Hi folks, this is an ongoing collection of witty pith and purpley prose I've happened across in my 42 trips 'round the Sun. Enjoy.

"I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets."
-John Glenn

"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."
-Scottish Proverb

"This above all; to thine own self be true."
-William Shakespeare

"Not all that glitters is gold, and not all who wander are lost."
-J. R. R. Tolkien

"The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself." ~ Robert Ingersoll

"City Life. Millions of people being lonesome together." ~ H.D. Thoreau

Write on your doors the saying wise and old,

“Be bold! Be bold! And everywhere—Be bold;

Be not too bold!”

~HW Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus [1875] (after E. Spencer)

"We must think of our whole economics in terms of a preventive pathology instead of a curative pathology.

Don't oppose forces; use them.

God is a verb,

Not a noun.

~ Buckminster Fuller, No More Secondhand God

I’m an optimist but I don’t think it helps much ~ bumper sticker

"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press"—Alexander Solzhenitsyn

According to our tradition, when a man dies there comes to him the Angel, who says:

"Now I will tell you the secret of life and the meaning of the universe."

One man to whom this happened said:

"Take off, grey Angel. Where were you when I needed you?"

Among all the hosts of the dead he is the only one who does not know

the secret of life and the meaning of the universe;

whence he is held in superstitious veneration by the rest.

--Howard Nemerov

"Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to." ~ Mark Twain

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." ~ Oscar Wilde

“There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law." -Claude Debussy 1862-1918

"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something." -Ornette Coleman

"Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes. Edgard Varese (1883 - 1965)

"Life without music would be a mistake" – Neitzsche

"The history of jazz can be said in four words: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker" ~ Miles Davis

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

Douglas Adams, from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke

Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion. Lemuel K. Washburn

Who possesses art and science has no need of religion. Goethe

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religions in it. John Adams

Happiness is a how, not a what; a talent, not an object. Hermann Hesse

Peace is not God's gift to his creatures. It is our gift to each other. Elie Wiesel

You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take. Wayne Gretzky

Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people. Thomas L. Masson

Those who know the least obey the best. George Farquhar

How is it possible to expect mankind to take advice when they will not so much as take warning? Swift

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~ Arthur C Clarke’s First Law

The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery! ~ GB Shaw

People would rather be wrong than be different. Henry Jacobsen

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp - or what's a heaven for? Robert Browning

Ignorance is not innocence but sin. ~ Robert Browning

"Nations do not mistrust each other because they are armed;
they are armed because they mistrust each other." ~ Ronald Reagan

"Employers sense in me a denial of their values... They fear me.
I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe."

~ Ignatius Reilly
(J. K. Toole in "A Confederacy of Dunces"}

"Freedom is the right to choose the habits that bind you." Renate Rubinstein