There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
-The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

There is really nothing you must be and there is nothing you must do. There is really nothing you must have and there is nothing you must know. There is really nothing you must become. However, it helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains, the earth gets wet.
-Zen saying

In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence, the second listening, the third remembering, the fourth practicing, the fifth -- teaching others.
-Ibn Gabirol, poet and philosopher (c. 1022-1058)

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.
-Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
-Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator and writer (106-43 BCE)

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.
-Alan Alda, actor and director (1936-)

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
-Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)

No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
-Victor Hugo, poet, novelist and dramatist (1802-1885)

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
-Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
-John Andrew Holmes

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
-Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.
-E.L. Doctorow, writer (1931- )

"Strange things I have in head, that will to hand"
Macbeth

To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
-Robert M. Pirsig, author [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]

Nowadays, people can be divided into three classes - the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-Not-Paid-for-What-They-Haves.
-Earl Wilson, newspaper columnist (1907-1987)

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.
-Lao-Tzu, philosopher (6th century B.C.)

A man there was, tho' some did count him mad / The more he cast away, the more he had.
-John Bunyan, preacher (1628-1688) [Pilgrim's Progress]

In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter.
-Chinese proverb

Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can save a couple of hours in the library.
-Frank H. Westheimer, chemistry professor (1912- )

He who would travel happily must travel light.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945)

Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
-Edward Everett Hale, author (1822-1909)

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
-H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.
-James Branch Cabell, novelist, essayist, critic (1879-1958)

A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
-James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

"I love mankind. It's the people I can't stand."
- cartoonist Charles Schultz