Maureen > Maureen's Quotes

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
― George Eliot

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
― Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
― E.E. Cummings

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
― Albert Einstein

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
― Albert Einstein

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”
― Nicholas Klein

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”
― Gilda Radner

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, He will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?' rather He will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?”
― Mother Teresa

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.


From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare