The Right Moment

Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.

--Jean de la Bruyere

Confused

The catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented--and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

--Al Gore (Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech)

Butterfly, Quietly

Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Who Doubts

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

--Rollo May

Animal Spirits

Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits--a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.

--John Maynard Keynes

Clarity, Obscurity

Those who know they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound strive for obscurity.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

As You Are

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?

--Fanny Brice

Fragile Blue Crescent

Fanatic ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our planet as a fragile, blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.

--Carl Sagan

Secrecy Is The Mark

I have taught the way without making any distinction between inner and outer teaching. For in respect of the truth there must be no such thing as the "closed fist" of the teacher, who hides some essential knowledge from the pupil. Secrecy is the mark of false doctrine.

--Digha Nikaya

Once Upon A Time

"Thou shall not" might reach the head, but it takes "Once upon a time" to reach the heart.

--Philip Pullman

Sum Total

Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstandings that can gather around a new name.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Live Among Savages

All the property that is necessary to a man, for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species, is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of. But all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who, by their laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition. He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire and live among savages. He can have no right to the benefits of society, who will not pay his club towards the support of it.

--Benjamin Franklin

Sequestered

He thought, How we're each sequestered in our own suffering.

--Ha Jin

The More, The Less

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

--Richard Bach

Unreasonable

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

--George Bernard Shaw