We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.

Cato the Elder (234 BC 149 BC) There is so much good in the worst of us, And so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly behooves any of us To talk about the rest of us. Edward Wallis Hoch (1849 1925), Marion (Kansas) Record Never tell evil of a man, if you do not know it for certainty, and if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, 'Why should I tell it?' Johann K. Lavater A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way. John Tudor Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Oscar Wilde (1854 1900), Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III ______________________________________________ Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens. Nick Diamos It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 1894) Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. Plutarch (46 AD 120 AD) As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things. Po Bronson, quoted in Publishers Weekly A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. Wilson Mizner (1876 1933) _______________________________________________ Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices just recognize them. Edward R. Murrow (1908 1965), television broadcast, December 31, 1955 Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest of violence. Francis Jeffrey (1773 1850) Prejudice is opinion without judgement. Voltaire (1694 1778) Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room. William Hazlitt (1778 1830) A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely re-arranging their prejudices. William James (1842 1910) _______________________________________________

There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity. Chester Bowles (1901 1986) Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? Kelvin Throop III An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. Laurence J. Peter (1919 1988) An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living. Nicholas Chamfort (1741 1794) In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from. Peter Drucker (1909 2005) ______________________________________________ I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few. Benjamin Disraeli (1804 1881), campaign speech at High Wycombe, England, November 27, 1832 The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. Hannah Arendt (1906 1975) The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them. Mark Twain (1835 1910), Notebook, 1935 When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 1968) It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. Robert Anton Wilson _______________________________________________ It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. George Bernard Shaw (1856 1950), Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists" The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made. Jean Giraudoux (1882 1944) Judge thyself with the judgment of sincerity, and thou will judge others with the judgment of charity. John Mitchell Mason I am not sincere, even when I say I am not. Jules Renard (1864 1910) A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. Oscar Wilde (1854 1900), The Critic as Artist, part 2, 1891 _______________________________________________

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. George Moore Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel. George Santayana (1863 1952) Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. Miriam Beard Travel is only glamorous in retrospect. Paul Theroux (1941 ), in The Washington Post Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost (1874 1963), The Road Not Taken _______________________________________________ Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. Charles M. Schulz (1922 2000), (Snoopy) It's funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn't it? Eleanor H. Porter (1868 1920), Pollyanna, 1912 If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater, suggest that he wear a tail. Fran Lebowitz (1950 ) No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation. Fran Lebowitz (1950 ) Animals are such agreeable friends they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. George Eliot (1819 1880), 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story,' Scenes of Clerical Life, 1857 _______________________________________________ It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship. Colette (1873 1954), The Pure and the Impure, 1932 Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. Eric Hoffer (1902 1983) We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners. George Bernard Shaw (1856 1950), "You Never Can Tell" (1898), act I One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness. Josh Billings (1818 1885) To have respect for ourselves guides our morals; and to have a deference for others governs our manners. Lawrence Sterne (1713 1768) _______________________________________________

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. Amy Lowell (1874 1925) Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. Andre Gide (1869 1951) Let each man exercise the art he knows. Aristophanes (450 BC 388 BC), Wasps, 422 B.C. I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none. Ben Shahn (1898 1969) So you see, imagination needs moodling long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. Brenda Ueland ______________________________________________ Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God. Heywood Broun (1888 1939) An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. John Buchan (1875 1940) It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us. Peter De Vries When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?" Quentin Crisp You've got your phenomenon on one hand. Concrete and knowable. On the other hand you've got the incomprehensible. You call it God, but to me, God or no, it remains just that, the unknowable. Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, A Wing and a Prayer, 1994 _______________________________________________ He who builds a better mousetrap these days runs into material shortages, patent-infringement suits, work stoppages, collusive bidding, discount discriminationand taxes." H. E. Martz Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. H. L. Mencken (1880 1956) Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. Herman Wouk (1915 ) The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward. John Maynard Keynes (1883 1946) When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. Plato (427 BC 347 BC), The Republic _______________________________________________

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent. Epictetus (55 AD 135 AD) What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. George Dennison Prentice It's important to begin a search on a full stomach. Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991 If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 1973) Food is our common ground, a universal experience. James Beard, O Magazine, November 2003 _______________________________________________ The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility. Brooks Atkinson (1894 1984), Once Around the Sun, 1951 Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy. Charles Peters The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. Eugene McCarthy (1916 ), Time magazine, Feb. 12, 1979 Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status. Laurence J. Peter (1919 1988) Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. Milton Friedman (1912 ) _______________________________________________ The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character. Isabelle Eberhardt We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it. Lyndon B. Johnson (1908 1973), December 13, 1963 Time is just something that we assign. You know, past, present, it's just all arbitrary. Most Native Americans, they don't think of time as linear; in time, out of time, I never have enough time, circular time, the Stevens wheel. All moments are happening all the time. Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, Hello, I Love You, 1994 Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition. Sir William Osler (1849 1919), to his students I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present. W. Somerset Maugham (1874 1965), The Moon and Sixpence _______________________________________________

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on. Bob Newhart (1929 ) Total absence of humor renders life impossible. Colette (1873 1954), Chance Acquaintances, 1952 The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. E E Cummings (1894 1962) Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can. Elsa Maxwell, September 28, 1958 Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. Joseph Addison (1672 1719), The Spectator, September 26, 1712 _______________________________________________ The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. George Eliot (1819 1880) It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, 1999 The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action. John Dewey (1859 1952) An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides. John H. Patterson A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards. Karl Kraus (1874 1936) ______________________________________________ I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. E. B. White (1899 1985) Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative. H. G. Wells (1866 1946) One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy. Jane Austen (1775 1817), Mansfield Park It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing. Scott Westerfeld, Peeps, 2005 A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. Tennessee Williams (1911 1983), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) _______________________________________________

Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. Edith Sitwell (1887 1964), Taken Care Of ,1965 I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. Martha Washington (1732 1802) A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug. Patricia Neal Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. William James (1842 1910) The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind. William James (1842 1910) _______________________________________________ The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues. Rene Descartes (1596 1650), 'Le Discours de la Methode,' 1637 Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy. Seneca (5 BC 65 AD), Moral Letters to Lucilius, 64 A.D. He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. Sir Winston Churchill (1874 1965) Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once. Tallulah Bankhead (1903 1968) It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations. Walter Bagehot (1826 1877), ____________________________________________ The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 1892) My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose. Bette Davis (1908 1989), The Lonely Life, 1962 He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason. Cicero (106 BC 43 BC) Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot. D. H. Lawrence (1885 1930) The worst sin perhaps the only sin passion can commit, is to be joyless. Dorothy L. Sayers (1893 1957), Gaudy Night _______________________________________________

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Mahatma Gandhi (1869 1948), (attributed) If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 1527) Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge. Paul Gauguin (1848 1903) Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge. Scott Adams (1957 ) In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior. Sir Francis Bacon (1561 1626) _____________________________________________ Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition. Alexander Hodge Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. Bertrand Russell (1872 1970), Unpopular Essays (1950), "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition. Cicero (106 BC 43 BC) A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time. George Iles Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Helen Keller (1880 1968), The Open Door (1957) _______________________________________________ Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 1945) It's choice not chance that determines your destiny. Jean Nidetch Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance, And toss them on the wheels of Chance. Juvenal (55 AD 127 AD) In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind. Louis Pasteur (1822 1895), lecture 1854 Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish. Ovid (43 BC 17 AD) ______________________________________________

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience. Anatole Broyard Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 1944), "The Little Prince", 1943 Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home. Bill Cosby (1937 ) People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children. Bill Watterson (1958 ), Calvin and Hobbes If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. Bruce Barton ________________________________________________ That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent. Aldous Huxley (1894 1963) If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. Aristotle (384 BC 322 BC), Politics The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law. Aristotle (384 BC 322 BC) In the state of nature...all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law. Charles de Montesquieu (1689 1755) The love of democracy is that of equality. Charles de Montesquieu (1689 1755) _______________________________________________ I don't think necessity is the mother of invention invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. Agatha Christie (1890 1976), An Autobiography, 1977 The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Alan Kay An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously. Charles F. Kettering (1876 1958) We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. Eric Hoffer (1902 1983) Invention is the mother of necessity. Thorstein Veblen (1857 1929) _______________________________________________

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. Bertrand Russell (1872 1970) "My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober." G. K. Chesterton (1874 1936) Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. George Bernard Shaw (1856 1950) You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. George Bernard Shaw (1856 1950), "Misalliance" Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. George Jean Nathan (1882 1958) ______________________________________________ All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principle of equal partnership. Ann Landers (1918 2002) A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it. Anne Morrow Lindbergh I used to believe that marriage would diminish me, reduce my options. That you had to be someone less to live with someone else when, of course, you have to be someone more. Chantal Saperstein Marriage. It's like a cultural hand-rail. It links folks to the past and guides them to the future. Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Our Wedding, 1992 I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person. Jane Austen (1775 1817), Mansfield Park ______________________________________________

Let's not kid ourselves. Whatever we diagnose, most patients, if they don't die, get well by themselves. Our job is mainly to try to make them feel better; do no harm. Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Wake Up Call, 1992 The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals. Sir William Osler (1849 1919), In H. Cushing, Life of Sir William Osler (1925) Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973) "Science and Scientism" The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire (1694 1778) One has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience. Alice James _______________________________________________ No moral system can rest solely on authority. A. J. Ayer (1910 1989), Humanist Outlook Good laws have their origins in bad morals. Ambrosius Macrobius Compassion is the basis of all morality. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 1860) The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others. Bertrand Russell (1872 1970) We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach. Bertrand Russell (1872 1970),