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Over the past few years I have tried to collect a number of quotations that help to inspire me, make me laugh, or just make me think.
The quotes below are random at best, but I've found them to be enormously helpful no matter what mood I am in.

He who doesn't take risks, doesn't drink champagne.
-Alexander Lebed

Reality is an illusion created by an alcoholic deficiency.
-Anonymous

Valentine: You get nothing if you give nothing.
Hannah: I ask nothing.

-Arcadia (A Play in Two Acts), Act II, Scene 7, by Tom Stoppard

Hannah: It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise, we're going out the way we came in.
-Arcadia (A Play in Two Acts), Act II, Scene 7, by Tom Stoppard

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.
-Aristotle

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.
-Ben Jonson

I think that Night-and this is an endearing quality-is not that savvy about how to promote himself. He definitely wears what he's thinking and feeling on his sleeve.
-Bruce Willis on M Night Shyamalan

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
-Chinese Proverb

A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child.
-Chinese Proverb

Democracy means government by discussion but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
-Clement Attlee

When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal.
When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self.

-Confucius

The most effective leader is the one who satisfies the psychological needs of his followers.
-David Ogilvy

It's one thing to speculate. But in here, speculation very quickly becomes assumption, and then assumption becomes fact, and reveals itself as disappointment when what everyone forgets began as speculation turns out to be false.
-Dehrian

Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.
-Edward Norton

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.
-Elbert Hubbard

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
-English Proverb

We're given a code to live our lives by: we don't always follow it but it's still there.
-Gary Oldman

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-George Santayana

I don't think I've mastered anything. I'm still wrestling with the same frustrations, the same issues, the same problems as I always did. That's what life is like.
-Harrison Ford

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.
-Hasidic Proverb

What makes equality such a difficult business is that we only want it with our superiors.
-Henry Becque

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.
-Henry Kissinger

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.
-Horace

Hope and imagination are the only consolations for the disappointments and sorrows of experience.
-Italo Calvino

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-James D. Nicoll

Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.
-Jane Austen

Loaf said that it felt like a saturday....he asked me what I was doing and I replied..."Working."
-Jason Baker

"My mom said God made some of us different, knowing that it'd be hard. But he picked the people who would be different really carefully." Then the sensitive kid leans forward to the chubby kid: "God thinks we're strong."
-Jeff Giles on The Sixth Sense

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
-Joseph Conrad

He who is eternally without desire Perceives the spiritual side of it; He who is permanently with desire Perceives the limit of it.
-Laozi

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
-Lauren Bacall

My life consists in my being content to accept many things.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in mind.
-Marcel Proust

If you think you have someone eating out of your hand, it's a good idea to count your fingers.
-Martin Buxbaume

If a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

One on one fights are for kids that have no friends.
-Michael DiScipio

Men of power have not time to read; yet men who do not read are unfit for power.
-Michael Foot

A closed mouth catches no flies.
-Miguel de Cervantes

It is no simple matter to pause in the midst of one's maturity, when life is full of function, to examine what are the principles which control that functioning.
-Pearl S. Buck

Truth comes out in wine.
-Pliny the Elder

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.
-President Ronald W. Reagan

A liar should have a good memory.
-Quintilian

The man who says what he thinks is finished, and the man who thinks what he says is an idiot.
-Rolf Hochhuth

Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.
-Ronald Reagan

Fortune favours the brave.
-Terence

I'm Like A Chocoholic, But For Booze
-The Onion

Most success comes from ignoring the obvious.
-Trevor Holdsworth

You never look good when you're thinking aloud.
You never look good.

-Vijay Manwani

If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused.
-Walter Mondale

Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.
-William Pitt the Elder