Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
-- Dale Carnegie

"If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep."
-- Dale Carnegie

"A teacher is an encourager."
-- David McCullough, author.

"No country should be allowed to take the law into their own hands... Especially the United States of America, because they are the only superpower in the world today, and they must be exemplary in everything they do.''
-- Nelson Mandela

"Dear God, I surrender this situation to you. May it be used for your purposes. I ask only that my heart be open to give love and to receive love. May all the results unfold according to your will. Amen.” Whatever you do, do it for God.
We are strong enough to do any job He asks us to do. Don’t be concerned about your own readiness, says the Course, but be consistently aware of His. It is not you doing the work, but the spirit who is within you. Forgetting this causes fear. A Course in Miracles says that the presence of fear is a sure sign we’re trusting in our own strength. “If you are trusting in your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious and fearful.” Of ourselves, none of us have the capacity to work miracles. With ‘the power that is in us but not of us,’ however, there is nothing we can not do."
-- Marianne Williamson, Return to Love

"Never 'for the sake of peace and quiet' deny your convictions."
-- Dag Hammarskjold

"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."
-- Janis Joplin

"I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty."
-- Imelda Marcos

"Those who hate to go to bed fear death; those who hate to get up fear life."
-- Wystan Hugh Auden

"Joy, temperance, and repose,
slam the door on the doctor's nose."
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work...
-- H. L. Hunt

"Believe that you will succeed, and you will."
-- Dale Carnegie

"No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it."
-- Grace Slick

"When you’re a child you’re not asked to think about future generations. When you’re a child you’re not asked to take care of the earth. When you’re a child you’re not asked to take responsibility for the planet on which we live. As an adult you must. But what happens in our society too often is we don’t bother to ever tell people that from now on it’s your job to be responsible for future generations. From now on it’s your job to take care of the earth. From now on it’s your job to be responsible."
-- Marianne Williamson

"I burned my candle at both ends, and now have neither foes nor friends."
-- Samuel Hoffenstein

"My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light."
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"One must not lose desires. They are mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love, and to long life."
-- Alexander Bogomoletz

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
-- Andre Gide

'I am very upset that the Defense Department and the administration have not provided the facilities for the American people to know what their troops are doing in Afghanistan. It's been a total news blackout. We are not allowed to accompany troops into action, and this is a denial of the free speech and free press to which we're entitled - particularly when it's a matter of reporting our boys and girls going into action, endangering their lives to protect our democracy. We are entitled to know what they're putting up with and how they are performing."
-- Walter Cronkite, to Liz Smith, syndicated columnist in today's editions.

"It is not half so important to know as to feel... Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration, or love-then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response."
-- Rachel Carson, biologist

"I drank very expensive vodka... which sounds like a good idea until the end of the evening when you're mixing it with Mountain Dew."
-- Matthew Perry, actor, Larry King Live, August 22, 2002.

"There was steam coming out of my ears, I wanted to be famous so badly. You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn't think what the repercussions would be."
-- Matthew Perry, actor, to Dana Kennedy in The New York Times. August 23, 2002.

"If I hadn't had the experience of being famous, I would have searched for it my whole life. I would have just gone on and on trying to find it."
-- Matthew Perry , actor, ibid.

"I didn't get sober because I felt like it, I got sober because I was worried I was going to die the next day."
-- Matthew Perry, actor, ibid.

"Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
-- Margaret Young

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
-- Coco Chanel

"Look for your own... Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else-and out of yourself create, impatiently…the most irreplaceable of beings."
-- Andre Gide, novelist.

"But none of these lessons mean anything if parents are not sufficiently involved. Much has to be asked of schools, but much must also be asked of parents. Politicians hesitate to raise the specter of absentee parents for fear of being accused of using the parents as scapegoats. But homes that value learning will also nurture children who are avid students. Similarly, schools in which parents are more involved tend to have students who perform better on tests."
-- Harold O. Levy, former Chancellor of the former New York City Board of Education, in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, August 21, 2002.

"Screw it, do it - it's later than you think"
-- Betsey Johnson, Designer to Michael Musto, in the Village Voice, August 21, 2002, p. 10.

"He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities."
-- Benjamin Franklin

"We are often so hurt by what happened in the past that we are afraid to allow the present to just be. We project onto someone now standing in front of us the mistakes of someone we haven't seen for years. We falsely believe that judging someone now will somehow give us more power or control over our destiny. The opposite of course is true, because judgment is the death of enchantment. And if we're living in judgment, then we are bound to be judged!"
-- Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love

"You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last."
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

"I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while."
-- Max Eastman

"Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There's always something about your success that displeases even your best friends."
-- Mark Twain

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
-- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

"I've been around the world three times... now, if I can't walk, then I don't want to go."
-- Todd Stockman

"Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those."
-- Mark Twain, Letter to W. D. Howells, 20 May 1891.

"I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want."
-- Mark Twain

"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
-- Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on Virginia.

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward."
-- Spanish Proverb

I can remember the first time I had to go to sleep.
Mom said, "Steven, time to go to sleep."
I said, "But I don't know how."
She said, "It's real easy. Just go down to the end of tired and hang a left."
So I went down to the end of tired, and just out of curiosity I hung a right.
My mother was there, and she said "I thought I told you to go to sleep."
-- Steven Wright

"Laugh and the world laughs with you;
snore and you sleep alone."
-- Anthony Burgess

“I think what influences you is movies that you innocently see that make you crazy in a wonderful way.”
-- John Waters

"No, no, I'm euphoric!... I am a happy camper! "
-- Harold O. Levy, Chancellor of the New York City schools on his impending departure this week, The New York Times, August 11, 2002.

"Rest is a state of selfness. It is the place that few of us allow ourselves to go for any length of time because of the many other so-called important things in our lives.
-- Molly Vass

"From time to time, I need a rest from the exercitation of my intellect."
-- Jean Stafford

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
-- Albert Einstein

"I have always been possessed by obsessive thoughts that I can't get rid of unless I act them out." So says my Cancerian friend Andrew, a conceptual artist. "Luckily for me," he continues, "in recent years I've retrained myself to feed on creative obsessions that inspire my art rather than on worried, petty obsessions that disrupt my life. I'd be an obnoxious lunatic if I didn't have my work to serve as an outlet for my relentless fantasy life." This is an excellent approach for most Cancerians to emulate all the time, but it's especially apropos these days. Your imagination is even more fertile and active than usual; it'll drive you crazy unless you channel it towards a noble goal."
-- Robert Brezny, astrologer and author of the column, Real Astrology.

"To teach is to learn twice."
-- Joseph Joubert

"When in this world the headlines read
Of those whose hearts are filled with greed
Who rob and steal from those who need
To right this wrong with blinding speed
Goes Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!

Speed of lightning, roar of thunder
Fighting all who rob or plunder
Underdog. Underdog!"
-- Underdog, the TV theme song.

"The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave his fetters fall.... Freedom and slavery are mental states."
-- Mahatma Ghandi

"Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected."
-- Mahatma Ghandi

"Action is the antidote for despair."
-- Joan Baez

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself."
-- Galileo

"Give me a short handle broom and I will stick it up my ass and sweep the floor while I am doing all these other things."
-- Pat Fowler, relating advice given to her by her father.

"My heroes are John Wayne, Babe Ruth, Roy Rogers, and whoever canceled Jerry Springer."
-- George Carlin, comedian.

"Charisma was originally a religious term, meaning 'of the spirit,' or 'inspired.' It’s about letting God’s light shine through us. It’s about a sparkle in people that money can’t buy. It’s an invisible energy with visible effects."
-- Marianne Williamson , in Return to Love.

"I guess there's just two kinds of people, Miss Sandstone: my kind of people and assholes."
-- Divine in Pink Flamingos, by John Waters, 1972.

"Don't go through life, grow through life."
--Eric Butterworth

"Excess on occasion is exhilarating... It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
--W. Somerset Maugham

"If you don't like something, change it.
If you can't change it, change your attitude."
-- Maya Angelou

"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction."
-- Bessie Anderson Stanley, Brown Book Magazine, Boston. 1904

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"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall..."
-- Mohandas Gandhi

"Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state. There is as little reason to deplore the one as there is to be pleased over the other."
-- Mohandas Gandhi

"An eye for eye makes the whole world blind..."
-- Mohandas Gandhi

"Hatred can be overcome only by love."
-- Mohandas Gandhi

"The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it."
-- Colin Wilson

"If the train doesn't stop at your station... it's not YOUR train.
-- Marianne Williamson

"The quieter you become the more you can hear."
-- Baba Ram Dass

"And if the while I think on thee Dear Friend,
All loses are restored, and sorrows end."
-- William Shakespeare

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours."
-- Yogi Berra, baseball player.

"Usually we figure out what we think would make us happy, and then try to make those things happen. But happiness isn’t circumstance-dependent. There are people who have every reason in the world to be happy who aren’t. There are people with genuine problems who are. The key to happiness is the decision to be happy."
-- Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love

"People never think anything is anything really"
-- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"Whores are a dime a dozen, but a good bookkeeper is hard to find."
-- Shelley Winters, Actress, The Balcony

"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues."
-- Elizabeth Taylor, Actress

"When I saw Manhattan, I wanted it..."
-- Quentin Crisp, The Slow Trip to Paradise

"Those who are not hopeless are worried that one day their lives will end. And, if you live long enough, of course, you long for it to end. That's been my desire in recent times. I only hope to become extinct. But before all that, you must try everything. Have children. Behave in such a way that monuments are built to you. Rule the world! Have streets and theaters named after you. Write your autobiography. These are ways to stay alive."
-- Quentin Crisp, What Does It Mean To Be Human, 1999.

"Your independence will not be compromised by intimacy."
-- Fortune Cookie

"The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time."
-- James Taylor

""We know that she'll be lively, alert, friendly, outgoing and HIV-positive. She'll be healthy, not sickly... We want to show children that it's okay to touch an HIV-positive person, okay to hug, that a person can still be a constructive part of the community."
-- Joel Schneider, vice president of Sesame Workshop, on the creation of an HIV+ Muppet for Sesame Street in South Africa, as quoted by Ananova.

"With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival?...Even if he is still in the world, bin Ladenism has left for good. Mr. bin Laden was the public face of a brand of politics that committed suicide in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, killing thousands of innocent people in the process."
-- Amir Taheri, in an op-ed piece in today's New York Times.

"I'm amused when I hear people speak of Ronald Reagan with such reverence as this towering figure in history. When I knew him, he was a very ordinary guy whose biggest talent was his ability to read from a TelePrompTer. He looked good and articulate in front of the camera, but I couldn't see any substance behind that image."
-- Richard Widmark, Actor, as quoted by Liz Smith in her syndicated column.

"Set up as an ideal the facing of reality as honestly and as cheerfully as possible."
-- Dr. Karl Menninger

"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."
-- Garrison Keillor

"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality."
-- Jules de Gaultier

"Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs."
-- Lily Tomlin

"Klaatu Barada Nikto"
-- Gort, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Twentieth Century Fox, 1951.

"I'm a mother pheasant plucker. I pluck mother Pheasants. I'm the most pleasant mother pheasant plucker, that ever plucked a mother pheasant."
-- Unknown

"We are all born naked and screaming and if you're lucky that sort of thing won't stop there..."
-- Unknown

"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else."
-- Ogden Nash

"Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live..."
-- Unknown

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
-- Abraham Lincoln

"I want to focus on my salad."
-- Martha Stewart, on CBS Early Show, when the host wanted to discuss the IMCLONE scandal, during a cooking spot.

"So we're left with a system that is fine for turning out bicycle messengers, and absolutely terrific at preparing kids for Rikers Island. It's great to have a governor that cares about standards."
-- Bob Herbert, in The New York Times, July, 1, 2002, Editorial on the state of the New York City public school system.

"Love your neighbors. It's a great world, and you can make it better...."
-- President Bill Clinton, at Stuyvesant High School Graduation, NYC, June, 2002.

"What is the name of your first pet? What is the first street you ever lived on? Combine the two and you get your porn name."
-- Promotion flyer for the upcoming Steven Soderbergh movie.

"If you want to do easy things where you can't fail and don't run any risks, I think the satisfaction and contribution are low. If you want to take on things that everybody says are impossible but everybody agrees we desperately need, that's the great challenge."
-- Michael Bloomberg, Mayor, on taking over the NYC school system.

"The language is atrocious... so much 'A-S-S'... I know what a bottom is!"
-- Sylvia Myer

"Remember to say no; it's the most difficult word".
-- Bette Davis to Robin Williams quoted in today's Liz Smith column.

"Certain things should just stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone."
- Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"Boy, when you are dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you are dead? Nobody."
- Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"I figured that I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversation with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone . . . I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd getmarried. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a piece of paper, like everybody else"
-- Holden Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"Only in New York does pizza reach your house before an ambulance . . . are banks' doors open, while counter-top pens are bolted . . . do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and diet soda . . . must invalids walk to the back of a drugstore for prescriptions, while unsick folk get cigarettes up front . . . do we screen calls with answering machines but have call waiting, so we don't miss hearing from someone we wouldn't talk to in the first place."
--Sy Presten

'I don't see people who are nasty or read nasty things. This makes me more tranquil"
-- Brooke Astor on her 100th Birthday tomorrow.

"I know many of my husband's ex-girlfriends who will agree that if every man was was as good in bed as David, there would be a lot of happy women in the world,"
-- Liza Minnelli

"If Liza was expecting passion with David on their wedding night, believe me, she's still waiting."
-- Ruth Warrick , as quoted in The Globe.

"We moved in together one week after we met, that says it all."
-- Liza Minnelli

"I know who I am. That's the important thing. She knows who she is, and we're so in love we've got our own world."
-- David Gest

"Ruth Warrick is trying to capitalize on the attention of our wedding"... "It is unfortunate that an 86-year-old woman, like Ruth Warrick, can think that a friendship is more than just that. Ruth Warrick is old enough to be David's grandmother."
-- Liza Minnelli, as told to Page Six.

"It's all a big mistake. I never should have said it"... "I feel very badly about it. I guess I was a little giddy. I feel terrible to rain on their parade."
--Ruth Warrick, as told to Page Six.

"I hate stupid damn Earth."... "You are getting bald, Mr. Tawd."... "Yeah , well Mister Tawd IS getting old."... "This place has Anthrax!... YOU have Anthrax!"... "I love Mister Tawd, he's the best teacher in the whole wide world."... "Hello Miss Dawg... blah blah blah blah."
--Aaron, age six

"There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse."
-- Quentin Crisp

"An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last chapter missing."
-- Quentin Crisp

"Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist - but then what isn't?"
--Quentin Crisp

"She’s using him? He’s using her? Who cares? Nobody deserves to do it all alone.”
-- Margaret O'Brien (at the fourth wedding of Liza Minnelli, as quoted by Rex Reed)

"My father is always telling me to take care of myself and get a lot of rest. He's always saying, "Sleep will fix anything. Go take a nap." I think he's right. I find when I get frazzled, if I get a good night's sleep, I feel much better about things."
-- Ben Stiller

"It costs nothing to be kind."
-- Sylvia Myer

It was "the kissiest wedding I've ever seen."
-- Liz Smith (on the wedding of Liza Minelli to David Gest, yesterday).

"People call and ask me, 'Carolyn, is Satan there?' And I tell them, 'Satan is only where we let him.'"
-- Carolyn Risher, Mayor of Inglis, Fla., (who issued a decree banning Satan from town).

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The race against time can only be won by slowing down."
-- Fortune Cookie

"It's always something..."
-- Rosanna Rosana Danna (as played by Gilda Radner)