birth,
And dearer yet the brotherhood
That binds the brave of all the earth—— Henry Newbolt,
“Clifton Chapel,” in The Island Race (London: Elkin Mathews, 1898).
Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a dark room.
Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn’t there.
Religion is looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn’t there and shouting "I found it!".
Science is looking for a black cat in a dark room with a flashlight.
— Anonymous
“Mes Révérends Pères, mes lettres n’avaient pas accoutumé de se suivre de si près, ni d’être si étendues. Le peu de temps que j’ai eu a été cause de l’un et de l’autre. Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”
“I have made this letter longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter.”
— Blaise Pascal,
Lettres provinciales, letter 16 (4 December 1656)
“Education must prepare students to be independent, self-reliant human beings. But education, at its best, also must help students go beyond their private interests, gain a more integrative view of knowledge, and relate their learning to the realities of life.”
— Ernest L. Boyer,
/Ernest L. Boyer: Selected Speeches, 1979–1995/ (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997).
“The bodily eye… is provided by nature; the eye of the mind, of which the object is truth, is the work of discipline and habit…. This process of training, by which the intellect, instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study or science, is disciplined for its own sake, for the perception of its own proper object, and for its own highest culture, is called Liberal Education; and though there is no one in whom it is carried as far as is conceivable…”
— John Henry Newman,
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated, Discourse VII, “Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Professional Skill,” §1 (1852; New York: Chelsea House Press, 1983).
“No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
— Helen Keller,
Helen Keller’s Journal: 1936–1937 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1938), 60.
I will keep this Oath and this stipulation — to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required, to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others.
— Hippocrates,
“The Oath,” in The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, trans. Francis Adams (London: Sydenham Society, 1849).
“But it was the opposite. He had already taught me: ‘See that bird?’ he says. ‘It’s a Spencer’s warbler.’ (I knew he didn’t know the real name.) ‘Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts.’ (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.)”
— Richard P. Feynman,
“The Making of a Scientist,” in “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”: Further Adventures of a Curious Character (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 14.
“Hernando Cortés sailed from Cuba with eleven ships, the largest being of 100 tons burden, placing in them eleven captains, and himself being one of these. He took along 500 men, some horses, and goods for barter, having Francisco de Montejo as a captain and Alaminos as chief pilot of the armada. On the admiral’s ship he set a banner of white and blue in honor of Our Lady, whose image, together with the cross, he always placed wherever he destroyed idols. On the banner was a red cross surrounded by a legend reading:
Amici sequamur crucem, et si habuerimus fidem, in hoc signo vincemus.”
— Diego de Landa,
Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, trans. William Gates (Baltimore: Maya Society, 1937), §IV.
“Amici, sequamur crucem, et si nos fidem habemus, vere in hoc signo vincemus”
“Friends, let us follow the cross, and if we have faith, in this sign we will win”
— Andrés de Tapia,
“Relación sobre la conquista de México,” in Colección de documentos para la historia de México, ed. Joaquín García Icazbalceta (Mexico City, 1866), 2:554–94.
“Nisi Dominus reliquisset semen, sicut Sodoma fuissemus”
“Had the Lord not left a seed, we would have been like Sodom.”
— Diego de Landa,
Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, §XXXIX, loosely citing Isaiah 1:9 / Romans 9:29.
Source Text Isaiah 1:9 (Vulgate) “Nisi Dominus exercituum reliquisset nobis semen, quasi Sodoma fuissemus, et quasi Gomorrha similes essemus”sacred-texts Romans 9:29 (Vulgate) “Nisi Dominus Sabaoth reliquisset nobis semen, sicut Sodoma facti essemus, et sicut Gomorrha similes fuissemus”vulgate Landa “Nisi Dominus reliquisset semen, sicut Sodoma fuissemus”
“Seek a humble sort of thing. Our hearts often look for something very big, something wanting a lot of sacrifice, and often our heart does not see the humble things… You see somebody alone — try and be with him, try to give him some of the hours which you might take for yourself and in that way learn to serve: and then only will you begin to find true happiness. I don’t know what your destiny will be. Some of you will perhaps occupy remarkable positions. Perhaps some of you will become famous by your pens, or as artists. But I know one thing: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
— Albert Schweitzer,
address at Silcoates School, Wakefield, 3 December 1935, in The Silcoatian, n.s., no. 25 (December 1935): 784–85.
“I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is that, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.”
— Attributed to Winston Churchill in Henry Fairlie,
The Life of Politics (London: Methuen, 1968), 203–4; no contemporaneous record.
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