Eclectic quotations accumulating in Hell's Kitchen, NY, USA.

20020925

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."
-- Dale Carnegie

20020924

"Anything you can imagine is real."
-- Pablo Picasso

20020923

"Enough with Martha Stewart jokes. I'm telling you for a fact that her new Web site is: 'MarthaStewart.con.' Also that her cabbage-chopping shows have switched from CBS-TV. They now appear on The Comedy Channel. Also that despite losing millions, the woman is still hard at work. She was spotted picking through garbage cans in Tacoma."
-- Cindy Adams, columnist, New York Post.

20020922

"Trust ivrybody -- but cut th' cards."
Finley Peter Dunne, "Casual Observations," Mr. Dooley's Philosophy, 1900

20020921

"My function in life was to render clear what was already blindingly conspicuous."
-- Quentin Crisp

20020919

"Knowing a man well never leads to hate
and nearly always leads to love..."
-- John Steinbeck

20020918

"Arnold Patent wrote that if you genuinely have something to say, there is someone who genuinely needs to hear it. We don't have to invent an audience so much as we have to hone the message we plan to give them once they get here. Serving three people is as important as serving three hundred. Once we're clear about how to deal with a small following, a large following will develop automatically, if that would serve the world. Our power lies in our clarity about the role our work can play in the creation of a more beautiful world. The miracle is to think of our career as our contribution, however small, to the healing of the universe."
-- Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love

20020917

"Im a thief and a shit-kicker!"
-- Divine

20020916

"You are a child of God. You were created in a blinding flash of creativity, a primal thought when God extended Himself in love. Everything you've added on since is useless.
When Michelangelo was asked how he created a piece of sculpture, he answered that the statue already existed within the marble. God Himself had created the Pieta, David, Moses. Michelangelo's job, as he saw it, was to get rid of the excess marble that surrounded God's creation.
So it is with you. The perfect you isn't something you need to create, because God already created it. The perfect you is the love within you. Your job is to allow the Holy Spirit to remove the fearful thinking that surrounds your perfect self, just as excess marble surrounded Michelangelo's perfect statue."

-- Marianne Williamson, A Return To Love

20020914

"I've got a few to go yet."
-- Nick Nolte, actor, after Katherine Hepburn accused him of falling down drunk in every gutter in town, 1990. According to the IMDB.

20020911

I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

20020910

'My mother opened the heavy [stage] door quite easily. I stepped inside and stood still. I was overcome with the emotion that here was hallowed ground . . . It came over me that I was looking at the stage and backstage of a cathedral, a temple, a mosque, a mother church . . . Of course, at that moment, I hadn't seen any live shows yet. At that time, I wanted only to kiss the floorboards . . . But how did I know they [legit stages] were really churches?"
-- Carol Channing, actress, in her new memoir Just Lucky I Guess.

20020909

"He who begins too much, accomplishes little."
-- German Proverb

20020908

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

20020907

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
-- Robert Byrne

20020906

"Six ways to make people like you:
1) Become genuinely interested in other people.
2) Smile.
3) Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4) Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5) Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
6) Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely."
-- Dale Carnegie

20020905

"The universe is sending you the right everything. You won't realize this until you fully show up in the situation the way it is. In other words, whatever the circumstance, if you assume that the circumstance is perfect, then you live fully within that circumstance. How can I be the best I can be within the circumstance that is already?."
-- Marianne Williamson

20020904

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

20020903

"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.

20020902

"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

20020901

"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

20020831

"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

20020830

"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

20020829

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

20020828

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

20020827

'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.

20020826

"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

20020823

"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

20020822

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.

20020821

"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

20020820

"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

20020818

"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

20020817

"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

20020815

"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.



20020814

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

20020813

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

20020812

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

20020811

"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.

20020810

"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

20020809

"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

20020808

"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.

20020807

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

20020806

"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.

20020805

"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


20020804

"Action is the antidote for despair."
-- Joan Baez
"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself."
-- Galileo

20020803

"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.

20020801

"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.

20020731

"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

20020730

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

20020729

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

20020728

"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

20020727

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20020725

"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






20020724

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

20020723

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

20020720

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

20020719

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

20020718

"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

20020717

"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

20020714

"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.

20020712

"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.

20020711

"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.

20020710

"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

20020706

"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

20020705

"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

20020704

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

20020703

"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.

20020701

"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.