George Santayana

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. 

Only the dead have seen the end of the war. 

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. 

The family is one of nature's masterpieces. 

Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. 

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it. 

A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud.  

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment. 

Wisdom comes by disillusionment. 

Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up. 

For a man who has done his natural duty, death is as natural as sleep. 

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. 

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. 

One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human. 

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds. 

The Bible is literature, not dogma. 

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different. 

Friedrich Schiller

Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom. 

Every true genius is bound to be naive. 

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain. 

There is room in the smallest cottage for a happy loving pair. 

Will it, and set to work briskly. 

Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change.

Disappointments are to the soul what a thunderstorm is to the air. 

There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny. 

Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine. 

Art is the daughter of freedom. 

It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases. 

Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men. 

The universe is one of God's thoughts. 

Great souls suffer in silence. 

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times. 

He who considers too much will perform little. 

Who dares nothing, need hope for nothing. 

Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor. 

Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful. 

Appearance rules the world. 

Stendhal

One can acquire everything in solitude except character. 

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love. 

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us. 

People happy in love have an air of intensity. 

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. 

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.

True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things. 

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few. 

The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly. 

Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one. 

Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained. 

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it. 

Only great minds can afford a simple style. 

The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water. 

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice? 

If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured. 

What is really beautiful must always be true. 

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face. 

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road. 

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion. 

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. 

A man of courage is also full of faith. 

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end. 

While there's life, there's hope. 

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct. 

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error. 

A home without books is a body without soul. 

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world. 

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body. 

The sinews of war are infinite money. 

The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words. 

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence. 

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body. 

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. 

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk. 

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. 

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power. 

Henrik Ibsen

The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right. 

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. 

People who don't know how to keep themselves healthy ought to have the decency to get themselves buried, and not waste time about it. 

A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong. 

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. 

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. 

Don't use that foreign word "ideals." We have that excellent native word "lies." 

A man should never put on his best trousers when he goes out to battle for freedom and truth. 

Do not use that foreign word "ideals." We have that excellent native word "lies." 

Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it... it's just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse. 

Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth. 

The pillars of truth and the pillars of freedom - they are the pillars of society. 

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt. 

Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed. 

One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it. 

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians. 

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth. 

Groucho Marx

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it. 

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five. 

I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members. 

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. 

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. 

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. 

A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running. 

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. 

I'm not feeling very well - I need a doctor immediately. Ring the nearest golf course. 

All people are born alike - except Republicans and Democrats. 

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife. 

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. 

Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know. 

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? 

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. 

She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon. 

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse. 

Clarence Darrow

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. 

True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else. 

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood. 

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. 

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. 

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of. 

You can only be free if I am free. 

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. 

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. 

The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything. 

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think. 

I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it. 

History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history. 

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

Sonny Rollins

There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time. 

I think the problem starts with the general appreciation of the music in the larger society. 

Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition. 

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show? 

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons. 

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing

I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that. 

But if I didn't have to make money, I would still play my horn. 

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again. 

What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years. 

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz. 

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz. 

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid. 

My mother came from St. Thomas. I heard that melody and all I did was actually adapt it. I made my adaptation of sort of an island traditional melody. It did become sort of my trademark tune. 

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

William Wordsworth

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind. 

Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher. 

Faith is a passionate intuition. 

Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future. 

A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. 

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. 

I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more. 

For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes the still, sad music of humanity. 

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity. 

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. 

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind. 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude. 

One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. 

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. 

Kurt Cobain

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not. 

I'm so happy because today I found my friends - they're in my head. 

Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with with your self-esteem. They're no good at all. 

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. 

If you die you're completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I'm not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I've got. 

Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock. 

A friend is nothing but a known enemy. 

It's okay to eat fish because they don't have any feelings. 

If it's illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail! 

I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else. 

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption. 

I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn't. 

Rather be dead than cool. 

The sun is gone, but I have a light. 

If you ever need anything please don't hesitate to ask someone else first. 

I was looking for something a lot heavier, yet melodic at the same time. Something different from heavy metal, a different attitude. 

The worst crime is faking it. 

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.