“Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.”

-- Eric Zorn

"There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness".

-- Josh Billings

"Time to make the donuts."

-- Michael Vale, Dunkin Donuts' "Fred the Baker" character, 1922-2005.


Image from the NNDB.

"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right".

-- Laurens Van der Post

"If we wait until we are 100 percent sure that we are making the right rather than the wrong decision, we can be 100 percent sure of only one thing--we will never make any decision at all. To be decisive and proactive, we often need to act long before we're convinced we're doing the right thing."

-- Arleen LaBella and Dolores Leach

"Everybody talks about the weather and nobody does anything about it."

-- Carl Sandburg

"The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin."

-- Jay Leno

“Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.”

-- Edna Ferber

"They're working people and they're not thugs. I'm a working person and if I go out on strike, I'm not a thug either."

-- Joan Taylor Stewart, to Mayor Bloomberg at Junior's restaurant yesterday, as reported in The New York Times, Bloomberg Balanced Tough Talk Against the Risk of Offending, by Jim Rutenberg.

"Know your limits... But never stop trying to exceed them!"

-- Anonymous

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions".

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'."

-- Phillip Lopate

"Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows".

-- David T. Wolf

"But in truth the audience doesn't have to be coerced to get it. This is where the country has been steadily moving of late. Brokeback Mountain, a Hollywood product after all, is not leading a revolution but ratifying one, fleshing out - quite literally - what most Americans now believe. It's not for nothing that the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage vanished as soon as the election was over. Polls show that a large American majority support equal rights for gay couples as long as the unions aren't labeled "marriage" - and given the current swift pace of change, that reservation, too, will probably fade in the next 5 to 10 years."

-- Frank Rich, Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run, The New York Times

"Patience is the best remedy for every trouble."

-- Fortune Cookie

"The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection".

-- Henry Ward Beecher

"Integrity is doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching."

-- Anonymous

"There is no birth of consciousness without pain".

-- Carl Jung


Image from JungCircle.com

"I'll go through it with dignity, with integrity, with love and bliss in my heart. I smile at everything, and I'm quite sure I'll smile then, too."

-- Stanley Tookie Williams, III; 1953-2005


Image from Tookie.com

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated,

and a person is humanized or de-humanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.

If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

-- Goethe, 1749-1832


Image from Cancellieri.org

"I'm a pioneer. That's my contribution. I broke barriers for black comics. I was being Richard Pryor; that was me on that stage. But I was on drugs at the time."

-- Richard Pryor, 1940-2005


Image from LA Times.

"It could be like this - just like this - always."

-- Jack Twist, character in Brokeback Mountain, portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal.


Image from JakeGyllenhaal.com

"If I had to live my life again... I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner."

-- Tallulah Bankhead


Image from Concordia.

"Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is... Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."

-- Yoda



Image from Chez Dafyd

"Music and John were inseperable. There was always music in our life."

-- Yoko Ono, to Mary Huhn in the New York Post, today.


Image from Blog Alice.

"It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up".

-- W. Somerset Maugham

"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years."

-- Bertrand Russell

"All of us are on journey to the future, yet all of us live in the present. Too many people get caught up in what could be, instead of appreciating what is. Appreciate what you have, and who you have, because the future can take it all away from you."

-- Laike, Lunar Silver Star Story Complete
. (As suggested by J.D.)

"The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them".

-- Samuel McChord Crothers

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron".

-- H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun on July 26, 1920. (Thanks to Curtis for the quote )

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents".

-- H.P. Lovecraft

"When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him".

-- Thomas Szasz