Misattributed Quotes

“Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.”

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

“I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.”

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.”

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”

“The lack of money is the root of all evils.”

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

“A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

“Warm summer sun, shine kindly here. Warm southern wind, blow softly here. Green sod above, lie light, lie light. Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night.”

“When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

“Candor is the brightest gem of criticism.”

“The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.”

“Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.”

“Plagiarists at least have the quality of preservation.”

“Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.”

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

“Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.”

“When we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, and opening quotation is a symphony precluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.”

“With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.”

“To a man of pleasure every moment appears to be lost, which partakes not of the vivacity of amusement.”

“That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?”

“Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”

“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.”

“The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.”

“It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.”

“There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.”

“Pearls mean tears.”

“Better Counsel comes overnight.”

“What is a hero without love for mankind.”

“Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.”

“Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!”

“It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.”

“Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.”

“As soon as there is life there is danger.”

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”

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

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.”

“God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”

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

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

“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

“A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.”

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

“We are what we think. All that we are arises With our thoughts. With our thoughts, We make our world.”

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

“Genius is sorrow's child.”

“Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity.”

“If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?”

“There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.”

“The only source of knowledge is experience.”

“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”

“If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

“Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.”

“Chose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm”

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

“Know thyself.”

“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”

“By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.”

“There is a devil in every berry of the grape.”

“The ink of the scholar and the blood of a martyr are of equal value in heaven.”

“Prayer carries us half way to God, fasting brings us to the door of His palace, and alms-giving procures us admission.”

“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

“Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.”

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

“The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.”

“You beat your Pate, and fancy Wit will come: Knock as you please, there's no body at home.”

“Never take counsel of your fears.”

“One man with courage makes a majority.”

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

“The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.”

“Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. It is better be alone than in bad company.”

“Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

“Ideas are, in truth, force.”

“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”

“Ideas control the world.”

“Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification. They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed.”

“The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.”

“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.”

“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them -- that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

“Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”

“I am not young enough to know everything.”

“Always forgive your enemies -- nothing annoys them so much.”

“Every crowd has a silver lining.”

“There's a sucker born every minute.”

“I read part of it all the way through.”

“A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.”

“I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”

“The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.”

“For it is in giving that we receive.”

“It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”

“Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, grow, grow.”

“Man has three friends on whose company he relies. First, wealth which goes with him only while good fortune lasts. Second, his relatives; they go only as far as the grave, leave him there. The third friend, his good deeds, go with him beyond the grave.”

“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

“Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.”

“It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.”

“Men must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants.”

“I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

“The human race has improved everything, but the human race.”

“You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”

“It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.”

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

“An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.”

“Any idiot can face a crisis, it's the day to day living that wears you out.”

“He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.”

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

“The greatest cunning is to have none at all.”

“Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.”

“You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.”

“It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”

“Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.”

“Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!”

“The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.”

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

“If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.”

“If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough”

“No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.”

“Debate is the death of conversation.”

“The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.”

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end”

“Never have children, only grand children.”

“The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the most important part of happiness.”

“If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

“My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.”

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as courses, and they come back to us as effects.”

“Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; While others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.”

“If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.”

“Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.”

“There are things known, and there are things unknown. And in between are the doors.”

“Be awfully nice to them going up, because you're gonna meet them all coming down.”

“The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?”

“A child miseducated is a child lost.”

“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”

“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”

“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”

“Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.”

“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

“Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity.”

“Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.”

“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.”

“Money can't buy poverty.”

“A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”

“There's no such thing as a free lunch.”

“A Constitution should be short and obscure.”

“All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.”

“A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments.”

“In the fight between you and the world, back the world.”

“The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.”

“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

“In this theater of man's life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers-on.”

“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”

“A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

“We are never like angels till our passion dies.”

“A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.”

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”

“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”

“The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.”

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

“Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?”

“I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.”

“It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.”

“The thing that goes the farthest towards making life worth while, That costs the least, and does the most, is just a pleasant smile.”

“The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow.”

“Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.”

“We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.”

“Good temper is one of the greatest preservers of the features.”

“Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.”

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”