Last Word

Friday, February 8, 2008

Compiled by Katherine J. Murray

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
—Igor Stravinsky

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.
—Allan Bloom

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
—Lord Chesterfield

Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.
—Otto von Bismarck

I think I don’t regret a single ‘excess’ of my responsive youth–I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.
—Henry James

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.
—Patrick Henry

Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still.
—Calvin Coolidge

If man does find the solution for world peace, it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.
—George C. Marshall

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.
—Marcel Proust

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.
—Theodore Roosevelt

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
—James Madison

It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.
—Herodotus

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
—Winston Churchill

Before you can win a game, you have to not lose it.
—Chuck Noll

Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.
—Confucius

Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good.
—Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand

There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.
—Daniel Webster
Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.
—Ludwig van Beethoven

The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.
—Clarence Thomas

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
—G. K. Chesterton

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.
—Duke Ellington

Truth is a great flirt.
—Franz Liszt

Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
—Victor Hugo

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.
—Douglas MacArthur

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
—Marcus Aurelius

If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.
—George Bernard Shaw

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