Quotable Quotes by Reader's Digest
The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in.
—BILL COPELAND
//
Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
—PAUL TILLICH
The Eternal Now
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The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability he has.
—CONFUCIUS
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You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.
—JOHN D. MACDONALD
introduction to Night Shift by Stephen King
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Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
—ST. AUGUSTINE
//
You may find the worst enemy or best friend in yourself.
—ENGLISH PROVERB
//
Often we change jobs, friends and spouses instead of ourselves.
—AKBARALI H. JETHA
Reflections
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Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgment.
—FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
//
A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself.
—AXEL MUNTHE
//
We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
//
We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our worst enemies.
—RODERICK THORP
Rainbow Drive
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If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.
—HAIM GINOTT
//
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
—ALBERT CAMUS
Lyrical and Critical Essays
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The better we feel about ourselves, the fewer times we have to knock somebody else down to feel tall.
—ODETTA
//
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
—ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
Flight to Arras
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Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
—ELBERT HUBBARD
//
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
—MARK TWAIN
//
No man was ever wise by chance.
—SENECA
//
What we do not understand we do not possess.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
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Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you
make a living; the other helps you make a life.
—SANDRA CAREY
//
The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself he becomes wise.
—ALDEN NOWLAN
Between Tears and Laughter
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The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
—CATHERINE THE GREAT
//
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
—KAHLIL GIBRAN
//
The best-educated human being is the one who understands most about the life in which he is placed.
—HELEN KELLER
//
Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
—JOSH BILLINGS
//
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
—MARIE CURIE
//
Life begins as a quest of the child for the man and ends as a journey by the man to rediscover the child.
—LAURENS VAN DER POST
The Lost World of the Kalahari
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To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
—HENRI BERGSON
//
Maturity is reached the day we don’t need to be lied to about anything.
—FRANK YERBY
//
When it comes to staying young, a mind-lift beats a face-lift any day.
—MARTY BUCELLA
in Woman magazine
//
Most people say that as you get old, you have to give up things. I think you get old because you give up things.
—SEN. THEODORE FRANCIS GREEN
//
You don’t stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing.
—MICHAEL PRITCHARD
//
Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.
—FRANCIS BACON
//
Growing up is usually so painful that people make comedies out of it to soften the memory.
—JOHN GREENWALD
//
Just remember, when you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.
—CHARLES SCHULZ
//
I have no romantic feelings about age. Either you are
interesting at any age or you are not. There is nothing particularly interesting about being old—or being young, for that matter.
—KATHARINE HEPBURN
//
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
—H. L. MENCKEN
Prejudices
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Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.
—TOM WILSON
//
Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.
—CHARLES R. SWINDOLL
The Strong Family
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Expect people to be better than they are; it helps them to become better. But don’t be disappointed when they are not; it helps them to keep trying.
—MERRY BROWNE
in National Enquirer
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Nobody wants constructive criticism. It’s all we can do to put up with constructive praise.
—MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
//
From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
—ARTHUR ASHE
Days of Grace
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Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.
—Quoted by JAMES THURBER in Life
//
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.
—PETER DE VRIES
The Tunnel of Love
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Oh, to be only half as wonderful as my child thought I was when he was small, and only half as stupid as my teenager now thinks I am.
—REBECCA RICHARDS
//
There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
—HELEN KELLER
//
The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
—THEODORE HESBURGH
//
My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
—CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND
//
The word no carries a lot more meaning when spoken by a parent who also knows how to say yes.
—JOYCE MAYNARD
in Parenting
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There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.
—WALT STREIGHTIFF
//
Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.
—FRED ROGERS
//
The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.
—FRANK A. CLARK
//
Loving a child doesn’t mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.
—NADIA BOULANGER
//
The best things you can give children, next to good habits, are good memories.
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
//
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
—Spotlight (Boise, Idaho)
//
I have found that the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it.
—HARRY S. TRUMAN
//
If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.
—DOROTHY LAW NOLTE
//
Parents need to fill a child’s bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can’t poke enough holes in it to drain it dry.
—ALVIN PRICE
//
Every adult needs a child to teach; it’s the way adults learn.
—FRANK A. CLARK
//
You cannot train a horse with shouts and expect it to obey a whisper.
—DAGOBERT D. RUNES
Letters to My Son
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People with tact have less to retract.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
//
Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
—HENRI FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL
//
Men may be divided almost any way we please, but I have found the most useful distinction to be made between those who devote their lives to conjugating the verb “to be,” and those who spend their lives conjugating the verb “to have.”
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
//
Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.
—MARY TYLER MOORE
//
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
--WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
//
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.
--WALTER ELLIOTT
The Spiritual Life
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A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
--ALISTAIR COOKE
//
Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
--NEWT GINGRICH
//
I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate—it’s apathy.
—LEO BUSCAGLIA
Love
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Anger is not only inevitable, it is necessary. Its absence means indifference, the most disastrous of all human failings.
—ARTHUR PONSONBY
//
I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
—BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
//
My life is in the hands of any fool who makes me lose my temper.
—JOSEPH HUNTER
//
If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
//
Nothing lowers the level of conversation more than raising the voice.
—STANLEY HOROWITZ
//
The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.
—JACQUELINE SCHIFF
in National Enquirer
//
Flatterers look like friends, as wolves like dogs.
—GEORGE CHAPMAN
//
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
—BEVERLY SILLS
//
I have never for one instant seen clearly within myself. How then would you have me judge the deeds of others?
—MAURICE MAETERLINCK
//
We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts.
—HAROLD NICOLSON
//
The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudices.
—CLINT EASTWOOD
//
Every bigot was once a child free of prejudice.
—SISTER MARY DE LOURDES
//
Sometimes the best way to convince someone he is wrong is to let him have his way.
—RED O’DONNELL
//
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
—SIMONE WEIL
//
Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.
—HAROLD COFFIN
//
The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt
until they are too strong to be broken.
—SAMUEL JOHNSON
//
The person who knows how will always have a job. But the person who knows why will be his boss.
—CARL C. WOOD
//
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
—SYDNEY J. HARRIS
//
The quality of a man’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.
—VINCE LOMBARDI
//
Opportunities are never lost. The other fellow takes those you miss.
—ANONYMOUS
//
Opportunity’s favorite disguise is trouble.
—FRANK TYGER
in Rotary “Scandal Sheet” (Graham, Texas)
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One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.
—JACK PENN
//
If you’re never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances.
—JULIA SOREL
//
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
—MAX DE PREE
Leadership Is an Art
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The person who has had a bull by the tail once has learned 60 or 70 times as much as a person who hasn’t.
—MARK TWAIN
//
Sometimes you earn more doing the jobs that pay nothing.
—TODD RUTHMAN
//
The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.
—SIR WILLIAM OSLER
//
If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.
—LARRY MCMURTRY
Some Can Whistle
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There is no saint without a past—no sinner without a future.
—ANCIENT PERSIAN MASS
//
He who is afraid to ask is ashamed of learning.
—DANISH PROVERB
//
I’d rather be a failure at something I enjoy than be a success at something I hate.
—GEORGE BURNS
//
You never conquer a mountain. You stand on the summit a few moments; then the wind blows your footprints away.
—ARLENE BLUM
//
I couldn’t wait for success . . . so I went ahead without it.
—JONATHAN WINTERS
//
Failure is an event, never a person.
—WILLIAM D. BROWN
Welcome Stress!
//
My father always told me, “Find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
—JIM FOX
//
It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
—FRANKLIN P. JONES
in Quote
//
A different language is a different vision of life.
—FEDERICO FELLINI
//
Learn a new language and get a new soul.
—CZECH PROVERB
//
He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
//
If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought.
—DENNIS ROTH
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The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
//
Parents can plant magic in a child’s mind through certain words spoken with some thrilling quality of voice, some uplift of the heart and spirit.
—ROBERT MACNEIL
Wordstruck
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Have you noticed that these days even a moment of silence has to be accompanied by background music?
—Funny Funny World
//
To disagree, one doesn’t have to be disagreeable.
—BARRY M. GOLDWATER WITH JACK CASSERLY
Goldwater
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There’s a difference between opinion and conviction. My opinion is something that is true for me personally; my conviction is something that is true for everybody—in my opinion.
—SYLVIA CORDWOOD
//
It is useless to send armies against ideas.
—GEORG BRANDES
//
A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.
—J. KRISHNAMURTI
//
Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated.
—ROBERT C. SAVAGE
Life Lessons
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Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
—ABIGAIL ADAMS
//
Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
—DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
Democracy and Its Discontents
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Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
//
Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you;
you must acquire it.
—SUDIE BACK
//
Books may well be the only true magic.
—ALICE HOFFMAN
//
Books are more than books. They are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
—AMY LOWELL
//
No one ever really paid the price of a book—only the price of printing it.
—LOUIS I. KAHN
//
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
—FRANZ KAFKA
//
Every artist was first an amateur.
--RALPH WALDO EMERSON
//
The greatest artist was once a beginner.
--Farmer's Digest
//
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
--PABLO PICASSO
//
A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o’clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.
—LIN YUTANG
The Importance of Living
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How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
—ANNIE DILLARD
The Writing Life
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Yes, there is a nirvana; it is in leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in
writing the last line of your poem.
—KAHLIL GIBRAN
//
Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.
—SOPHIA LOREN
Women & Beauty
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To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child’s delight added to your own—this is happiness.
—J. B. PRIESTLEY
//
So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health.
—A. J. REB MATERI
Our Family
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Storms make trees take deeper roots.
—CLAUDE MCDONALD
in The Christian Word
//
An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. An
inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
//
Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.
—DAVID FROST
//
Science cannot answer the deepest questions. As soon as you ask why there is something instead of nothing, you have gone beyond science. I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is the explanation for the miracle of existence—why there is something instead of nothing.
—COSMOLOGIST ALLAN R. SANDAGE
//
Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars, blown about us by the wind, and drink the universe in a glass of rain.
—IHAB HASSAN
//
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
—EDEN PHILLPOTTS
A Shadow Passes
//
The soul of Canada is a dual personality, and must remain only half-revealed to those who know only one language.
—FRANK OLIVER CALL
Canadian Quotations and Phrases
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One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
—BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
//
Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
—WILL ROGERS
//
To create a housing shortage in a huge country, heavily wooded, with a small population—ah, that’s proof of pure political genius.
—RICHARD J. NEEDHAM
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
//
To view poverty simply as an economic condition, to be measured by statistics, is simplistic, misleading and false; poverty is a state of mind, a matter of horizons.
—PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
Right from the Beginning
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Only a fool thinks price and value are the same.
—ANTONIO MACHADO
//
Measure wealth not by the things you have, but by the things you have for which you would not take money.
—ANONYMOUS
//
Money does make all the difference. If you have two jobs and you’re rich, you have diversified interests. If you have two jobs and you’re poor, you’re moonlighting.
—Changing Times
//
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
—ITALIAN PROVERB
//
The soldiers fight, and the kings are heroes.
—BARBARA MECHELS