By Professor Kelly
(random order for first 90)
- Good things, that come of course, far less do please,
Than those which come by sweet contingencies. — Robert Herrick - When in doubt, go home. — Anon
- There’s more fuss and nonsense about interpreting interpretations than interpreting things. — Montaigne
- Virtue is insufficient temptation. — G. B. Shaw
- Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. — Albert Einstein
- In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set mankind. — Hannah Moore - Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into the one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words, “For my sake the world was created,” and in his left, “I am dust and ashes.” — Hasidic saying
- Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. — Goethe
- Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. — Napoleon
- Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. — Italian proverb
- Woe to him who is alone when he falleth. — Proverbs, 4:10
- Reality is always more conservative than ideology. — Raymond Aron
- Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. — Seneca
- You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. — Charles Buxton
- Time is the wisest councilor. — Pericles
- Why should god submit himself to our puny distinction between existence and non-existence? If he’s worthy of the name, god can both be and not be at the same time. — Alfred Kelly
- Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods. — Albert Einstein
- What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree? — Logan Pearsall Smith
- Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. — Carl Jung
- We think in generalities, but we live in detail. — Alfred North Whitehead
- It is not the same to talk of bulls as to be in the bullring. — Spanish proverb
- We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love. — Sigmund Freud
- Don’t die until you’re dead. — Anon
- Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. — Proverbs, 16:18
- Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. — Francis Bacon
- We are always getting ready to live, but never living. — Emerson
- It is far easier to know men than to know a man. — La Rochefoucauld
- A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can. — Montaigne
- Courage mounteth with occasion. — Shakespeare
- Most people reason dramatically, not quantitatively. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- The higher the ape climbs, the more he shows his rear end. — German proverb
- One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it. — French proverb
- With enough “ifs,” we could put Paris in a bottle. — French proverb
- If there is another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this. — Robert Burns - The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. — Thoreau
- Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. — Albert Einstein
- The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. — William James
- You can count for certain on retaining the upper hand in any matter if you do everything without the slightest delay. — Georg von Lichtenberg
- Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them. — R. H. Tawney
- Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? — T. S. Eliot
- Nothing is an unmixed blessing. — Horace
- Most people sell their souls and live in good conscience on the proceeds. — Logan Pearsall Smith
- What is to give light must endure the burning. — Viktor E. Frankl
- God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them. — German proverb
- What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others. — French proverb
- Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom. — George Iles
- And all who told it added something new,
And all who heard it made enlargements too. — Alexander Pope - Invention is the mother of necessity. — Thorstein Veblen
- It is well for the heart to be naïve and the mind not to be. — Anatole France
- A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo. — Bill Grey
- Happiness is like coke — something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else. — Aldous Huxley
- Don’t worry about what other people think; they don’t do it very often. — Anon
- Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call destiny. — John Oliver Hobbes
- Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
- One must plow with the horses that he has. — German proverb
- Honor sinks where commerce long prevails. — Oliver Goldsmith
- Every word was once a poem. — Emerson
- Homo homini lupus [Man is a wolf to man]. — Plautus
- Good and bad men are less than they seem. — Coleridge
- My way of joking is to tell the truth. — G. B. Shaw
- Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame. — Antonia S. Byatt
- The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer master of the policy by the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. — Winston Churchill
- To every thing there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven. — Ecclesiastes, 3:1 - Be wary of the man who encourages an action in which he himself incurs no risk. — Joaquin Setanti
- Most apparent mountains turn out to be molehills; a few apparent molehills turn out to be mountains. — Alfred Kelly
- Airs of importance are the credentials of impotence. — Johann Kaspar Lavater
- How soon not now becomes never. — Martin Luther
- Rotten wood cannot be carved. — Chinese proverb
- Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity. — Albert Einstein
- He that is discontented in one place will seldom be content in another. — Aesop
- The injuries we do and the injuries we suffer are seldom weighed on the same scales. — Aesop
- Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream. — W. S. Gilbert - It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone’s beard. — Georg von Lichtenberg
- Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. — Thomas Edison
- God’ll send you the bill. — James Russell Lowell
- When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. — Eric Hofer
- Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. — Thomas La Mance
- That which is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember. — Thomas Fuller
- Lo! Men have become the tool of their tools. — Thoreau
- Examine the contents, not the bottle. — The Talmud
- Every fact is already a theory. — Goethe
- … the reasons for doubting being themselves doubtful. — Pierre Bayle
- Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. — Karl Marx
- How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound. — Joseph Joubert
- What good is running if you are not on the right path? — German proverb
- The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate. — J. B. Priestley
- A merry heart doeth good like medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones. — Proverbs, 4:10
- …………………………………………….Love will find its way,
Through paths where wolves would fear to prey. — Lord Byron - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. — Charles Darwin
- The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not. — Blaise Pascal
And finally, the top 10 (this time in order, the most important being number 10)
- That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun. — Ecclesiastes, I:9 - Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. — Ecclesiastes, I:2
- Wisdom is better than rubies. — Proverbs, 8:11
- After all is said and done, more will have been said than done. — Anon
- The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
Chastis’d by sabler tints of woe. — Thomas Gray - Love to faults is always blind,
Always is to joy inclined,
Lawless, winged and unconfined,
And breaks all chains from every mind. — William Blake - The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. — Shakespeare
- The emperor has no clothes. — Hans Christian Anderson
- Things are uncertain, and the more we get,
The more on icy pavements we are set. — Robert Herrick - Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying. — Robert Herrick