Blathery

Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Born this week

Aristotle

BCE BCE

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist born in the Macedonian city of Stagirus, in 384 BCE. His father, Nicomachus, died when ...

Thomas Fuller

1608August 16, 1661

Better be alone than in bad company.

Thomas Fuller was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, ...

Charles Caleb Colton

17801832

He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.

Charles Caleb Colton was an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities. Colton was educated at Eton and ...

E. M. Forster

1879June 7, 1970

History develops, art stands still.

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and ...

Orison Swett Marden

18501924

No man fails who does his best.

Dr. Orison Swett Marden was an American inspirational author who wrote on success in life and how to achieve it. His writings discuss ...

Helen Rowland

18751950

There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who remain permanently at that age.

Helen Rowland (1875 - 1950) was an American journalist and humorist. She is often confused with Helen May Rowland, a singer-actress who ...

Abu Bakr

573 CEAugust 23, 634 CE

Do not follow vain desires for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger.

Abdullah ibn Abi Qhuhafah, c. 573 CE - 23 August 634 CE, popularly known by his nickname Abu Bakr was a senior companion and the ...

Woodrow Wilson

December 28, 1856February 3, 1924

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921 and leader of the Progressive Movement. He served as ...

Plutarch

45 CE120 CE

The wildest colts make the best horses.

Plutarch, was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He is considered today to be ...

Isaac Asimov

January 2, 1920April 6, 1992

It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.

Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for ...

William Arthur Ward

1921March 30, 1994

It is wise to direct your anger towards problems - not people to focus your energies on answers - not excuses.

William Arthur Ward, author of Fountains of Faith, is one of America's most quoted writers of inspirational maxims. More than 100 ...

Dante Alighieri

1265September 14, 1321

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild.

Durante degli Alighieri, simply called Dante, was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa ...

Chanakya

BCE BCE

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

Chanakya was an Indian teacher, philosopher, and royal advisor. Originally a professor of economics and political science at the ancient ...

Stephen Gardiner

1497November 12, 1555

Georgian architecture respected the scale of both the individual and the community.

Stephen Gardiner was an English Roman Catholic bishop and politician during the English Reformation period who served as Lord Chancellor ...

Thomas a Kempis

1380July 25, 1471

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

Thomas à Kempis, C.R.S.A. was a German canon regular of the late medieval period and the most probable author of The Imitation of Christ, ...

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

35 CE100 CE

As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance ...

Ludwig van Beethoven

1770March 26, 1827

Recommend to your children virtue that alone can make them happy, not gold.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in ...

Rudyard Kipling

December 30, 1865January 18, 1936

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British soldiers in India and ...

Meister Eckhart

12601328

When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order.

Eckhart von Hochheim O.P., commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the ...

Epicurus

BCE BCE

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and ...

Manuel Puig

December 28, 1932July 22, 1990

I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes, not at all.

Manuel Puig was an Argentine author. Among his best known novels are La traición de Rita Hayworth, Boquitas pintadas, and El beso de la ...

Heraclitus

BCE BCE

Change alone is unchanging.

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was ...

Tertullian

160 CE220 CE

You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian, was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province ...

Gaius Sallustius Crispus

BCE BCE

All those who offer an opinion on any doubtful point should first clear their minds of every sentiment of dislike, friendship, anger or pity.

Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust, was a Roman historian, politician, and novus homo from a provincial plebeian ...

Barry Goldwater

January 2, 1909May 29, 1998

American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.

Barry Morris Goldwater was a businessman and five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for president ...

Tryon Edwards

18091894

To rule one's anger is well to prevent it is better.

Tryon Edwards was an American theologian, best known for compiling A Dictionary of Thoughts, a book of quotations. [But see note in Talk ...

Jane Seymour

1508October 24, 1537

People say women shouldn't have long hair over a certain age, but I've never done what everyone says.

Jane Seymour was Queen of England from 1536 to 1537 as the third wife of King Henry VIII. She succeeded Anne Boleyn as queen consort ...

Stephen Leacock

December 30, 1869March 28, 1944

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

Stephen P. H Butler Leacock, FRSC was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humourist. Between the years 1910 and 1925, he ...

Homer

born BCE

In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!

Homer is best known as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. He was believed by the ancient Greeks to have been the first and greatest ...

William E. Gladstone

December 29, 1809May 19, 1898

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

William Ewart Gladstone, was a British Liberal politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate ...

Henri Matisse

December 31, 1869November 3, 1954

Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a ...

Roger Ascham

1515December 23, 1568

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

Roger Ascham was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of ...

Geoffrey Chaucer

1343October 25, 1400

Filth and old age, I'm sure you will agree, are powerful wardens upon chastity.

Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the ...

Evan Esar

18991995

Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won't stand up either.

Evan Esar was an American humorist who wrote "Esar's Comic Dictionary" in 1943, "Humorous English" in 1961, and "20,000 Quips and Quotes" ...

Mencius

BCE BCE

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

Mencius was a Chinese philosopher who is the most famous Confucian after Confucius himself.

Tacitus

56 CE117 CE

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and ...

Zhuangzi

BCE BCE

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

Zhuang Zhou, often known as Zhuangzi was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BC during the Warring States ...

William Lyon Phelps

January 2, 1865August 21, 1943

The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.

William Lyon Phelps was an American author, critic and scholar. He taught the first American university course on the modern novel. He was ...

Alexander Smith

December 31, 1829January 5, 1867

Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.

Alexander Smith (31 December 1830- 5 January 1867, 8 January according to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable) was a Scottish poet, and ...

Antisthenes

BCE BCE

As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion.

Antisthenes was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before becoming an ardent ...

Christopher Columbus

1451May 20, 1506

No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour, if it is just and if the intention is purely for His holy service.

Christopher Columbus was a Genoese explorer, navigator, and colonizer, born in the Republic of Genoa. Under the auspices of the Catholic ...

Oliver Herford

1863July 5, 1935

Age, like distance lends a double charm.

Oliver Herford was an American writer, artist and illustrator who has been called "The American Oscar Wilde". As a frequent contributor to ...

Pliny the Elder

23 CEAugust 25, 79 CE

Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.

Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army ...

Douglas William Jerrold

January 3, 1803June 8, 1857

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.

Douglas William Jerrold (3 January 1803 - 8 June 1857) was an English dramatist and writer. Jerrold was born in London. His father, Samuel ...

E. Stanley Jones

January 3, 1884January 25, 1973

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.

Eli Stanley Jones was a 20th-century Methodist Christian missionary and theologian. He is remembered chiefly for his interreligious ...

J. R. R. Tolkien

January 3, 1892September 2, 1973

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic ...

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

December 29, 1814December 26, 1880

The creed of a true saint is to make the best of life, and to make the most of it.

Edwin Hubbell Chapin was an American preacher and editor of the Christian Leader. He was also a poet, responsible for the poem Burial at ...

Albert Pike

December 29, 1809April 2, 1891

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

Albert Pike (December 29, 1809 - April 2, 1891) was an attorney, Confederate officer, writer, and Freemason. Pike is the only Confederate ...

Jose Bergamin

December 30, 1895August 28, 1983

To sin offers repentance and forgiveness not to sin offers only punishment.

José Bergamín Gutiérrez was a Spanish writer, essayist, poet, and playwright. His father served as president of the canton of Málaga; ...

Minna Antrim

18611950

The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.

Minna Thomas Antrim was an American writer. She is famous for the quote "Experience is a great teacher, but she sends in terrific bills." ...

William J. H. Boetcker

18731962

You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.

William John Henry Boetcker was an American religious leader and influential public speaker. Born in Hamburg, Germany, he was ordained a ...

Alexandre Dumas

1726July 11, 1802

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

George Farquhar

1677April 29, 1707

Those who know the least obey the best.

George Farquhar (1677 - 29 April 1707) was an Irish dramatist. He is noted for his contributions to late Restoration comedy, particularly ...

William Gurnall

1617October 12, 1679

Godliness, as well as the doctrine of our faith, is a mystery.

William Gurnall was an English author and clergyman born at King's Lynn, Norfolk. He was educated at the free grammar school of his native ...

Saadi

12101291

I fear God and next to God I mostly fear them that fear him not.

Abū-Muhammad Muslih al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, Saadi Shirazi, better known by his pen-name Saʿdī or simply Saadi, was one of the ...

Holbrook Jackson

December 31, 18741948

No man is ever old enough to know better.

George Holbrook Jackson (31 December 1874 - 16 June 1948) was a British journalist, writer and publisher. He was recognised as one of the ...

George C. Marshall

December 31, 1880October 16, 1959

Go right straight down the road, to do what is best, and to do it frankly and without evasion.

George Catlett Marshall, Jr. was an American soldier and statesman famous for his leadership roles during World War II and the Cold War. He ...

Ausonius

310 CE395 CE

Forgive many things in others nothing in yourself.

Decimus Magnus Ausonius was a Roman poet and teacher of rhetoric from Burdigala in Aquitaine, modern Bordeaux, France. For a time he was ...

Francis Beaumont

1584March 6, 1616

Faith without works is like a bird without wings though she may hop with her companions on earth, yet she will never fly with them to heaven.

Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher. Beaumont was ...

Frank Moore Colby

18651925

I know of no more disagreeable situation than to be left feeling generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at.

Frank Moore Colby (1865 - 1925) was an American educator and writer, born in Washington, D. C.. He graduated from Columbia University in ...

Pierre de Coubertin

1863September 2, 1937

All sports must be treated on the basis of equality.

Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin was a French educator and historian, and founder of the International Olympic Committee. He is ...

Thomas Dekker

1572August 25, 1632

Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.

Thomas Dekker was an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades ...

Ernest Dimnet

18661954

Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul.

Ernest Dimnet (1866-1954), French priest, writer and lecturer, is the author of The Art of Thinking, a popular book on thinking and ...

John Florio

15531625

A good husband makes a good wife.

John Florio, known in Italian as Giovanni Florio, was a linguist and lexicographer, a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, and a ...

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

10211058

The test of good manners is to be patient with the bad ones.

Solomon ibn Gabirol, also known as Solomon ben Judah and traditionally known by his Latinized name Avicebron, was an Andalusian Hebrew poet ...

Edward Kennedy

1905November 29, 1963

Dad, I'm in some trouble. There's been an accident and you're going to hear all sorts of things about me from now on. Terrible things.

Edward Kennedy was a journalist best known for being the first Allied newsman to report the German surrender at the end of World War II, ...

Black Kettle

1803November 27, 1868

Although the troops have struck us, we throw it all behind and are glad to meet you in peace and friendship.

Chief Black Kettle was a leader of the Southern Cheyenne after 1854, who led efforts to resist American settlement from Kansas and Colorado ...

Ethel Watts Mumford

18781940

God gave us our relatives thank God we can choose our friends.

Ethel Watts Mumford was an American author from New York. "Mumford" came from her first husband George D Mumford, a lawyer. After her ...

John Webster

15801634

Eagles commonly fly alone. They are crows, daws, and starlings that flock together.

John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often ...

William Wycherley

1640December 31, 1715

Wit is more necessary than beauty and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

William Wycherley was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for the plays The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer.

Robert Smithson

January 2, 1938July 20, 1973

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his use of photography in relation to sculpture and land art.

Michael Tippett

January 2, 1905January 8, 1998

Shakespeare fascinated me. He hardly ever left the country. His imagination was worldwide though reading.

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his ...

Sam Levenson

December 28, 1911August 27, 1980

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.

Sam Levenson was an American humorist, writer, teacher, television host, and journalist.

Pablo Casals

December 29, 1876October 22, 1973

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

Pau Casals i Defilló, known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally ...

William Ames

1576November 14, 1633

Faith is the virtue by which, clinging-to the faithfulness of God, we lean upon him, so that we may obtain what he gives to us.

William Ames was an English Protestant divine, philosopher, and controversialist. He spent much time in the Netherlands, and is noted for ...

Roger Bacon

12141294

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

Roger Bacon, OFM, was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical ...

Giordano Bruno

1548February 17, 1600

It may be you fear more to deliver judgment upon me than I fear judgment.

Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer. He is celebrated for ...

Sitting Bull

1831December 15, 1890

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.

Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota holy man who led his people as a tribal chief during years of resistance to United States government ...

Frank Crane

18611928

A good motto is: use friendliness but do not use your friends.

Frank Crane was Chairman of the Republican Party of South Dakota from 1900 to 1906. Previously, he had been Superintendent of Public ...

John Denham

1615March 19, 1669

Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.

Sir John Denham (1614 or 1615 - 19 March 1669) was an English poet and courtier. He served as Surveyor of the King's Works and is buried in ...

William Dunbar

14591520

A lawyer who does not know men is handicapped.

William Dunbar was a Scottish makar poet active in the late fifteenth century and the early sixteenth century. He was closely associated ...

Du Fu

712 CE770 CE

This cream will help one's nature strengthen and grow, The diet gives support in my decline.

Du Fu was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. Along with Li Bai, he is frequently called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His ...

William Halsey

1770August 16, 1843

There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.

William Halsey was the first mayor of Newark, New Jersey serving from 1836 to 1837. He was 66 years of age and an attorney when elected. ...

Thomas Harrison

1606October 13, 1660

A poem conveys not a message so much as the provenance of a message, an advent of sense.

Major-General Thomas Harrison sided with Parliament in the English Civil War. During the Interregnum he was a leader of the Fifth ...

Robert Heller

18261878

Fear is excitement without breath.

Robert Heller, also Joseph Heller, was an English magician, mentalist, and musician. The year of his birth is the subject of some ...

John Heywood

14971580

Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?

John Heywood was an English writer known for his plays, poems, and collection of proverbs. Although he is best known as a playwright, he ...

J. Edgar Hoover

1895May 2, 1972

No amount of law enforcement can solve a problem that goes back to the family.

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of ...

William Kent

1685April 12, 1748

All gardening is landscape painting.

William Kent was an eminent English architect, landscape architect and furniture designer of the early 18th century. Kent introduced the ...

Frank Knox

1874April 28, 1944

God did not intend the human family to be wafted to heaven on flowery beds of ease.

William Franklin "Frank" Knox was an American newspaper editor and publisher. He was also the Republican vice presidential candidate in ...

Lactantius

240 CE320 CE

The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false the second, to know that which is true.

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine ...

Lawrence G. Lovasik

19131986

Have you noticed in your past experience that your kind interpretations were almost always truer than you harsh one?

Rev. Lawrence Lovasik, SVD was born on June 22, 1913 in Tarentum, Pennsylvania. He attended primary school at Saint Clement School before ...

Christopher Love

1618August 22, 1651

Pray in your family daily, that yours may be in the number of the families who call upon God.

Christopher Love was a Welsh Protestant preacher and advocate of Presbyterianism at the time of the English Civil War. In 1651 he was ...

Harry Melling

1945May 29, 1999

I am auditioning again - getting back to theatre would be amazing.

Harry Melling (1945 - May 29, 1999) was the team owner of Melling Racing, which won the 1988 NASCAR championship with Bill Elliott. ...

Timothy Murphy

17511818

The current medical records system is this: Room after room after room in a hospital filled with paper files.

Timothy Murphy was a rifleman in the American Revolutionary War. At the Battle of Bemis Heights on October 7, 1777, Murphy is reputed to ...

Nagarjuna

150 CE250 CE

Although you may spend your life killing, You will not exhaust all your foes. But if you quell your own anger, your real enemy will be slain.

Nāgārjuna is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers after Gautama Buddha. Along with his disciple Āryadeva, ...

Ouida

1839January 25, 1908

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.

Ouida was the pseudonym of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé.

David Seabury

1885April 1960

Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others.

David Seabury was an American psychologist, author, and lecturer. While practicing as a consulting psychologist in New York City, he ...

Johannes Tauler

1300June 15, 1361

God in His wisdom has decided that He will reward no works but His own.

Johannes Tauler OP was a German mystic, a Catholic preacher and a theologian. A disciple of Meister Eckhart, he belonged to the Dominican ...

Benjamin Whichcote

16091683

Fear is the denomination of the Old Testament belief is the denomination of the New.

Benjamin Whichcote (1609 - 1683) was a British Establishment and Puritan divine, Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and leader of the ...

Victor Borge

January 3, 1909December 23, 2000

My father invented a cure for which there was no disease and unfortunately my mother caught it and died of it.

Victor Borge (b. January 3, 1909, Copenhagen, Denmark d. December 23, 2000, Greenwich, Connecticut) was a humorist, entertainer and ...

Andrew Johnson

December 29, 1808July 31, 1875

Honest conviction is my courage the Constitution is my guide.

Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson became president as he was Vice President at ...

Frederick Smith

December 30, 1805February 16, 1879

Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.

Frederick Smith was a British entomologist. Smith worked in the zoology department of the British Museum from 1849, specialising in the ...

Alex Ferguson

December 31, 1941November 23, 1974

If I have my health I can carry on. There will be a point when I do quit but I have absolutely no idea when that is.

Sir Alexander Chapman "Alex" Ferguson, CBE is a Scottish former football manager and player who managed Manchester United from 1986 to ...

David M. Shoup

December 30, 1904January 13, 1983

Remember, God provides the best camouflage several hours out of every 24.

David Monroe Shoup was a decorated general of the United States Marine Corps who was awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II, became the ...

Elizabeth Arden

December 31, 1884October 18, 1966

Hold fast to youth and beauty.

Florence Nightingale Graham, who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian American businesswoman who founded what is now ...