quotations

I enjoy reading quotations. It's amazing how much wisdom and/or humour can be contained in a few words. I'll add to this collection as I find new material.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Stupidity makes itself invisible by assuming unimagined proportions
Max Frisch

My education started the day I left school.
Mark Twain

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W.Sommerset Maugham

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Mae West

To release the pure language captured by a foreign tongue into one's own; to rephrase, such as to liberate that which is imprisoned in a composition - this is the task of the translator.
Walter Benjamin

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.
Vidal Sasson, hairstylist

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.
Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister

Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
Chinese proverb

None of us is as smart as all of us.
Japanese proverb

Management is tasks. Management is discipline.
But management is also people.
Peter Drucker, Austrian-American management guru

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
Linus Pauling

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
Herbert A. Simon

Change is a process, not an event.
anonymous

If you empty your purse into your head,
no man can take it away from you. An investment
in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Ben Franklin

Thunder is impressive but lightning gets the work done.
Mark Twain

Kill time… and you kill opportunity.
anonymous

The only preparation for tomorrow is the right use of today.
anonymous

Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.
Don Wilder

You are known by your choices.
anonymous

I think that age destroys the notion of time and,
contrary to what one might think, inaction and a lack
of purpose make the clock tick faster.
Jean Prové

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

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good
is not original and the part that is original is not good.
Samual Johnson, author of A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

The interruptions ARE the journey.
Ted Simon

There are moments on a motorcycle when all the glory of motion is distilled into one purposeful package. Chasing curves over a swelling landscape, a motorcycle enters the pure expression of physics and is bound to the road in a way no car will ever know. The rider and machine are literally balanced on the infinitely thin line where centripetal force meets gravity. Despite this state of suspended disaster, the sensation of risk is largely a sensation; the motorcycle is in harmony with the road, and risk comes overwhelmingly from other drivers. Any moment of travel on a motorcycle is a light and essential moment, an agile rebuke to a life conducted in one place. The raw force of the engine is not hidden beneath a hood, but alternately purrs and growls a few inches from the knees, demanding the consciousness of power. Sealed behind glass, insulated by climate control systems and music, the driver of a car knows nothing about the directions of the wind, the lay of sunlight, the small changes in temperature between a peak and a valley, the textured noise of differing asphalts, or the sweet and sour aromas of manured fields or passing pine forests. Engaged in all the senses and elements, balanced in the present tense, a rider on two wheels can taste moments of oneness with the road.
Patrick Symmes in Chasing Che