You might not have been my first love but you were the love that made all the other loves irrelevant.

#564 · Rupi Kaur

Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.

#563 · Sam Levenson

Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

#562 · Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. (...) I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

#561 · Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You're something between a dream and a miracle.

#560 · Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

#559 · Henry Ford

Tending the garden is a relaxing pastime, but it does not prepare one for the inevitable battles of life. It is easy to be calm in a serene setting.
To be calm and serene when under attack is much more difficult; therefore, I tell you that it is far better to be a warrior tending his garden rather than a gardener at war.

#558 · Chinese Proverb

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

#557 · George Orwell

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

#556 · George Orwell

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

#555 · George Orwell

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

#554 · George Orwell

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

#553 · George Orwell

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

#548 · Patti Smith

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.

#547 · Patti Smith

If giving points is the only way to motivate a student to complete an assignment, perhaps we should look more closely at the assignment.

#546 · Terry Heick

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

#545 · Thomas Paine

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

#544 · Thomas Paine

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

#543 · Mahatma Gandhi

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

#542 · Mahatma Gandhi

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

#541 · Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.

#540 · Mahatma Gandhi

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

#539 · Mahatma Gandhi

It's not about what it is, it's about what it can become.

#538 · Theodor Seuss Geisel

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

#537 · Theodor Seuss Geisel

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

#536 · Theodor Seuss Geisel

When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

#535 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.

#534 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

#533 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

#532 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.

#531 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.

#530 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

Do one thing every day that scares you.

#529 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.

#528 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

#527 · Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

#526 · Oscar Wilde

No one is afraid of heights, they're afraid of falling down. No one is afraid of saying I love you, they're afraid of the answer...

#525 · Kurt D. Cobain

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

#524 · Bernard M. Baruch

Never follow the crowd.

#523 · Bernard M. Baruch

Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.

#522 · Bernard M. Baruch

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

#521 · Bernard M. Baruch

We are not defending nature - we are nature defending itself.

#455 · anonymous

You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

#520 · Nicholson Baker

Carpe diem' doesn't mean seize the day – it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem' means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be "cape diem". (...) What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things – so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant--pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man that Horace was.

#519 · Nicholson Baker

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

#518 · Nicholson Baker

The problem with reading: you always have to pick up again at the very thing that made you stop reading the day before.

#513 · Nicholson Baker

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.

#517 · William W. Purkey

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

#516 · James Joyce

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

#515 · James Joyce

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

#514 · James Joyce

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

#512 · Benjamin Franklin

My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.

#511 · Henry Rollins

There is an abiding beauty which may be appreciated by those who will see things as they are and who will ask for no reward except to see.

#510 · Vera Brittain

For the eclipse tonite...
Let go of old wounds
So the new ones don't hurt as much.

#509 · Chan Marshall (Cat Power)

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

#507 · George Bernard Shaw

Books are written by the alone for the alone.

#508 · Donna Tartt

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.

#506 · Donna Tartt

I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

#505 · Donna Tartt

I decided as long as I'm going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.

#504 · Stephenie Meyer

It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the thing you do with it. You are beautiful.

#503 · Stephenie Meyer

I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.

#502 · Stephenie Meyer

Lean on principles, one day they 'll end up giving way.

#501 · Oscar Wilde

Education is not filling buckets; It's lighting fires.

#500 · W. B. Yeats

Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more.

#499 · George Bernard Shaw

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done...

#498 · Marie curie

What hath night to do with sleep?

#497 · John Milton

It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.

#496 · Rainer Maria Rilke

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.

#495 · Rainer Maria Rilke

Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.

#494 · Rainer Maria Rilke

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

#493 · Rainer Maria Rilke

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

#492 · Rainer Maria Rilke

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

#491 · Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White

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.

#490 · Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

#489 · Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

#488 · Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

#487 · Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

#486 · Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White

Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way - or always to have it.

#485 · Frances Hodgson Burnett

Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.

#484 · Frances Hodgson Burnett

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.

#483 · Frances Hodgson Burnett

Everything's a story - You are a story - I am a story.

#482 · Frances Hodgson Burnett

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.

#481 · Frances Hodgson Burnett

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

#480 · Oscar Wilde

According to this law [the law of Dharma], you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing it. There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the whole world--and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that creates affluence. Expressing your talents to fulfill needs creates unlimited wealth and abundance.

#479 · Deepak Chopra

Happiness for a reason is just another form of misery because the reason can be taken away from us at any time.

#478 · Deepak Chopra

The Ego is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.

#477 · Deepak Chopra

Walk with those seeking truth... Run from those who think they've found it.

#476 · Deepak Chopra

When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.

#475 · Deepak Chopra

You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.

#474 · Deepak Chopra

The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.

#473 · Zadie Smith

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

#472 · Zadie Smith

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

#471 · Zadie Smith

You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.

#470 · Zadie Smith

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

#469 · Zadie Smith

There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

#468 · Evelyn Waugh

To understand all is to forgive all.

#467 · Evelyn Waugh

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name. For the rest: my loves, my hates, down even to my deepest desires, I can no longer say whether these emotions are my own, or stolen from those I once so desperately wished to be.

#466 · Evelyn Waugh

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.

#35 · Evelyn Waugh

There is still, I think, not enough recognition by teachers of the fact that the desire to think (...) must be induced before the power is developed. Most people, whether men or women, wish above all else to be comfortable, and thought is a pre-eminently uncomfortable process.

#465 · Vera Brittain

Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel one more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of you.

#464 · Vera Brittain

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.

#463 · William Makepeace Thackeray

Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?

#462 · William Makepeace Thackeray

Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.

#461 · William Makepeace Thackeray

The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.

#460 · Annie Dillard

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

#459 · Annie Dillard

A wise person knows when and how to improvise.

#458 · Barry Schwartz

A wise person is made and not born.

#457 · Barry Schwartz

A wise person knows when and how to make the exception to every rule.

#456 · Barry Schwartz

A line is a dot that went for a walk.
Drawing is taking a line for a walk.

#454 · Paul Klee

Universe consists of frozen light.

#453 · David Bohm

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

#452 · David Bohm

Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture?

#451 · David Bohm

Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.

#450 · David Bohm

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

#449 · David Bohm

In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.

#448 · David Bohm

Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe… What we believe determines what we take to be true.

#447 · David Bohm

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

#446 · Michel de Montaigne

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

#445 · Michel de Montaigne

I can, therefore I am.

#444 · Simone Weil

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

#443 · Simone Weil

Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.

#442 · Simone Weil

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

#441 · Simone Weil

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

#440 · Simone Weil

Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.

#439 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

#438 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The soul is healed by being with children.

#437 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.

#436 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

#435 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

#434 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

#433 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's.

#432 · Fyodor Dostoyevsky

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life.

#431 · Friedrich Nietzsche

To teach is to create a space in which obedience to truth is practiced.

#430 · Parker Palmer

To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.

#429 · Pablo Picasso

The odds are irrelevant; if it’s possible and it matters, you take the shot and you never give up.

#428 · Regina Dugan

Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the ‘things’ that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.

#427 · Bill Buxton

The customer is always right about asking.

#426 · Faruk Ateş

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface, but connected in the deep.

#425 · William James

There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around a house. You can't know the limit beforehand, but you will know when you've reached it.

#424 · Alice Munro

The constant happiness is curiosity.

#423 · Alice Munro

Empowerment of individuals is a key part of what makes open source work, since in the end, innovations tend to come from small groups, not from large, structured efforts.

#422 · Tim O'Reilly

Life teaches you how to live it, if you live long enough.

#421 · Tony Bennett

When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.

#420 · James Gleick

What is more dangerous than to become a poet? which is, as some say, an incurable and infectious disease.

#419 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

He who reads much and walks much, goes far and knows much.

#418 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.

#417 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.

#416 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it.

#415 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

#414 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.

#413 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.

#412 · Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child's need for quietness is the same today as it has always been--it may even be greater--for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.

#411 · Margaret Wise Brown

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

#410 · Ray Bradbury

Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.

#409 · Oliver Sacks

My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.

#408 · Oliver Sacks

Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.

#407 · Oliver Sacks

The cost of changing things afterward is much higher than the cost of better preparation.

#406 · Dieter Rams

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

#405 · Marshall McLuhan

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.

#404 · Marshall McLuhan

As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of 'do it yourself.'

#403 · Marshall McLuhan

We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

#402 · Marshall McLuhan

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.

#401 · Marshall McLuhan

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

#400 · Marshall McLuhan

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

#399 · Anais Nin

Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.

#398 · Anais Nin

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

#397 · Anais Nin

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

#396 · Oscar Wilde

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

#395 · Mahatma Gandhi

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

#394 · Theodor Seuss Geisel

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

#393 · Theodor Seuss Geisel

You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

#392 · Theodor Seuss Geisel

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

#391 · Theodor Seuss Geisel

Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.

#390 · Annie Proulx

We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.

#389 · Annie Proulx

If you can't fix it, you have to stand it.

#388 · Annie Proulx

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

#387 · Annie Proulx

You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.

#386 · Annie Proulx

The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false.

#385 · Greg Bear

You are what you leave behind.

#384 · Greg Bear

I will learn by screwing up.

#383 · Greg Bear

Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.

#382 · Greg Bear

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

#381 · Greg Bear

A good logo provides the pleasure of recognition and the promise of meaning.

#380 · Paul Rand

Now that we’ve agreed designers should code, can we also agree designers should know how to write?

#379 · Mike Monteiro

To create great work, here's how you must spend your time: 1% inspiration, 9% perspiration, 90% justification.

#378 · George Lois

Teamwork might work in building an amish barn, but it can't create a big idea.

#377 · George Lois

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.

#376 · George Lois

Most people work at keeping their job rather than doing a good job.

#375 · George Lois

Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.

#374 · Italo Calvino

The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.

#373 · Guy de Maupassant

She realized for the first time that two people can never reach each others deepest feelings and instincts, that they spend their lives side by side, linked it may be, but not mingled, and that each one's inmost being must go through life eternally alone.

#372 · Guy de Maupassant

A lawful kiss is never worth as much as a stolen one.

#371 · Guy de Maupassant

Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.

#370 · Guy de Maupassant

Breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.

#369 · Guy de Maupassant

Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.

#368 · Guy de Maupassant

The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.

#367 · Guy de Maupassant

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

#366 · Guy de Maupassant

Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms.

#365 · Guy de Maupassant

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

#364 · Guy de Maupassant

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses a lamppost - for support rather than illumination.

#363 · Andrew Lang

When we see a rose, we immediately say, rose. We do not say, I see a roundish mass of delicately shaded reds and pinks. We immediately pass from the actual experience to the concept. [...]
We cannot help living to a very large extent in terms of concepts. We have to do so, because immediate experience is so chaotic and so immensely rich that in mere self-preservation we have to use the machinery of language to sort out what is of utility for us, what in any given context is of importance, and at the same time to try to understand—because it is only in terms of language that we can understand what is happening. We make generalizations and we go into higher and higher degrees of abstraction, which permit us to comprehend what we are up to, which we certainly would not if we did not have language. And in this way language is an immense boon, which we could not possibly do without.

#362 · Aldous Huxley

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