“S” Quotations

(see also [Ten] COMMANDMENTS and RELIGION and SUNDAY and WORSHIP)

• The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. The Bible—Mark:2–27

QUOTE NOTE: Chiasmus was a characteristic of early Hebrew poetry, and here Jesus offers a legendary example of the device.

• Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week. Alice Walker, “To the Editors of Ms. Magazine,” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983)

(see also GRACE and RELIGION and RITUAL and SACRED and SYMBOLS & SYMBOLISM)

• I mean by this word Sacrament and outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The Book of Common Prayer (1662)

• Voting is a civic sacrament. Theodore Hesburgh, quoted in Reader’s Digest (Oct., 1984)

(see also CHERISHED and DIVINE and GODLY and HALLOWED and PURE and REVERED and SAINTLY and VENERABLE)

• Human beings tend to regard the conventions of their own societies as natural, often as sacred. Mary Catherine Bateson, in Composing a Life (1989)

• Awareness of the sacred in life is what holds our world together, and the lack of awareness of the sacred is what is tearing it apart. Joan Chittister, in In a High Spiritual Season (1995)

• Nothing is sacred anymore, even the sacred. Maureen Dowd, “Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Linked,” The New York Times (Feb. 8, 2011)

Dowd continued: “And even that most secret ritual of the Roman Catholic faith, the veiled black confessional box. Once funeral homes began live-streaming funerals, it was probably inevitable. But now confessions are not only about touching the soul, but touching the screen.”

• The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and your last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor, and with joy and with fear as well. But always, though, with blessing. Martha Graham, in Blood Memory: An Autobiography (1991)

• The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO. Ayn Rand, in Anthem (1946)

• The words secret and sacred are siblings. Mary Ruefle, in Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012)

• The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas—uncertainty, progress, change—into crimes. Salman Rusdie, in a speech (Feb. 6, 1990)

• It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble, but we do know it is our sacred duty. Florida Scott-Maxwell, in The Measure of My Days (1968)

• The sacred is not in heaven or far away. It is all around us, and small human rituals can connect us to its presence. And of course the greatest challenge (and gift) is to see the sacred in each other. Alma Luz Villanueva, quoted in a 1999 issue of Ms. magazine (specific issue undetermined)

• People thinking for themselves have more energy in their voice, than any government, which it is possible for human wisdom to invent; and every government not aware of this sacred truth will, at some period, be suddenly overturned. Mary Wollstonecraft, in An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution and the Effect It Has Produced in Europe (1794)

(see also CRITICISM and DOGMA and QUESTIONING and SACRED and SCRUTINY and SKEPTICISM & SKEPTICS)

• Sacred cows make the best hamburger. Author Unknown

QUOTE NOTE: A sacred cow is something (or someone) so revered that it is considered immune from criticism. The term derives from the Hindu practice of venerating cows, who are regarded as reincarnated human beings. The expression is American in origin and was well understood by the end of the nineteenth century. For example, an 1890 New York Herald editorial on a public construction project wrote: “While the great ditch may be regarded as one of the commercial diversities of the commonwealth, to worship it as a sort of sacred cow is not necessarily a work of true statesmanship.” The concept of “butchering sacred cows” emerged early in the twentieth century, but the make the best hamburger saying did not emerge until the 1960s. The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (2012) marks its first appearance in an Oct. 19, 1965 column in The Daily Collegian, Pennsylvania State University’s student-run newspaper.

ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites mistakenly attribute the observation to Mark Twain.

• Sacred cows make very poor gladiators. Nikki Giovanni, the title essay, in Sacred Cows…And Other Edibles (1988)

• Every sacred cow in the business has to do with economics. Gena Rowlands, quoted in Judith Crist, Take 22 (1984)

(see also ABSTINENCE and MARTYRS & MARTYRDOM and RENUNCIATION and SELF-DENIAL)

• Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it. George Santayana, in The Sense of Beauty (1896)

• Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of the heart. William Butler Yeats, in “Easter 1916” (1916)

(see also ANGUISH and [The] BLUES and DEPRESSION and DESPAIR and GRIEF and MELANCHOLY and MISERY and SORROW and UNHAPPINESS)

• Venice, California, in the old days had much to recommend it to people who liked to be sad. Ray Bradbury, the opening line of Death is a Lonely Business (1985)

• The saddest thing under the sky is a soul incapable of sadness. Catherine de Gasparin, in Human Sadness (1863)

• Being in the depths of sadness is just as important an experience as being exuberantly happy. Marlene Dietrich, “How to Be Loved,” in a 1954 edition of Ladies’ Home Journal (specific issue undetermined)

• Sadness does not inhere in things; it does not reach us from the world and through mere contemplation of the world. It is a product of our own thought. Émile Durkheim, in Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897)

• If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Miles Franklin, a reflection of protagonist Sybylla Melvyn, in My Brilliant Career (1901)

Melvyn continued: “Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot.”

• One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often. Erich Fromm, in an interview on ABC-TV (May 25, 1958)

• Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue. André Gide, journal entry (March, 1922), in The Journals of André Gide, 1889–1949, Vol. 1 (1956)

• And finally: ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to cosmic sadness? Etty Hillesum, a March 1942 diary entry, in An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-43 (1983)

A moment later, Hillesum added: “Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge—from which new sorrows will be born for others—then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.”

• In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly. William James, “Is Life Worth Living?” in The Will to Believe (1897)

• Be happy, talk happiness. Happiness calls out responsive gladness in others. There is enough sadness in the world without yours. Helen Keller, in Out of the Dark (1914)

• In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. Abraham Lincoln, in letter to Fanny McCullough (Dec. 23, 1862)

• Believe me, every heart has his secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the protagonist Paul Flemming speaking, in Hyperion (1839)

ERROR ALERT: Countless books and internet sites mistakenly present this quotation with every man rather than every heart. The problem originated in The Longfellow Birthday Book, a commemorative quotation anthology published in England shortly after Longfellow’s death in 1882. The mistake stubbornly continues to be made, showing up on numerous internet sites and even in such respected quotation anthologies as H. L. Mencken’s A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942) and, more recently, in Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner’s The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (2008).

• A feeling of sadness comes o’er me/That my soul cannot resist;/A feeling of sadness and longing,/That is not akin to pain/,And resembles sorrow only/As the mist resembles the rain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Day is Done,” in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems (1846)

• There does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don’t mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one’s breathing. Katherine Mansfield, “The Canary,” in The Doves’ Nest (1923)

• Even though sometimes you can control your anger, you can’t control your sadness. Barbara Park, a reflection of the protagonist, ten-year-old Howard Jeeter, in The Kid in the Red Jacket (1987)

A moment later, Howard continued with this “out of the mouths of babes” thought: “If you’ve ever been sad, really sad, you know what I’m talking about. Sadness is with you all the time. Even when your friends are trying to make you laugh, sadness seems to be waiting right behind your smile.”

• Better by far you should forget and smile/Than that you should remember and be sad. Christina Rossetti, in the poem “Remember” (1862)

• For of all sad words of tongue or pen./The saddest are these: “It might have been!” John Greenleaf Whittier, in “Maud Muller” (1854)

• To make art is to realize another’s sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people’s lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger. Marianne Wiggins, the voice of the narrator, in The Shadow Catcher (2007)

QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the quotation is typically presented on internet quotation sites, but it was originally part of a larger passage in which the character Clara was reflecting on her father often saying that art was the ability to recognize sadness in others, and often to “imagine sadness greater than his own.” Here’s the fuller passage:

“Art, their father had frequently told them, was exactly that: to make art is the realize another’s sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people’s lives, to feel with and for a stranger.”

(see also FRIENDS & FRIENDSHIP and RELATIONSHIPS and TRUST)

• Oh, the comfort—the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, a reflection of protagonist and narrator Dora Johnston, in A Life For a Life (1859)

She preceded the thought by saying: “But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely.”

(see also CAUTION and DANGER and OBSTACLES and PROBLEMS and TROUBLE and STUMBLES & STUMBLING and TEST and TROUBLE)

• Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety. Aesop, “The Great and the Little Fishes,” in Fables (6th c. B.C.)

• Our sense of safety depends on predictability, so anything living outside the usual rules we suspect to be an outlaw, a ghoul. Diane Ackerman, in The Moon by Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales (1991)

• Early and provident fear is the mother of safety. Edmund Burke, in a House of Commons speech (May 11, 1792)

• Everyone, my friend, demands a spice of danger in their lives. Some get it vicariously—as in bullfights. Some read about it. Some find it at the cinema. But I am sure of this—too much safety is abhorrent to the nature of a human being. Agatha Christie, the character Hercule Poirot speaking, in Curtain (1975)

Poirot continued: “Men find danger in many ways— women are reduced to finding their danger mostly in affairs of sex. That is why, perhaps, they welcome the hint of the tiger—the sheathed claws, the treacherous spring. The excellent fellow who will make a good and kind husband—they pass him by.”

• You cannot play for safety and make art. You have to get past your own fear Lucille Clifton, in interview with Bill Moyers, in The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets (1996)

Clifton continued: “It’s all right to be afraid, but if you draw back from what frightens you, then you may as well stop writing because, in a way, everything is frightening. Every morning you wake up to the unexpected, to what might kill you, but you have to do it anyway. Once you decide, ‘I will see clearly, I will speak clearly, I will say what I see, then you have to do it all.’”

• Safety that depends on an apron-string is very unsafe! Margaret Deland, the character Dr. Lavendar speaking, in The Awakening of Helena Richie (1906)

• Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin, “Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor” (Nov. 11 1755); reprinted in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 6, 1755-1756 (1963, Leonard W. Labaree, ed.)

QUOTE NOTE: A slightly altered form of this observation is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

• When we deliberately leave the safety of the shore of our lives, we surrender to a mystery beyond our intent. Ann Linnea, in Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife (1995)

• Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. William Shakespeare, the character Hotspur speaking, in King Henry IV, Part I (1596–97)

• Don’t play for safety./It’s the most dangerous thing in the world. Hugh Walpole, in the poem Fortitude (1913)

(see NAUTICAL METAPHORS)

(see also ATHLETES & ATHLETICISM and BASEBALL and BASKETBALL and BOXING and FISHING and FOOTBALL and GOLF and HOCKEY and HUNTING and MOUNTAINEERING & ROCK-CLIMBING and POOL & BILLIARDS and RUNNING & JOGGING and SHIPS & BOATS and SOCCER and SPORT and SWIMMING and TENNIS and TRACK & FIELD and WALKING and WRESTLING)

• Nothing comes from a life of ease./The good sailor hails from the stormy seas. Author Unknown

• It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage. George William Curtis, “The Public Duty of Educated Men,” Commencement address at Union College (Schenectady, NY; June 27, 1877); reprinted in Opinions and Addresses of George William Curtis (1894)

• The effect of sailing is produced by a judicious arrangement of the sails to the direction of the wind. William Falconer, in An Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1769)

• There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet—except in dreams. Jerome K. Jerome, in Three Men In a Boat (1889)

Jerome continued: “The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature!

• Ocean racing is like standing under a cold shower and tearing up five-pound notes. Edward Heath, former British prime minister, quoted in Randy Steele, “Talking Points,” Boating magazine (July, 2001)

(see also MARTYRS & MARTYRDOM and RELIGION and SAINTS & SINNERS and SIN)

• Can one be a saint if God does not exist? Albert Camus, the character Tarrou speaking, in The Plague (1947)

Tarrou continued: “That is the only concrete problem I know of today.”

• Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb. T. S. Eliot, in Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

• Mistaken saints, who thought to save/Their souls, by making life a grave. Helen Hunt Jackson, “The Gift of Grapes,” in Poems (1893)

• For the wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or testy or impatient in their turns, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven. Phyllis McGinley, “Running to Paradise,” in Saint-Watching (1969)

• The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1962) [italics in original]

• Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent. George Orwell, “”Reflections on Gandhi,” in Shooting the Elephant (1950)

• And thus I clothe my naked villainy/With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,/And seem a saint when most I play the devil. William Shakespeare, the character Gloucester speaking, in Richard III (1591)

• They saint you for the miracles, not the sermons. Ron Simoncini, in a personal communication to the compiler (Jan. 8, 2017)

(see also SAINTS & SAINTHOOD and SIN)

• As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints. Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820)

• Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner. Eric Hoffer, in The Passionate State of Mind (1955)

(see also APPETITE and BREAD and CHEESE and CONDIMENTS and COFFEE and COOKS & COOKING and DESCRIPTIONS—OF FOODS & PREPARED DISHES and DESSERT and DIETS & DIETING and DINNERS & DINING and EATING and EGGS & OMELETTES and ENTERTAINING and FOOD and FRUITS and GARDENS & GARDENING and GARLIC and GOURMETS & GOURMANDS and HUNGER and MEALS and NUTRITION and RECIPES & COOKBOOKS and RESTAURANTS and SPICES & SEASONING and SOUP and SUPPER and VEGETABLES and VEGETARIANISM & VEGANISM)

• Molded salads are best served in situations where they have little or no competition Peg Bracken, in Appendix to I Hate to Cook Book (1966)

Bracken went on to add: “Like television, gelatin is too often a vehicle for limp leftovers that couldn’t make it anywhere else.”

• It is always wise to make too much potato salad. Even if you are cooking for two, make enough for five. Potato salad improves with age— that is, if you are lucky enough to have any left over. Laurie Colwin, in Home Cooking (1988)

• One uncongenial guest can ruin a dinner more easily than a poor salad, and that is saying a great deal. Myrtle Reed, in Old Rose and Silver (1909)

• If a man prepares dinner for you and the salad contains three or more types of lettuce, he is serious. Rita Rudner, from her stand-up routine

• If food were poetry, subs would be limericks, sushi a haiku and salad a sonnet—14 lines of freshness and exquisite flavor. An antidote to winter sludge. A rainbow of colors and often a surprise. Deborah Salomon, “A Sonnet to Salad,” The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC; April 16, 2012)

This is the opening paragraph of the article. Regarding the surprises often involved in a salad, Salomon continued in the second paragraph: “Where else do sweet onions and strawberries, avocados and oranges so happily marry?” She also ended her article on a memorable note: “If dance is poetry in motion, salad is a sonnet on a plate.”

• A husband, Monsieur Marsac, is like a lobster salad. When it is good, it is very good, and when it is bad it is intolerable. Molly Elliott Seawell, the character Madame Fleury speaking, in The Sprightly Romance of Marsac (1899)

QUOTE NOTE: Seawell is not well remembered today, but she was quite popular in her era. She burst on the scene with The Sprightly Romance of Marsac, which was awarded the first prize of $3,000 as the “best novelette” in a New York Herald competition.

• Let first the onion flourish there,/Rose among roots, the maiden-fair,/Wine-scented and poetic soul/If the capacious salad bowl. Robert Louis Stevenson, “To a Gardener,” in Underwoods (1887)

• It’s certain that fine women/A crazy salad with their meat. William Butler Yeats, “A Prayer for My Daughter,” in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)

(see also ADVERTISING and BUSINESS & BUSINESS PEOPLE and CAPITALISM and COMMERCE and CORPORATE CULTURE and CORPORATION and CUSTOMERS and ECONOMICS and ENTREPRENEURS and EXECUTIVES and GREED and LABOR and MANAGEMENT and MARKETING and MERCHANTS and MONEY and ORGANIZATIONS and PRODUCTION & PRODUCTIVITY and PROFIT & LOSS and STOCK MARKET and WEALTH and WORK)

• For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. Arthur Miller, the character Charley speaking, in Death of a Salesman (1949).

QUOTE NOTE: Charley is speaking to Biff about Willy Loman, who has committed suicide after losing his job and his hope. He continues: “And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.”

• When one has the right swing and enthusiasm, selling is not unlike hunting, a veritable sport. Carl Sandburg, quoted in North Callahan, Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works (1987)

QUOTE NOTE: In 1902, the twenty-year-old Sandburg said goodbye to Phillip Greene Wright, his poetry professor at Lombard College (Galesburg, Illinois) and made his way east. The two men corresponded as Sandburg hitched rides on rail cars and supported himself in part by door-to door selling of stereopticon photographs. This hunting metaphor came after professor Wright had asked his former student if he’d found the experience of sales discouraging. Sandburg continued:

To scare up the game by preliminary talk and to know how long to follow it, to lose your gain through poorly directed argument, to hang on to game that finally eludes, to boldly confront, to quickly circle around, to keep on the trail, tireless and keen, till you have bagged some orders, there is some satisfaction in returning at night, tired of the trail, but proud of the days work done.

(see also BENEVOLENCE and CARE & CARING and CAREGIVERS & CAREGIVING and CHARITY and [Good] DEEDS and GENEROSITY and GIFTS & GIVING and GOODNESS and HELPING and HUMANITARIANS & HUMANITARIANISM and KINDNESS & UNKINDNESS and PHILANTHROPY and [Good] SAMARITAN and SERVICE)

• No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well. Margaret Thatcher, in interview on London Weekend Television’s Weekend World (Jan. 6, 1980)

(see also DUPLICITY and HYPOCRISY and [Righteous] INDIGNATION and PIETY)

• Sanctimony probably engenders at least as much lying as cynicism. Wendy Kaminer, “Lies and Consequences,” in The American Prospect (May 19, 2002)

Kaminer preceded the thought by writing: “Liars—especially liars in power—often conflate their interest with the public interest. (What’s good for General Motors is good for the United States.) Or they consider their lies sanctified by the essential goodness they presume to embody, like terrorists who believe that murder is sanctified by the godliness of their aspirations.”

• America's oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony. Philip Roth, a reflection of narrator Nathan Zuckerman, in The Human Stain (2000)

(see also BOSTON and CHICAGO and DESCRIPTIONS—OF PLACES and HOLLYWOOD and LAS VEGAS and LONDON and LOS ANGELES and NEW ORLEANS and NEW YORK CITY and PARIS)

(see also AMERICAN CITIES)

• San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities. Cecil Beaton, in It Gives Me Great Pleasure (1955)

• New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.) Nora Ephron, in Scribble Scribble (1978)

• Every man should be allowed to love two cities, his own and San Francisco. Gene Fowler, quoted in John Bernard McGloin, San Francisco: The Story of a City (1978)

• San Francisco is a mad city—inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty. Rudyard Kipling, in American Notes (1891)

In his book, Kipling also wrote about the city: “San Francisco has only one drawback. 'Tis hard to leave.”

• That was old San Francisco, the gay, young, wind-swept, fog- shrouded city scattered about on seven times seven sand hills; a city ringed with dunes and with steep cobbled streets going down to wooden piers, and masts and hulls, and the blue waters of the bay. Kathleen Thompson Norris, in My San Francisco (1932)

In her loving tribute to the city Norris also wrote: “San Francisco…manages, mysteriously, through all the years, to preserve the romantic, the dramatic attitude of her younger days. She is still as surprising, as fascinating, as original as ever she was in the first days of all, when a hundred ships, deserted by gold-mad sailors, rotted in her harbor, and bells rang in the old Mission of Our Lady of Sorrows out on Dolores Street.”

(see also CRAZY and INSANITY and (Mental) ILLNESS and MADNESS)

• The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re OK, then it’s you. Rita Mae Brown, quoted in Susan Musgrave, Musgrave Landing: Musing on the Writing Life (1994)

• It’s better to be crazy on one point and happy, than sane on all points and unhappy. Margaret Deland, “The Third Volume,” in Around Old Chester (1915)

• Sanity, in my opinion, is an achievement. I have seen very few well-balanced people in my life who were not dunces. Corra Harris, in As A Woman Thinks (1925)

• It’s possible to fight intolerance, stupidity, and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it’s probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity. P. D. James, the protagonist Adam Dalgliesh speaking, in Devices and Desires (1989)

• What is sanity, after all, except the control of madness? Josephine Johnson, in Now in November (1934)

• What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

• It isn’t for the moment you are struck that you need courage but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1973)

• Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it’s a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform.

Margaret Millar, in A Stranger in My Grave (1960)

Millar continued: “A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.”

• There are certain eras which are too complex, too deafened by contradictory historical and intellectual experiences, to hear the voice of sanity. Sanity becomes compromise, evasion, a lie. Susan Sontag, in Against Interpretation (1966)

• Sanity is a cozy lie. Susan Sontag, quoted in Charles Ruas, Conversations with American Writers (1985)

• The most delusional fantasies can be made to masquerade as sanity if you’ve got the political power to reinforce them. Penny Skillman, “It’s a Mad, Mad World,” in San Francisco Chronicle Review (1988)

• One of the definitions of sanity, itself, is the ability to tell real from unreal. Shall we need a new definition? Alvin Toffler, in Future Shock (1970)

• When all the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity, since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree. George Bernard Shaw, referring to WWI, in letter to Maxim Gorky (Dec. 28, 1915)

(includes SAINT NICK; see also CHRISTMAS)

• Bernard Shaw (I strongly suspect) began to disbelieve in Santa Claus at a discreditably early age. G. K. Chesterton, in George Bernard Shaw (1909)

• Santa Claus is anyone who loves another and seeks to make them happy; who gives himself by thought or word or deed in every gift that he bestows; who shares his joys with those who are sad; whose hand is never closed against the needy; whose arm is ever outstretched to aid the week; whose sympathy is quick and genuine in time of trouble; who recognizes a comrade and brother in every man he meets upon life’s common road; who lives his life throughout the entire year in the Christmas spirit. Edwin Osgood Grover, a 1912 statement, quoted in Vicky Howard, The Book of Santa Claus (2005)

• We all ought to understand we’re on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn’t do kids any harm for a few years but it isn’t smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins. Andy Rooney, in Sincerely, Andy Rooney (1999)

(see also CRITICISM and IRONY and PARODY & PARODISTS and RIDICULE and SATIRE & SATIRISTS and WIT)

• If you can't detect the sarcasm, you’ve misunderstood. Lily Allen, lyrics from the song “Hard Out Here,” on the album Sheezus (2014)

• Sarcasm masquerades as the Preppy’s sense of humor. Lisa Birnbach, in The Official Preppy Handbook (1980)

• At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862)

• Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it. Thomas Carlyle, in Sartor Resartus (1833)

• Her sarcasm was so quick, so fine at the point—it was like being touched by a metal so cold that one doesn’t know whether one is burned or chilled. Willa Cather, the narrator, fifteen-year-old Nellie Birdseye, describing Myra Henshawe, in My Mortal Enemy (1926)

• The best philosophy to employ toward the world is to alloy the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt. Nicolas Chamfort, quoted in A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1886)

• Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument. Rufus Choate, quoted in David George Plotkin, Dictionary of American Maxims (1955)

• The sarcasm made a slight whistling noise as it flew over Loafers’ head. Eoin Colfer, in Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code (2001)

• Inevitably, anytime we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds. So we resort to sarcasm, cutting humor, criticism—anything that will keep from exposing the tenderness within. Stephen Covey, in The Divine Center (1982)

Covey continued: “Each partner tends to wait on the initiative of the other for love, only to be disappointed but also confirmed as to the rightness of the accusations made.”

• Petulance is not sarcasm. Benjamin Disraeli, in a speech in Parliament (December 16, 1852)

QUOTE NOTE: The phrase above came in a fuller set of remarks Disraeli made about fellow MP Sir Charles Wood: “He has to learn that petulance is not sarcasm and that insolence is not invective.”

• It is smart to think of some sarcastic thing to say; but it is smarter still to think of it and not say it. Lillian Eichler, in The Book of Conversation, Vol. 1 (1927)

• Blows are sarcasms turned stupid. George Eliot, in Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

QUOTE NOTE: In an editor's note in his Dictionary of Quotations (1968), Bergen Evans wrote that sarcastic remarks “were sometimes called dry blows.”

• It is better to sacrifice one's love of sarcasm than to indulge it at the expense of a friend. Théophile Gautier, quoted in A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1886)

• Sarcastic language refers to irony that is especially bitter and caustic. Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. in The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding (1994)

• Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on Earth tolerable. Nick Hornby, “Needle in a Haystack”, in Songbook (2003)

• As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak. John Knowles, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Gene Forrester, in A Separate Peace (1959)

In many quotation anthologies, the observation is often presented this way: “Sarcasm is the protest of the weak.”

• Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose. Chuck Klosterman, the character John Laidlaw speaking, in Downtown Owl: A Novel (2008)

• Sarcasm…is antithetical to the concept of intimacy. Roger Kreuz, in Irony and Sarcasm (2020)

• Irony isn’t a loner; it spends a lot of time in the company of a shady relative with a checkered reputation. The nature of their relationship, however, is obscure. Sarcasm could be thought of an irony’s evil twin. Roger Kreuz, in Irony and Sarcasm (2020)

Kreuz continued: “Or perhaps they are described as siblings, or simply as cousins. Sarcasm is also a bit two-faced, with a penchant for hostility as well as humor.”

• Sarcasm is a subtle form of bullying and most bullies are angry, insecure, cowards. Clifford N. Lazarus, “Think Sarcasm is Funny? Think Again,” in Psychology Today (June 26, 2012)

• A sarcastic person has a superiority complex that can be cured only by the honesty of humility. Lawrence G. Lovasik, in The Hidden Power of Kindness (1999)

• He knew that women appreciated neither irony nor sarcasm, but simple jokes and funny stories. He was amply provided with both. W. Somerset Maugham, a reflection of protagonist Niccolò Machiavelli, in Then and Now (1946)

• Sarcasm…raised blisters on her soul that smarted for months. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the narrator describing the character Katherine Brooke, in Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)

• It’s wildly irritating to have invented something as revolutionary as sarcasm, only to have it abused by amateurs. Christopher Moore, the character Joshua [Jesus] speaking, in Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (2002)

QUOTE NOTE: Lamb is Moore’s satirical attempt to fill in the childhood years of Jesus through the eyes of his childhood pal Levi bar Alphaeus, also known as Biff. Jesus’s childhood years are often referred to as the “lost” years because his life before age twelve is not described in the New Testament.

• We are suffering from too much sarcasm. Marianne Moore, in The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore (1986; Patricia C. Willis, ed.)

• Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life. Agnes Repplier, “Wit and Humor,” in Essays in Idleness (1893)

• Essentially, sarcasm is often hostility disguised as humor. Synonyms include derision, mockery, and ridicule, all less-than-humorous things to be receiving. Anthony D. Smith, “Behind the Scenes of Sarcasm,” in Psychology Today (December 14, 2020)

Smith’s article alsocontained this other memorable observation: “Sarcasm, a sort of cloak-and-dagger approach to communication”

• Many men have withstood an argument who fell before a sarcasm. Elizabeth Elton Smith, in The Three Eras of Woman’s Life (1836)

• A true sarcasm is like a sword-stick; it appears from under the cloak, and is pretty sure to have a thrust at something or other. Sydney Smith, “The Moral Education of the People,” in The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (1855)

• Nothing sharpens the arrow of sarcasm so keenly as the courtesy that polishes it; no reproach is like that we clothe with a smile and present with a bow. Philip Dormer Stanhope (Lord Chesterfield), quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, Edge-Tools of Speech (1886)

• The talent for being sarcastic is a most dangerous one. No one ever knew a sarcastic woman who could keep friends. Helen Ekin Starrett, in The Charm of Fine Manners, Being a Series of Letters, to a Daughter (1907)

• Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces. Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe), quoted in Roger Kreuz, Irony and Sarcasm (2020)

QUOTATION CAUTION: So far, I’ve been unable to confirm the authenticity of this quotation.

• Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit. James Thurber, quoted in Horn Book Magazine (April, 1962)

• Sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent screams for someone to care and help them. David Foster Wallace, in Infinite Jest (2011)

• Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence. Oscar Wilde, widely quoted, not authenticated

(see also BURLESQUE and CRITICISM and HUMOR and IRONY and JOKES and LAMPOON and LAUGHTER and PARODY & PARODISTS and RIDICULE and SARCASM and WIT & WITTICISMS)

• Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule. Saul D. Alinsky, in Rules for Radicals (1971)

Alinsky continued: “A sense of humor enables him to maintain his perspective and see himself for what he really is: a bit of dust that burns for a fleeting second. A sense of humor is incompatible with the complete acceptance of any dogma, any religious, political, or economic prescription for salvation. It synthesizes with curiosity, irreverence, and imagination. The organizer has a personal identity of his own that cannot be lost by absorption or acceptance of any kind of group discipline or organization.”

• Satire is dependent on strong beliefs, and on strong beliefs wounded. Anita Brookner, quoted in The Spectator (London; March 23, 1989)

• Satire is tragedy plus time. Lenny Bruce, “Performing and the Art of Comedy,” in The Essential Lenny Bruce (1967; John Cohen, ed.)

Bruce continued: “You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.”

• Prepare for rhyme—I’ll publish right or wrong:/Fools are my theme, let Satire be my song. George Gordon (Lord Byron), in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: A Satire” (1809)

• A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true. G. K. Chesterton, “Pope and the Art of Satire,” in Twelve Types (1903)

• Satire well applied, is the medicine of the mind. James Cobb, in The Haunted Tower (1789)

• What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not, unless the man is a prig, the fact the people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly. It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very sagacious, honest and well-intentioned. Claud Cockburn, “The Worst Possible Taste,” in Cockburn Sums Up (1981)

• By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection. Frank Moore Colby, “Simple Simon,” in The Colby Essays (1926)

• The difference between satire and humor is that the satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive—often to release him again for another chance. Peter De Vries, quoted in Harold Bloom, Twentieth-Century American Literature (1986)

• Satire’s nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth. E. L. Doctorow, “Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith,” in Creationists: Selected Essays, 1993–2006 (2006)

• A satirist is a man whose flesh creeps so at the ugly and the savage and the incongruous aspects of society that he has to express them as brutally and nakedly as possible to get relief. John Dos Passos, “Grosz Comes to America,” in Esquire magazine (Sep., 1936); reprinted as “Satire as a Way of Seeing,” in Occasions and Protests (1964)

Dos Passos continued: “He seeks to put his grisly obsession into expressive form the way a bacteriologist seeks to isolate a virus.”

• How important are free speech and satire? Important enough that people will murder others to silence the kind of speech they don’t like. Neil Gaiman, in a Tweet (Jan 7, 2014)

QUOTE NOTE: Gaiman was referring to the mass murder of staffers at Charlie Hebdo magazine by Islamic militants.

• Satire, like conscience, reminds us of what we often wish to forget. Marguerite Gardiner (Lady Blessington), in Desultory Thoughts and Reflections (1839)

• A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit’s conjecture is to endanger the species. Penelope Gilliatt, in To Wit (1990)

• Smart writers never understand why their satires on our town [Hollywood] are never successful. What they refuse to accept is that you can’t satirize a satire. Hedda Hopper, in From Under My Hat (1952)

• Reality has an odd habit of catching up with satire. Walter Isaacson, in Steve Jobs (2011)

• Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel—it’s vulgar. Molly Ivins, quoted in “The Mouth of Texas,” People magazine (Dec. 9, 1991)

QUOTE NOTE: Ivins was contrasting satire with humor. She introduced the observation by saying: “There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity—like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule—that’s what I do.” Ivins reprised the thought in a 1995 Mother Jones piece about Rush Limbaugh (“Lyin’ Bully,” May/June, 1995), writing: “Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel. It has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful. When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.”

ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites mistakenly present an abridged version of the Ivins quotation: “Satire is the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.”

• Satire is by its nature offensive. So is much art and political discourse. The value of these expressions far outweighs their risk. Erica Jong, “Deliberate Lewdness and the Creative Imagination: Should We Censor Pornography?” in What Do Women Want (1998)

Jong preceded the observation with this observation: “If we ban whatever offends any group in our diverse society, we will soon have no art, no culture, no humor, no satire.”

• It is hard not to write satire. Juvenal, in Satires (c. 100 A.D)

• Satire is what closes on Saturday night. George S. Kaufman, quoted in Howard Teichmann, George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait (1972)

QUOTATION CAUTION: In George S. Kaufman and His Friends (1974), Scott Meredith presented a version of the observation with one less word: “Satire is what closes Saturday night.” The meaning of both is the same—that while Broadway audiences love wit and humor, they respond far less favorably to satire.

• Satire may be of a dozen kinds and used for a dozen purposes. It may be personal, malicious, diabolical, and colorless, just a stick to beat a dog. But humor is the very life of it. Stephen Leacock, in Hellements of Hickonomics in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Our Social Planning Mill (1936)

• Satirists are born when there is nothing to laugh at. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, in More Unkempt Thoughts (1964)

• Satire died the day they gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize. There were no jokes after that, Tom Lehrer, quoted in London's Daily Telegraph (April 28, 1998)

• Only a mind steeped in true love can write irony. The others write satire. James A. Michener, in Hawaii (1959)

• Satire should, like a polish’d razor keen,/Wound with a touch, that’s scarcely felt or seen. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “Verses Address’d to the Imitator of Horace” (1733), in The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, vol. 5 (1803)

QUOTE NOTE: In The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), Steven Pinker wrote about Lady Mary’s observation: “But satire is seldom polished that keenly, and the butts of a joke may be all too aware of the subversive power of humor. They may react with a rage that is stoked by the intentional insult to a sacred value, the deflation of their dignity, and a realization that laughter indicates common knowledge of both. The lethal riots in 2005 provoked by the editorial cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (for example, one showing Muhammad in heaven greeting newly arrived suicide bombers with ‘Stop, we have run out of virgins!’) show that when it comes to the deliberate undermining of a sacred relational model, humor is no laughing matter.”

• Satire is a lesson, parody is a game. Vladimir Nabokov, in Strong Opinions (1990)

• There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off. P. J. O’Rourke, in Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (1995)

• Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet/To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet. Alexander Pope, in The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (1733)

• The most annoying of all public performers is the personal satirist. Though he may be considered by some few, as a useful member of society; yet he is only ranked with the hangman, whom we tolerate because he executes the judgment we abhor to do ourselves; and avoid, with a natural detestation of his office: The pen of the one and the cord of the other are inseparable in our minds. Jane Porter, in Philip Sidney and Jane Porter, Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney, With Remarks by Miss Porter (1807)

• A fondness for satire indicates a mind pleased with irritating others; for myself, I never could find amusement in killing flies. Marie-Jeanne Roland, a 1776 remark, quoted in Lydia Maria Child, Memoirs of Madame de Staël and of Madame Roland (1847)

• Satire is focused bitterness. Leo Rosten, in The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N (1959)

QUOTE NOTE: Rosten’s fuller observation went this way: “Humor is the affectionate communication of insight (Satire is focused bitterness, and burlesque the skewing of proportions).”

• Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art. Philip Roth, “On Our Gang” (1971), in Reading Myself and Others (1975)

• The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. Salman Rushdie, “Defend the Right to Be Offended,” in Open Democracy (Feb. 7, 2005)

• The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. Salman Rushdie, “Do We Have to Fight the Battle for the Enlightenment All Over Again?” in The Independent (Jan. 22, 2005)

• Religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. Salman Rushdie, “I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, as We All Must,” in The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 7, 2015)

QUOTE NOTE: Rushdie was writing in response to news of an attack by two masked gunman who on January 7, 2015 stormed the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and massacred a dozen staffers. The magazine had recently published a series of satirical cartoons, including one which depicted Prophet Muhammad saying, “It’s hard being loved by jerks.” Rushdie continued: “‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

• Satire is exaggeration and distortion to make a point. Oliver Stone, remark in interview, The Charlie Rose Show (PBS: Aug. 16, 1994)

Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces. Rex Stout, quoted in Roger Kreuz, Irony and Sarcasm (2020)

• Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own. Jonathan Swift, in Preface to The Battle of the Books (written 1697, published 1704)

QUOTE NOTE: In Swift’s time, glass was the common term for a mirror.

• In modern America, anyone who attempts to write satirically about the events of the day finds it difficult to concoct a situation so bizarre that it may not actually come to pass while his article is still on the presses. Calvin Trillin, in Introduction to Uncivil Liberties (1982)

• The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little—or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. Anthony Trollope, in An Autobiography (1883)

The observation was inspired by the writings of William Makepeace Thackeray, about whom Trollope wrote: “It was perhaps his chief fault as a writer that he could never abstain from that dash of satire which he felt to be demanded by the weaknesses which he saw around him.”

• Criticizing a political satirist for being unfair is like criticizing a 260-pound noseguard for being physical. Garry Trudeau, in speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association (April 25, 1988)

Trudeau introduced the observation by saying: “Satire is supposed to be unbalanced. It’s supposed to be unfair.”

• Satire picks a one-sided fight, and the more its intended target reacts, the more the practitioner gains the advantage. Garry Trudeau, quoted in The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 20, 1993)

• Satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality. Barbara W. Tuchman, in A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978)

• A satirist is a man profoundly revolted by the society in which he lives. His rage takes the form of wit, ridicule, mockery. Gore Vidal, “The Satiric World of Evelyn Waugh,” in The New York Times (Jan. 7, 1962)

These were the opening words of Vidal’s article. His closing words were: “At full strength, wit is rage made bearable, and useful.”

• Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die. Voltaire, Lettre à Bordes (10 January 1769)

• Satire is alive and well and living in the White House. Robin Williams, quoted in Rolling Stone magazine (Feb. 25, 1985)

(see also BLISS and CHEER & CHEERFULNESS and CONTENTMENT and DISSATISFACTION and FULFILLMENT and HAPPINESS and JOY)

• Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction. Anne Frank, diary entry (July 6, 1944), in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1952)

Frank preceded the thought by writing: “We have many reasons to hope for great happiness, but…we have to earn it. And that’s something you can’t achieve by taking the easy way out. Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy.”

• What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree. Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)

• Life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. Betty Friedan, in The Second Stage (1981)

• From the satisfaction of desire there may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair. André Gide, the voice of the narrator, in The Counterfeitors (1925)

• You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction. George Horace Lorimer, the character John Graham writing in a letter to his son, in Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (1903)

• We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve. Maxwell Maltz, in Psycho-Cybernetics (1960)

Maltz continued: “People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile.”

• Satisfaction of one’s curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. Linus Pauling, quoted in Robert John Paradowski, The Structural Chemistry of Linus Pauling, Vol. 1 (1972)

• Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. Theodore Isaac Rubin, in Love Me, Love My Fool: Thoughts from a Psychoanalyst’s Notebook (1976)

• He is well paid that is well satisfied. William Shakespeare, the character Portia speaking, in The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596)

• As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death. George Bernard Shaw, the character Gregory Lunn speaking, in Overruled (1912)

• Satisfaction may be the goal of the average person, but it is the enemy of greatness. Garrison Wynn, in The Real Truth About Success (2010)

(see also APPRECIATION and DELECTABLE and DELICIOUS and EATING and ENJOYMENT and PLEASURE and SEASONING and TASTE)

• We define the concept of savoring as going beyond the the experience of pleasure to encompass a higher order awareness or reflective discernment on the part of the individual. Fred B. Bryant and Joseph Veroff, in Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience (2007)

A bit earlier, Bryant and Veroff wrote on the subject: “The word savoring also conveys metaphorically a search for the delectable, delicious, almost gustatory delights of the moment. Although the term fits more intuitively with attending to a sensory experience such as taste, we mean to extend it to attending to more complex cognitive associations.”

(see SILENCE)

(see also BLAME & BLAMING and CENSURE and COMPLAINING & COMPLAINTS and CRITICISM and EXCUSES and FINGER-POINTING)

• The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (1967)  

• For the last six thousand years, the Devil has been the grand scapegoat. He has had to bear the blame of every thing that has gone wrong. All the evil that gets committed is laid to his door, and he has, besides, the credit of hindering all the good that has never got done at all. If mankind were not thus one and all victims to the Devil, what an irredeemable set of scoundrels they would be obliged to confess themselves!” Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury, the voice of the narrator, in Zoë, The History of Two Lives, Vol. 2 (1845)

Jewsbury introduced the thought by writing: “What would become of the world without the Devil?”

(see also ALARM and BRAVERY and COWARDICE and FEAR and FRIGHT)

• If men ever discovered how tough women actually are, they would be scared to death. Edna Ferber, in A Kind of Magic (1963)

• A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice. Edgar Watson Howe, in Country Town Sayings (1911)

• The main thing is not a matter of wanting to win; the main thing is being scared to lose. Billie Jean King, in Billie Jean (1982; with Frank Deford)

• What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not? Toni Morrison, the character Pilate speaking, in Song of Solomon (1977)

• If you’re never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances. Julia Sorel, in See How She Runs (1978)

• “Fearless” is living in spite of those things that scare you to death. Taylor Swift, quoted in a 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined)

• If I ever felt inclined to be scared going into a room full of people I would say to myself, “You’re the cleverest member of one of the cleverest families in the cleverest class of the cleverest nation of the world, so what have you got to be frightened of?” Beatrice Webb, in Beatrice Webb’s American Diary (1963; David A. Shannon, ed.)

(see also ADVERSITY and AGONY and ANGUISH and DEPRESSION and DIFFICULTY and GRIEF & GRIEVING and MISERY & WOE and MISFORTUNE and PAIN and PROBLEMS and SORROW and TEARS and TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS)

• Scars are tattoos with better stories. Author Unknown

• When wounds are healed by love, the scars are beautiful. Author Unknown

• Every man has had his battle with temptations. Every man has had his scars. Henry Ward Beecher, in Proverbs From Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

• The human race…tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What’s left of kisses? Wounds however leave scars. Bertolt Brecht, in Short Stories, 1921-1946 (1983)

• Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars. E. H. Chapin, in Living Words (1866)

ERROR ALERT: This quotation, but with seared instead of seamed, was mistakenly attributed to Kahlil Gibran in The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran (1995). Ever since, almost all quotation anthologies have repeated the error.

• I am a pear that has survived a hailstorm: when it does not rot, it becomes better and sweeter than the others, in spite of its little scars. Colette (pen name of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette), in a 1912 letter, reprinted in Letters From Colette (1980; Robert Phelps, ed.)

• There are deep lines on each side of his mouth and I know they are the scars from the thin blade of life. Deborah Joy Corey, “Good Intentions,” in Story (1990)

• A sneer is like a flame; it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes, but it leaves a bitter scar. Margaret Deland, in The Awakening of Helena Richie (1906)

• For women, tears are the beginning of initiation into the Scar Clan, that timeless tribe of women of all colors, all nations, all languages, who down through the ages have lived through a great something, and yet who stood proud, still stand proud. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in Women Who Run With the Wolves (1992)

• Throughout human history people have scarred, painted, pierced, padded, stiffened, plucked, and buffed their bodies in the name of beauty. Nancy L. Etcoff, in Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (1999)

• One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. F. Scott Fitzgerald, the voice of the narrator, in Tender Is the Night (1934)

The narrator continued: “There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”

• Divorce is a serious operation which leaves scars forever. Solar Forst, in Alphabet of Love (1967)

• Scars are stories, history written on the body. Kathryn Harrison, quoted in Marilee Strong, A Bright Red Scream (1999)

• Let no one ever say it is not those sins of omission that scar the soul and set the heart to cringing in the small hours of the night. The “why didn’t I?” knows a more hopeless regret than the committed mistake. Ann Head, in Always in August (1961)

• Be fond of the man who jests at his scars, if you like; but never believe he is being on the level with you. Pamela Hansford Johnson, in The Holiday Friend (1972)

• Divorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony—a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable. Erica Jong, in Fear of Fifty (1994)

• It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don’t agree. The wounds remain. Time—the mind, protecting its sanity—covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone. Rose Kennedy, in Times to Remember (1974)

• Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they? Cormac McCarthy, the character señorita Alfonsa speaking, in All the Pretty Horses (1992)

• Hate leaves ugly scars; love leaves beautiful ones. Mignon McLaughlin, in The Neurotic’s Notebook (1960)

• That’s what a conscience is made of, scar tissue…Little strips and pieces of remorse sewn together year by year until they formed a distinctive pattern, a design for living. Margaret Millar, in Do Evil in Return (1950)

• Suicide can be used as a very cruel weapon, you know. It can be the ultimate revenge, leaving a scar that a living person may carry to the grave. Patricia Moyes, in Johnny Under Ground (1961)

• Age’s terms of peace, after the long interlude of war with life, have still to be concluded—Youth must be kept decently away—so many old wounds may have to be unbound, and old scars pointed to with pride, to prove to ourselves we have been brave and noble. Eugene O’Neill, in Strange Interlude (1928).

• The pain that I carried was never validated because my scars didn’t show on the outside. In retrospect, I often wished that I had carried my scars on the outside. At least no one could have denied their existence. Catherine Oxenberg, quoted in Linda Sivertsen, Lives Charmed (1998)

• If we could only use other folks’ experience, this here world would be heaven in about three generations, but we’re so constructed that we never believe fire’ll burn till we poke our own fingers into it to see. Other folks’ scars don't go no ways at all toward convincin’ us. Myrtle Reed, in At the Sign of the Jack-o’-Lantern (1905)

• To tell a falsehood is like the cut of a saber; for though the wound may heal, the scar of it will remain. Saadi, in Gulistan (1258)

• He jests at scars that never felt a wound. William Shakespeare, the character Romeo speaking, in Romeo and Juliet 1595)

• A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honor. William Shakespeare, the character Lafew speaking, in All's Well That Ends Well (1603-04)

• Divorce is simply modern society’s version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers. William Shatner, in Up Till Now: The Autobiography (2008; with David Fisher)

• Whatever doesn’t kill you leaves scars. Susan Sontag, quoted in Charles Ruas, Conversations With American Writers (1984)

• To be alive at all is to have scars. John Steinbeck, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Ethan Hawley, in The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)

• Scars are just another kind of memory. M. L. Stedman, in The Light Between Oceans (2012)

• Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of a life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus. Wallace Stegner, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Joe Allston, in The Spectator Bird (1976)

• They say the face tells all there is to know about a life, but I personally believe much can be deduced from the hands. There are lines and scars, bumps and calluses; indeed, the hands are both the sketch and the final work of art. Jacqueline Winspear, in The Mapping of Love and Death (2010)

• Time may heal wounds, but it does not erase the scars. Jane Yolen, in Briar Rose (1992)

(see also ORGANIZATION and PLANNING and TIME MANAGEMENT)

• A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life (1989)

Dillard continued: “A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself decades later, still living.”

(includes [The] LEARNED; see also BRAIN and COLLEGE and ERUDITION and MIND and INTELLECT and INTELLECTUALS and INTELLIGENCE and KNOWLEDGE and LEARNING and PEDANTS & PEDANTRY and PROFESSORS and STUDY and THINKING & THINKERS and THOUGHT and UNIVERSITY and WISDOM)

• A scholar’s heart is a dark well in which are buried many aborted feelings that rise to the surface as arguments. Natalie Clifford Barney, in Adventures of the Mind (1929)

• A mechanic is driven by his work all day, but it ends at night; it has an end. But the scholar’s work has none. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an undated 1845 journal entry

• A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one. Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack (Nov. 1734)

• A scholar is like a book written in a dead language—it is not every one that can read in it. William Hazlitt, “Common Places,” in The Literary Examiner (Sep.–Dec., 1823)

• It is the vice of scholars to suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books. William Hazlitt, “On the Conduct of Life,” in Literary Remains (1836)

• People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. G. C. Lichtenberg, in Aphorisms: Notebook B (written between 1765–1799)

(see also COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES and EDUCATION & EDUCATORS and HIGH SCHOOL and HOMEWORK and INSTRUCTION & INSTRUCTORS and KNOWLEDGE and LEARNING and PROFESSORS and STUDENTS and STUDIES and TEACHERS & TEACHING and TUTORS & TUTORING)

• What school is about; two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind. Barbara Kingsolver, “Life Without Go-Go Boots” (1990), in High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (1995)

ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet quotation sites mistakenly present the quotation as if it began: “School is about two parts ABCs….”

• Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods. Neil Postman, quoting “an old aphorism,” in Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)

(see also EDUCATION & EDUCATORS and INSTRUCTION & INSTRUCTORS and LEARNING and STUDENTS and TEACHERS & TEACHING)

• Teaching takes skill and education and dedication. Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry. Dick Cavett, “Schooling Santorum,” in The New York Times (Feb. 24, 2012)

(includes SCI-FI; see also BOOKS and FICTION and NOVELS and LITERATURE and WRITING)

• Science fiction is the fiction of ideas. Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I’m borrowing energy from the ideas themselves. Ray Bradbury, in Paris Review interview (Spring, 2010)

Bradbury continued: “Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.”

• Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future. Clifton Fadiman, in Introduction to Great Stories of Science Fiction (1951; Murray Leinster, ed.)

• Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art. Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” in Against Interpretation (1966)

• I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” ever since [publishing his first works], and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Science Fiction,” in Wampeters: Foma and Granfallons (1974)

• A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content. Theodore Sturgeon, a 1951 observation, quoted in A Touch of Sturgeon: Stories (1987; David Pringle, ed.)

(see also BIOLOGY and CHEMISTRY and EVOLUTION and EXPERIMENT & EXPERIMENTATION and FACTS and GEOLOGY and MATHEMATICS and OBJECTIVITY & SUBJECTIVITY and PHYSICS and RESEARCH and SCIENTISTS and SCIENTISTS—ON THEMSELVES and SCIENTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and TECHNOLOGY and THEORY)

• Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. Georges Braque, journal entry, in Le Jour et la nuit: Cahiers 1917–52 (1952)

• Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature. Jacob Bronowski, “The Creative Mind” (lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Feb. 26, 1953); reprinted in Science and Human Values (1961)

• That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. Jacob Bronowski, in The Ascent of Man (1973)

• Experience, the universal Mother of Sciences. Miguel de Cervantes, in Don Quixote (1605)

• There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Raymond Chandler, in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)

QUOTE NOTE: This observation appeared under the heading “Great Thought.” Chandler continued: “Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.”

• Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and your instruments, but in the end your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work. Michael Crichton, the narrator quoting a favorite saying of the character Dr. Jeremy Stone, in The Andromeda Strain (1969)

• There’s real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality. Richard Dawkins, in “Slaves to Superstition,” episode one of the Channel Four documentary film The Enemies of Reason (August 13, 2007)

• Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. John Dewey, in The Quest for Certainty (1929)

ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites mistakenly have the imagination. Dewey continued: “What are now working conceptions, employed as a matter of course because they have withstood the tests of experiment and have emerged triumphant, were once speculative hypotheses.”

• Science is an edged tool, which men play like children, and cut their own fingers. Arthur S. Eddington, quoted in Robert L. Weber, More Random Walks in Science (1982)

• All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking. Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality,” in Journal of the Franklin Institute (March, 1936); reprinted in Ideas and Opinions (1954)

• Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. Richard Feynman, “What is Science?” a talk at the 1966 annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association; later published in The Physics Teacher (1969; 7:6). Also published in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (1999)

• In science, “fact” can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” in Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes (1983)

• The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos. Stephen Jay Gould, summarizing a thought from Sigmund Freud, “Jove’s Thunderbolts,” in Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (1995)

• Science is a voyage of discovery, and beyond each horizon there is another. Francis Hitching, in The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong (1982)

• Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. Edwin Hubble, in “The Exploration of Space,” Harper’s Magazine (May, 1929)

• Science is the only way we have of shoving truth down the reluctant throat. Aldous Huxley, in Literature and Science (1963)

• The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. T. H. Huxley, in “Biogenesis and Abiogenesis,” his 1870 Presidential address to British Association for the Advancement of Science; reprinted in Discourses: Biological and Geological Essays (1894)

• Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed. T. H. Huxley, in Aphorisms and Reflections; From the works of T. H. Huxley (1908; Henrietta A. Huxley, ed.)

• Reason, Observation, and Experience—the Holy Trinity of Science. Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Gods” (a Jan., 1872 lecture), reprinted in The Gods, and Other Lectures (1874)

QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the quotation is generally presented, but it was originally the first portion of a fuller observation: “Reason, Observation, and Experience—the Holy Trinity of Science—have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die.”

• Every science has been an outcast. Robert G. Ingersoll, in speech at Troy, New York (Dec. 17, 1877); reprinted in Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child (1903)

• The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions. Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Overture,” in The Raw and the Cooked (1964)

• In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality. Mary McCarthy, “The Fact in Fiction,” in On the Contrary (1961)

• Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. Robert K. Merton, in The Sociology of Science (1973)

• Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Louis Pasteur, remarks at banquet during 1876 meeting of the International Congress of Sericulture (Milan, Italy)

• Science has made us gods before we are even worthy of being men. Jean Rostand, in Thoughts of a Biologist (1955)

• All science is either physics or stamp collecting. Ernest Rutherford, in Rutherford at Manchester (1962; J. B. Birks, ed.)

QUOTE NOTE: The distinction here is between mathematical and descriptive science.

• Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home. Carl Sagan, in Pale Blue Dot (1994)

• Science as a Candle in the Dark. Carl Sagan, subtitle of The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

• Science is organized knowledge. Herbert Spencer, in Education (1861)

• Today’s science is tomorrow’s technology. Edward Teller, in The Legacy of Hiroshima (1962; with Allen Brown, Jr.)

• Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honor, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), “On the Origin of Life,” address to British Association for the Advancement of Science (Edinburgh, Scotland; Aug., 1871)

• Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently. Should the knife have not been developed? Werner von Braun, on his work as a German scientist during WWII, quoted in Alan F. Pater, What They Said in 1975: The Yearbook of World Opinion (1976)

QUOTE NOTE: Before heading up America’s space program in the post-WWII years, von Braun was the German scientist most responsible for developing the Nazi rocketry program. After the war, U. S. officials viewed his knowledge as so essential to the country’s future space program that they absolved him of responsibility for war crimes, granted him U.S. citizenship, and made him a leading NASA scientist.

• Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. Simone Weil, “The Power of Words” (1937), in Selected Essays, 1934–1943 (1957)

• Much of good science—and perhaps all of great science—has its roots in fantasy. Edward. O. Wilson, in Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)

(see also ART and ARTISTS and SCIENCE and SCIENCE & RELIGION and SCIENTISTS)

• There is an art to science, and science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole. Isaac Asimov, in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988; I. Asimov and J. A. Shulman, eds.)

• Art is I; science is we. Claude Bernard, quoted in Lily Splane, Quantum Consciousness (2004)

• It is the greatest of crimes to depress true art and science. William Blake, in letter to William Hayley (Dec. 11, 1805); reprinted in The Letters of William Blake, Vol. I (1906; A. G. Blomefield Russell, ed.)

• Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. Georges Braque, journal entry, in Le Jour et la nuit: Cahiers 1917–52 (1952)

• Art and science coincide insofar as both aim to improve the lives of men and women. The latter normally concerns itself with profit, the former with pleasure. Bertolt Brecht, in Little Organon for the Theater (1949)

Brecht added: “In the coming age, art will fashion our entertainment out of new means of productivity in ways that will simultaneously enhance our profit and maximize our pleasure.”

• Art is science made clear. Jean Cocteau, in a 1926 French publication, later reprinted in Collected Works (1950)

• Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth. Cyril Connolly, in The Unquiet Grave (1944; rev. ed. 1951)

• Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art. Will Durant, in The Story of Philosophy (1926)

• Science and art belong to the whole world, and the barriers of nationality vanish before them. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “In a Conversation With a German Historian” (1813), reported in Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922; Kate Louise Roberts, ed.)

• He who posseses science and art, has religion; he who possesses neither science nor art, let him get religion. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in “Gedichte,” quoted in Miguel De Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (1913)

QUOTE NOTE: I’ve also seen this translated as a poetic quatrain: “He who possesses science and art,/Possesses religion as well;/He who possesses neither of these,/Had better have religion.”

• The truths of Science become more meaningful and more beautiful when analyzed and explained; exactly the reverse occurs with the truths of Art. Boris Glikman, in a personal communication to the compiler (August, 2017)

• Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul. Maxim Gorky, in Untimely Thoughts (1968)

Gorky preceded the observation by writing: “The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art.”

• Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process. Franz Grillparzer, in Notebooks and Diaries (1838)

• A science or an art may be said to be “useful” if its development increases, even indirectly, the material well-being and comfort of men, it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude and commonplace way. G. W. Hardy, in A Mathematician’s Apology (1940)

• Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with a good conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is leading the “higher life.” Aldous Huxley, “Ends and Means” (1937), in Collected Essays (1959)

• Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of one thing. T. H. Huxley, in Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley (1907; Henrietta A Huxley, ed.)

• Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul. John Ruskin, in Stones of Venice, Vol. III (1853)

• Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena. John Ruskin, in Stones of Venice, Vol. III (1853)

• Imagination comes first in both artistic and scientific creations, but in science there is only one answer and that has to be correct. James Watson, quoted in “Discoverers of the Double Helix,” The Daily Telegraph (London; April 27, 1987)

• Art was the mother of Science. William Whewell, “The General Bearing of the Great Exhibition on the Progress of Art and Science,” lecture to the London Society of Arts (Nov. 26, 1851)

Whewell introduced the thought by saying: “In general, art has preceded science. Men have executed great, and curious, and beautiful works before they had a scientific insight into the principles on which the success of their labors was founded.”

(see also RELIGION and SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS)

• Science and religion, religion and science, put it as I may, they are two sides of the same glass, through which we see darkly until these two, focusing together, reveal the truth. Pearl S. Buck, in A Bridge for Passing (1962)

• Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Freeman Dyson, “Progress in Religion: A Talk by Freeman Dyson,” acceptance speechfor the Templeton Prize (Washington DC; May 9, 2000)

Dyson continued: “Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.”

• The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide. Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry (March 4, 1831)

• Religions tend to be hostile and divisive among themselves, while the sciences are necessarily allies—indicating there may be more of a religious core of unity in scientific investigation of the truth than in the religious exhortation of piety. Sydney J. Harris, in Pieces of Eight (1982)

• The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. Walter Lippmann, in A Preface to Morals (1929)

• What has occurred over the course of the last few centuries is a growing (but by no means universal or certain) recognition that science gets the job done, while religion makes excuses. P. Z. Myers, in a Pharyngula blog post (Sep. 12, 2009)

Myers continued: “Sometimes they are very pretty excuses that capture the imagination of the public, but ultimately, when you want to win a war or heal a dying child or get rich from a discovery or explore Antarctica, you turn to science and reason, or you fail.”

• Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. Jonathan Sacks, in The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (2011)

• Science tries to answer the question: “How?” How do cells act in the body? How do you design an airplane that will fly faster than sound? How is a molecule of insulin constructed? Religion, by contrast, tries to answer the question: “Why?” Why was man created? Why ought I to tell the truth? Why must there be sorrow or pain or death? Warren Weaver, in Science and Imagination (1967)

Weaver continued: “Science attempts to analyze how things and people and animals behave; it has no concern whether this behavior is good or bad, is purposeful or not. But religion is precisely the quest for such answers: whether an act is right or wrong, good or bad, and why.”

• In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. Carl Sagan, in a 1987 speech to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal [CSICOP]; quoted in Judson Poling, Do Science and the Bible Conflict? (2003)

(see also SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS and WISDOM)

• Science is organized knowledge, wisdom is organized life. Will Durant, “Immanuel Kant and German Idealism,” in The Story of Philosophy (1926)

(see also BIOLOGY and CHEMISTRY and EVOLUTION and EXPERIMENT & EXPERIMENTATION and FACTS and GEOLOGY and MATHEMATICS and OBJECTIVITY & SUBJECTIVITY and PHYSICS and RESEARCH and SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS—ON THEMSELVES and SCIENTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and TECHNOLOGY and THEORY)

• Scientists have a second brain where other people have their hearts. Martha Albrand, in Nightmare in Copenhagen (1954)

• When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes. W. H. Auden, “The Poet and the City,” in The Dyer’s Hand (1962)

Earlier in the piece, Auden wrote: “The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately, poetry cannot celebrate them because their deeds are concerned with things, not persons and are, therefore speechless.”

• To be successful, you don’t have to be right, but you do have to understand, with a scientist’s emotional detachment, why you were wrong. Kari Byron, in Crash Test Girl (2018)

• The scientist we need most may be hidden in a little girl, or in a dark-skinned infant. Prejudice will cost us more than we can replace if we allow the prejudiced among those who make the search. Pearl S. Buck, in Pearl S. Buck and Carlos P. Romulo, Friend to Friend (1958)

• What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on. Jacques Cousteau, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor (July 21, 1971)

• A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. Marie Curie, quoted in Eve Curie, Madame Curie: A Biography (1937)

• Whatever a scientist is doing—reading, cooking, talking, playing—science thoughts are always there at the edge of the mind. They are the way the world is taken in; all that is seen is filtered through an everpresent scientific musing. Vivian Gornick, in Women in Science: Then and Now (1983)

• Whenever I hear a scientist speak with a great air of authority, I know he isn’t a scientist, for his attitude contradicts the whole meaning of his vocation. Sydney J. Harris, in Leaving the Surface (1968)

• The pursuit of knowledge is an intoxicant, a lure that scientists and explorers have known from ancient times; indeed, exhilaration in the pursuit of knowledge is part of what has kept our species so adaptive. Kay Redfield Jamison, in Exuberance: The Passion for Life (2004)

• The limitations of our biological equipment may condemn us to the role of Peeping Toms at the keyhole of eternity. Arthur Koestler, on scientists, in The Roots of Coincidence (1972)

ERROR ALERT: Many quotation anthologies and almost all internet sites mistakenly present the quotation this way: “Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.”

• Scientists are rarely to be counted among the fun people. Awkward at parties, shy with strangers, deficient in irony—they have had no choice but to turn their attention to the close study of everyday objects. Fran Lebowitz, in Metropolitan Life (1974)

• It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young. Konrad Lorenz, in On Aggression (1966)

• Among scientists are collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are port-scientists and philosopher-scientist and even a few mystics. Peter B. Medawar, in The Art of the Soluble (1967)

• If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence of a heightened sensibility. Peter B. Medawar, in a reference to Van Gogh’s famous act of self mutilation, in “J. B. S.” (1968); reprinted in Memoirs of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography (1986)

• It is the duty of scientists to dispel ignorance. Linus Pauling, “The Social Responsibilities of Scientists and Science,” in The Science Teacher (1933)

• I have a lot of ideas and throw away the bad ones. Linus Pauling, quoted in Thomas Hager, Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling (1995)

QUOTE NOTE: This was Pauling’s reply to former student David Harker, who had asked his professor, “Dr. Pauling, how do you have so many good ideas.”

• A good part of the trick to being a first-rate scientist is in asking the right questions or asking them in ways that make it possible to find answers. Anne Roe, in The Making of a Scientist (1952)

• One could count on one’s fingers the number of scientists throughout the world with a general idea of the history and development of their particular science: there is none who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. Simone Weil, in Oppression and Liberty (1955)

Weil continued: “As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work.”

• The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper. Edward O. Wilson, in Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)

Wilson, who has been both a scientist and a novelist, went on to add: “Innovators in both literature and science are basically dreamers and storytellers. In the early stages of the creation of both literature and science, everything in the mind is a story. There is an imagined ending, and usually an imagined beginning, and a selection of bits and pieces that might fit in between.”

• Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk. Simone Weil, in On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

(see also SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS and SCIENTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS)

• The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. Richard Dawkins, in Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998)

Dawkins continued: “It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”

• I’m absolutely convinced that the pleasure of a real scientific insight—it doesn’t have to be a great discovery—is like an orgasm. Carl Djerassi, quoted in L. Wolpert and A. Richards, Passionate Minds: The Inner World of Scientists (1997)

• You sit quietly gestating them, for nine months or whatever the required time may be, and then one day they are out on their own, not belonging to you any more but to the whole community of scientists. Freeman Dyson, on the formulation of scientific theories, in the Preface to From Eros to Gaia (1992)

Dyson continued: “Whatever it is that you produce—a baby, a book, or a theory—it is a piece of the magic of creation. You are producing something that you do not fully understand. As you watch it grow, it becomes part of the larger world, and fits itself into a larger design than you imagined.”

• When a man after long years of searching chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding. Albert Einstein, quoted in The New York Times (Nov. 10, 1978)

• I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. Richard Feynman, in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)

Feynman continued: “I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.”

• I have no possessions that are truly my own. I am like a stranger at a rich man’s gate. Erich Harth, in The Creative Loop: How the Brain Makes a Mind (1993)

Harth, a professor of physics at Syracuse University and an elegant science writer, added: “What I have is borrowed, and even my knowledge is nothing but hand-me-downs, and an occasional oddity I pick up by chance. I pass it on to others like me.”

• I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Isaac Newton, quoted in David Brewster, The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (1832)

• I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little into a full and clear light. Isaac Newton, quoted in Robert Grant, History of Physical Astronomy (1852)

• The scientist, if he is to be more than a plodding gatherer of bits of information, needs to exercise an active imagination. Linus Pauling, “Imagination in Science,” in Tomorrow magazine (Dec., 1943)

Pauling continued: “The scientists of the past whom we now recognize as great are those who were gifted with transcendental imaginative powers, and the part played by the imaginative faculty of his daily life is as least as important for the scientist as it is for the worker in any other field—much more important than for most.”

• My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method. Carl Sagan, in Cosmos (1980)

(see also SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS)

• Bronowski uses the English language—not his first language, which makes it all the more remarkable—as a painter uses his brush, with mastery all the way from broad canvas to exquisite miniature. Richard Dawkins, on Jacob Bronowski, in the Foreword to a 2011 paperback edition of Bronowski’s classic The Ascent of Man (1973)

• Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. But those of us who are not that tall have to choose! Richard Feynman, recalled by Carver Mead in Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism (2002),

(see also EMOTION and HELPLESSNESS and OUTRAGE and PASSION and PROTEST)

• Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry (April 19, 1838)

QUOTE NOTE: In the spring of 1838, Emerson was attempting to come to grips with a powerful sense of outrage after citizens of the Cherokee Nation were forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Georgia and resettled in American Southwest land (present-day Oklahoma) that had been designated as Indian Territory. This practice—which also included the forced relocation of the Muscogee, Seminole, Chicasaw, and Choctaw nations—is commonly referred to as The Trail of Tears. About a letter of protest he sent to President Van Buren, Emerson wrote that he was fully aware that the letter was “merely a scream; but sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”

(see also CRITICISM and DOUBT and EXAMINATION)

• Our own political life is predicated on openness. We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Encouragement of Science,” address at Science Talent Institute (March 6, 1950); reprinted in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Jan., 1951)

Oppenheimer added: “We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.”

(includes CARVING; see also ART and [WORK OF] ART and ARTIST and ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and PAINTING & PAINTERS)

• Sculpture is nothing more than hundreds of different lines, profiles, silhouettes, seen from as many different angles. J. Chester Armstrong, in Artists of the Rockies and the Golden West (Spring, 1984)

• Sculpture is a sensuous art. Jacob Bronowski, in The Ascent of Man (1972)

• Some sculpture is warm, some forever cold. Robert Henri, in The Art Spirit (1923)

• Carving became a harbor of safety into which I could steer my thoughts and senses, a sort of salvation by self-obliteration. Malvina Hoffman, in Sculpture Inside and Out (1939)

• Sculpture may be almost anything: a monument, a statue, an old coin, a bas-relief, a portrait bust, a lifelong struggle against heavy odds. Malvina Hoffman, in Sculpture Inside and Out (1939)

• Sculpture is a parable in three dimensions, a symbol of a spiritual experience, and a means of conveying truth by concentrating its essence into visible form. Malvina Hoffman, in Sculpture Inside and Out (1939)

Hoffman went on to add: “It must be the reflection of the artist who creates it and of the era in which he lives, not an echo or a memory of other days and other ways.”

• To give life to sculpture I found it must have a pulse, a breathing quality that could change in a flash, and it must never appear static, hard, or unrevealing. All these demands formed themslves in my thoughts, and became like an endless obsession. Malvina Hoffman, in Yesterday Is Tomorrow: A Personal History (1965)

• I am moved to say a word in favor of sculpture being a far higher art than painting. There is something in the purity of the marble, in the perfect calmness, if one may say so, of a beautiful statue, which cannot be found in painting. Harriet Hosmer, quoted in Cornelia Carr, Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories (1912)

A moment later Hosmer added: “I grant that the painter must be as scientific as the sculptor, and in general must possess a greater variety of knowledge, and what he produces is more easily understood by the mass, because what they see on canvas is most frequently to be observed in nature. In high sculpture it is not so. A great thought must be embodied in a great manner, and such greatness is not to find its counterpart in everyday things.”

• All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer—at least the answer for myself. Art is an action against death. It is a denial of death. Jacques Lipchitz, quoted in Bert Van Bork, Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work (1966)

• In my opinion, long and intense study of the human figure is the necessary foundation for a sculptor. Henry Moore, quoted in Katherine Kuh, Henry Moore: 1921-1948 (1960)

• Patriotism is the last refuge of the sculptor. William Plomer, tweaking the famous Samuel Johnson observation (to be found in Patriotism), quoted in letter from Rupert Hart-Davis to George Lyttleton (Oct. 13, 1956); reprinted in The Lyttleton Hart-Davis Letters: 1955-56 (1978; J. Murray, ed.)

QUOTE NOTE: Plomer was referring to a South African statue he had seen honoring Boer pioneers, but his observation applies to the public statuary of all countries.

• Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump. Auguste Rodin, quoted in Camille Mauclair, Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works (1905)

• Sculpture is more than any other art the expression of restraint.

Eleanor Rowland, in The Significance of Art: Studies in Analytical Esthetics (1913)

• Every time I make a sculpture, it breeds ten more, and then time is too short to make them all. David Smith, in Art in America magazine (January-February, 1966)

(see OCEANS & SEAS)

(see also AUTUMN/FALL and SPRING and SUMMER and WEATHER and WINTER)

• All human life has its seasons, and no one’s personal chaos can be permanent: winter, after all, does not last forever, does it? There is summer, too, and spring, and though sometimes when branches stay dark and the earth cracks with ice, one thinks they will never come, that spring, that summer, but they do, and always. Truman Capote, in letter to Mary Louise Aswell, quoted in Gerald Clarke, Capote: A Biography (1988)

• Life is a thing of many stages and moving parts. What we do with ease at one time of life we can hardly manage at another. What we could not fathom doing when we were young, we find great joy in when we are old. Like the seasons through which we move, life itself is a never-ending series of harvests, a different fruit for every time. Joan Chittister, in In a High Spiritual Season (1995)

• We Californians are constantly accused of not having seasons, but we do. We have fire, flood, mud, and drought. Phyllis Diller, in Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse (2005)

• Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons. Gretel Ehrlich, in The Solace of Open Spaces (1985)

• I know I am but summer to your heart,/And not the full four seasons of the year…. Edna St. Vincent Millay, from the poem “I Know I Am But Summer,” in The Harp-Weaver (1923)

• The soul’s life has seasons of its own; periods not found in any calendar, time that years and months will not scan, but which are as deftly and sharply cut off from one another as the smoothly arranged years which the earth’s motion yields us. Ralph Iron (pen name of Olive Schreiner), in The Story of an African Farm (1883)

• Trees, unlike so many humans, always improve on acquaintance. No matter how much you like them at the start you are sure to like them much better further on, and best of all when you have known them for years and enjoyed intercourse with them in all seasons. L. M. Montgomery, in Emily Climbs (1925)

• The seasons run with swift feet. Gene Stratton-Porter, in The White Flag (1923)

• Here in Florida the seasons move in and out like nuns in soft clothing, making no rustle in their passing. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, in Cross Creek (1942)

• To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tantamount to constant travel: one is traveling with the earth. Marguerite Yourcenar, in With Open Eyes: Conversations With Matthieu Galey (1980)

(see also COMEBACKS and FAILURES and HINDSIGHT and MISTAKES and REGRETS and STUMBLES)

• Every day is a second chance. Author Unknown

• Life always offers you a second chance. It’s called tomorrow. Author Unknown

• Everybody wants a second chance, but not everybody deserves one. Author Unknown

• When People Screw Up, Give Them a Second Chance. Richard Branson, title of article, in Business 2.0 magazine (Dec. 2005)

• Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no second chances in Mother Nature’s Survival Course. William S. Burroughs, a reflection of protagonist Kim Carson, in The Place of Dead Roads: A Novel (1983)

• America is the land of the second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life. George W. Bush, in State of the Union Address (Jan. 20, 2004)

• Each one of us…has he not a Life of his own to lead? One life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us for evermore! Thomas Carlyle, “How to Save the World,” in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)

• Every second a seeker can start over,/For his life’s mistakes/Are initial drafts/And not the final version. Sri Chinmoy, in Sri Chinmoy’s Heart Garden: A Book of Aphorisms for Joy and Inspiration (2005)

• There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance. I cannot call back the spoken word or the accomplished deed. Daphne Du Maurier, a reflection of the narrator (Philip), in My Cousin Rachel (1951)

• It has been said that sometimes the greatest hope in our lives is just a second chance to do what we should have done right in the first place. This is the story of my second chance. Richard Paul Evans, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Luke Crisp, in the Prologue to Lost December: A Novel (2011)

• We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance. Harrison Ford, in a 1991 interview, quoted in Garry Jenkins, Harrison Ford: Imperfect Hero (1998)

• As writers we live life twice, like a cow that eats its food once and then regurgitates it to chew and digest it again. We have a second chance at biting into our experience and examining it. Natalie Goldberg, quoted in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing (Writer’s Digest; 3rd ed.; 2016)

Goldberg continued: “This is our life and it’s not going to last forever. There isn’t time to talk about someday writing that short story or poem or novel. Slow down now, touch what is around you, and out of care and compassion for each moment and detail, put pen to paper and begin to write.”

• We’re given second chances every day of our life. We don’t usually take them, but they’re there for the taking. Andrew M. Greeley, quoted in The Baltimore Sun (Jan. 7, 1992)

QUOTATION CAUTION: This has become one of Greeley’s most popular quotations, even though an original source for it has not been found. I first came across it in a 1992 Baltimore Sun article on New Year’s resolutions.

• The past is nothing but our yearning for second chances. Dean Koontz, a reflection of the title character, in Brother Odd: An Odd Thomas Novel (2006)

QUOTE NOTE: This is a lovely thought on it's own, and it’s a shame it was was originally buried in the following larger observation: “We yearn for tomorrow and the progress that it represents. But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where was the progress in it? Or we yearn for yesterday, for what was or what might have been. But as we are yearning, the present is becoming the past, so the past is nothing but our yearning for second chances.”

• If grandparents want to have a meaningful and constructive role, the first lesson they must learn is that becoming a grandparent is not having a second chance at parenthood! Eda Le Shan, in Grandparenting in a Changing World (1993)

• Sometimes you don’t get a second chance. You need to take a chance when you have the opportunity. Always. Gavin MacLeod, in This is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood Faith & Life (with Mark Dagostino; 2013)

• In books as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it’s the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance. Cynthia Ozick, in interview in The Guardian (London; April 24, 2012)

• If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, there is always another chance for you. And supposing you have tried and failed again and again, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down. Mary Pickford, in Why Not Try God? (1934)

QUOTE NOTE: It’s possible that the final portion of Pickford’s observation was inspired by a famous quotation from Oliver Goldsmith: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

• You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Proverb (American)

QUOTE NOTE: This line became a modern American proverb after it was used as the tagline for a 1989 commercial for Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo. It is possible that the saying was inspired by an earlier observation attributed to the American clergyman Charles R. Swindoll: “First impressions never have a second chance.”

• Remarriage to a good woman is the best of second chances. Richard Raymond III, in a personal communication to the compiler (Jan. 28, 2018)

• Second chances are scarier than first chances, because the second time you know how much you’re risking. Nora Roberts, the character Lila Emerson speaking, in The Collector (2014)

QUOTE NOTE: Roberts also explored the topic of second chances in her 2000 novel Heart of the Sea. “No second chance?” the character Carrick says as he reflects on his situation. And then, as a wry smile appears on his face, he adds, “There might have been, had I not waited so long to take it.”

• If you are still breathing, you have a second chance. Don’t get stuck on past mistakes. Oprah Winfrey, remark at a 2014 “The Life You Want” weekend seminar

• There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, a refection of protagonist Daniel Sempere, in The Shadow of the Wind (2001)

• A second chance doesn't mean anything if you haven’t learned from your first mistake. Zig Ziglar, a Facebook post (April 12, 2014)

(includes HIDING; see also BETRAYAL and CONFIDENCE & CONFIDENTIALITY and ESPIONAGE and HIDING and PRIVACY and SPYING & SPIES and RUMOR)

• Real power begins where secrecy begins. Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

• A secret is but a thing told softly. Author Unknown

• To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself. Henry Ward Beecher, in Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887; William Drysdale, ed.)

• Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be a system of a regular government. Jeremy Bentham, “On Publicity,” in Essays on Political Tactics (1791)

ERROR ALERT: All over the Internet, this quotation is mistakenly presented in the following way: “Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.”

• A secret ceases to be a secret if it is once confided—it is like a dollar bill, once broken, it is never a dollar again. Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw), “Affurisms,” in Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865)

QUOTE NOTE: This was originally presented in Shaw’s characteristic phonetic dialect form: “A sekret ceases tew be a sekret if it iz once confided—it iz like a dollar bill, once broken, it iz never a dollar again.”

• If you tell a friend a secret, she will keep the secret by telling only one other person. Lisa Birnbach, in Lisa Birnbach, Ann Hodgman, & Patricia Marx, 1,003 Great Things About Friends (1999)

• Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared. Sissela Bok, in Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (1983)

• Possession of a secret is no guarantee of its truth. Rita Mae Brown, the protagonist Carole Hanratty speaking, in In Her Day: A Novel (1976)

• I know that’s a secret, for it is whispered everywhere. William Congreve, the character Mr. Tattle speaking, in Love for Love: A Comedy (1695)

• A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them. Joseph Conrad, the character Razumov speaking, in Under Western Eyes (1911)

• The companionship of a secret is often corruptive to good habits, such as sleep and appetite. Better tell me this mystery. Marjorie Benton Cooke, The character James Parkhurst, speaking to his daughter Bambi, in Bambi (1914)

• Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. John Dalberg (Lord Acton), in letter to Richard Simpson (Jan. 23, 1861); quoted in Abbot Gasquet, Lord Acton and His Circle (1906)

• He believed it was a natural law that men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted. Don DeLillo, the narrator describing a belief of the character Walter Everett, Jr., in Libra (1988

• Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack (July, 1735)

• If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend. Benjamin Franklin, in a 1741 issue of Poor Richard’s Almanack

• No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. Sigmund Freud, “The First Dream,” in Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905)

• We dance in a ring and suppose,/But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. Robert Frost, “The Secret Sits” in The Witness Tree (1942)

• If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. Kahlil Gibran, in Sand and Foam (1926)

• A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him. Ben Hecht, in A Child of the Century (1954)

• I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy…censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Robert A. Heinlein, a reflection of protagonist John Lyle, in the novella “If This Goes On—” (1940); revised and expanded in the 1953 Heinlein anthology Revolt in 2100.

Lyle continued: “Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

• Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. Robert A. Heinlein, an entry in “More From The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,” in Time Enough for Love (1973)

• The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651)

• Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;/A mother’s secret hope outlives them all. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., “A Mother’s Secret,” in Poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1902)

• The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep. Edgar Watson Howe, in Country Town Sayings (1911)

• Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us. Elbert Hubbard, in A Thousand and One Epigrams (1911)

• Look into any man’s heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed. Henrik Ibsen, in Pillars of Society (1877)

• People like to keep their little secrets to themselves. It’s like growing mushrooms in the cellar and running down to take a look at them now and then. Marjorie Kellogg, the title character speaking, in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1968)

• When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it. Jean de La Bruyère, in Characters (1688)

• Nothing circulates so rapidly as a secret. L. E. Landon, the voice of the narrator, in Romance and Reality, Vol. 2 (1841)

• How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves? François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)

• Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers. Johann Kaspar Lavater, in Aphorisms on Man (1788)

• A man is what he hides: a miserable little pile of secrets. André Malraux, the character Garine speaking, in Les Noyers de l'Altenburg [The Walnut Trees of Altenberg] (1943)

QUOTE NOTE: In the Preface to Antimémoires (1967), Malraux reprised the thought: “What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, the observation is presented as: “Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.”

• Everyone old enough to have a secret is entitled to have some place to keep it. Judith Martin, in Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children (1984)

• I’ll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly. Celeste Ng, the character Mia Warren speaking to Izzy, in Little Fires Everywhere (2017)

• Our own political life is predicated on openness. We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Encouragement of Science,” address at Science Talent Institute (March 6, 1950); reprinted in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Jan., 1951)

Oppenheimer added: “We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.”

• He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the rest no longer in his power. Jean Paul (pen name of Jean Paul Richter), the character Gaspard speaking, in Titan: A Romance (1803)

• The words secret and sacred are siblings. Mary Ruefle, “On Secrets,” in Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (2012)

• A person who tells a secret, swearing the recipient to secrecy in turn, is asking of the other person a discretion which he is abrogating himself. Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Paton Walsh, the voice of the narrator, in Thrones, Dominations (1998)

• There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses. George Bernard Shaw, the character Sir George Crofts speaking, in Mrs/ Warren’s Profession (1893)

• The secret in the search for meaning is to find your passion and pursue it. Gail Sheehy, in New Passages (1995)

• Secrets that are hidden in the darkness deep within us feed our addictions. Richard A. Singer, Jr., in The Essential Addiction Recovery Companion (2018)

• I define secrecy as the intention to hold back some piece of information from one or more people. The information itself is the secret. Michael Slepian, in a New York Times interview with Elisabeth Egan (June 3, 2022)

Slepian, a Columbia University professor and author of The Secret Life of Secrets (2022), continued: “Even if you haven’t recently had to hide it in a conversation, it’s still a secret if you intend to keep it from others.”

QUOTE NOTE: In what can only be described as a major stroke of irony, Slepian was already deep into his research on the subject of secrecy when he learned something that his family had hidden from him his entire life. Egan wrote: “The behavioral scientist was about to learn something his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles had known for his entire life: that he had been conceived by artificial insemination from an anonymous sperm donor.” The full interview may be seen here.

• Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth. Amy Tan, a reflection of narrator An-Mei, in “Queen Mother of the Western Skies,” The Joy Luck Club (1989)

• Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. Paul Tournier, in Guilt and Grace: A Psychological Study (1962)

• But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it? Anthony Trollope, a reflection of the narrator, in Framley Parsonage (1861)

• It’s a general principle. If you tell someone a secret, and ask them to keep it secret, you are asking them to display a discretion you are unable to display yourself. Jill Paton Walsh, protagonist Peter Wimsey speaking, in The Attenbury Emeralds: The New Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mystery (2011)

• Brains are an asset, if you hide them. Mae West, in an interview Charlotte Chandler, reported in Chandler’s book The Ultimate Seduction (1984)

In the interview West continued: “Men think a gal with good lines is better than one with a good line. But if you’ve got some brains in reserve, people can’t use you”

• I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it. Oscar Wilde, the character Basil Hallward speaking, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

• It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. Oscar Wilde, the voice of the narrator, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

• Repeat nothing—absolutely nothing—that is told you in confidence. There is no such thing as telling just one person. Lois Wyse, in The Six-Figure Woman (1983)

• A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, a reflection of the narrator and protagonist Daniel Sempere, in The Shadow of the Wind (2001)

(see also CULTS and DOGMA & DOGMATISM and EXTREMISM & EXTREMISTS and FANATICISM & FANATICS and IDEOLOGY & IDEOLOGUES and RADICALISM & RADICALS and RELIGION)

• A sect, incidentally, is a religion with no political power. Tom Wolfe, “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976).

QUOTE NOTE: Four years later, in an article on the Jonestown Massacre (“Entr’actes and Canapes,” in the 1980 book In Our Time), Wolfe tweaked this observation to craft what would become an even more famous quotation: “A cult is a religion with no political power.”

(see also BELIEF and DOUBT and POLITICS & RELIGION and RELIGION)

• Our secularism is hard-won, the product of centuries of political, intellectual, and sometimes physical courage. Secularism is the institutionalization of doubt, or more precisely of respect for doubt. It is harder to love doubt than to love freedom. So we are grudging about our secularism, and some of us are a little ashamed of it. Maybe it takes Rushdie’s nightmare and Khomeini’s rage to remind us how precious it is, and how fiercely it must be guarded. Hendrik Hertzberg, “TRB from Washington,” in The New Republic (March 20, 1989)

(see also CERTAINTY and DANGER and FEAR and INSECURITY and [NATIONAL] SECURITY and SAFETY)

• The most important thing in life, without exception, is to step out of the magic circles of safety we create for ourselves. Tapping the same lever to get the same pellet day after day, safe as it is, is for the birds; security isn’t the best thing life has to offer and habit dulls both desire and imagination. Regina Barreca, in Too Much of a Good Thing Is Wonderful

• Too much safety is abhorrent to the nature of a human being. Agatha Christie, the protagonist Inspector Poirot speaking, in Curtain (1975)

• We pay for security with boredom, for adventure with bother. Peter De Vries, the protagonist Chick Swallow speaking, in Comfort Me With Apples (1956)

• Security is one of the prison walls of the affluent society; ever since the pax Romana, being safe has been an unhealthy mega-European obsession. John Fowles, “I Write Therefore I Am” (1964), in Wormholes: Essays and Occasional Writings (1998)

QUOTE NOTE: Fowles was recalling the decision he made early in his career to give up paying jobs in order to devote himself full-time to writing. He preceded the thought by writing: “To a career man, I suppose, the decision would seem lunatic; perhaps even courageous. But a bank vault is secure; an atomic shelter is secure; death is secure.”

• The richness of living caught at her throat, and all the well-meant security with which people surrounded themselves was exposed for what it truly was: a wall to keep out life, a conceit, a mad delusion. Dorothy Gilman, in The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (1970)

The narrator, describing the title character at an important moment of understanding, preceded the observation by writing: “It was the unexpected that brought to these moments the tender, unnameable rush of understanding, this joy in being alive. It was safety following danger, it was food after hours of hunger, rest following exhaustion, it was the astonishing strangers who had become her friends. It was this and more, until the richness of living….”

• Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life. Germaine Greer, in The Female Eunuch (1971)

Greer introduced the thought by writing: “There is no such thing as security. There never has been.”

• Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. God himself is not secure, having given man dominion over his works! Helen Keller, in Let Us Have Faith (1940)

QUOTE NOTE: This observation was followed by some of Keller’s most famous words, including her signature daring adventure line: “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run that outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”

• Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in The wave of the Future (1940)

(see also COURTSHIP and FLIRTATION and LOVE and MALE-FEMALE DYNAMICS and SEX)

• Jesus Christ has seduced more women than Don Juan. Gertrude Atherton, in Adventures of the Mind (1929)

• Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction. Natalie Clifford Barney, quoted in “My Country ’tis of Thee,” Adam magazine, no. 299 (London, 1962)

• Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist bothers to buy a bottle of wine. Andrea Dworkin, in Letters from a War Zone (1988)

• All really great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction. Marya Mannes, in More in Anger (1958)

(see SIGHT)

(see also DISCOVERY and FINDING and QUEST and QUESTIONING and SEARCHING)

• Do not follow in the footsteps of the Ancients; seek what they sought. Matsuo Bashō, in R. H. Blyth, “Bashō,” Haiku (1951; Hokuseido Press)

QUOTE NOTE: Bashō (1644–1694) was the most celebrated Japanese poet of his time and is considered one of history’s greatest—if not the greatest—masters of haiku (in his time, called hokku). This passage has also been translated in the following ways:

“Seek not after the ancients; seek what they sought.”

“Seek not the paths of the ancients; seek that which the ancients sought.”

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of old men; seek what they sought.”

• Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. The Bible: Matthew 7:7 KJV)

• When a man after long years of searching chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding. Albert Einstein, quoted in The New York Times (Nov. 10, 1978)

• No matter how much we seek, we never find anything but ourselves. Anatole France, quoted in a 1978 issue of Saturday Review (specific issue undetermined)

• Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into himself and to lose himself in his ideas. Voltaire, “Soul,” in Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

(see also BIGOTRY and [Racial] DISCRIMINATION and MINORITIES and RACE and RACE RELATIONS and RACISM & RACIAL PREJUDICE and SEGREGATION and SLAVERY and STEREOTYPES)

• Segregation is wrong because it is a system of adultery perpetuated by an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality. Martin Luther King, Jr., address at Cobo Hall civil rights rally (Detroit, Michigan; June 23, 1963)

(see also AUTHENTICITY and CONFLICT—WITHIN ONESELF and EGO and IDENTITY and INDIVIDUALISM & INDIVIDUALITY and INTEGRITY and (True to) SELF and SELF-ACCEPTANCE and SELF-ESTEEM and SELFISHNESS)

• The center of the universe is still the self. Henri-Frédéric Amiel, entry in his Journal Intime (Feb. 1, 1853)

• I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self. Aristotle, quoted in Johannes Stobaeus, Florilegium (5th c. A.D.)

• Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he/Who finds himself, loses his misery. Matthew Arnold, in “Self-Dependence” (1852)

• My inner self was a house divided against itself. St. Augustine, in Confessions (5th c. A.D.)

• There is no such flatterer as is a man’s self. Francis Bacon, “Of Friendship,” in Essays (1625)

QUOTE NOTE: In his “On Love” essay in the same collection, Bacon further explored the topic, this time quoting an unnamed source: “It hath been well said, ‘That the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self.’” Many reference sources mistakenly attribute the quotation directly to Bacon.

• I didn't learn for years that you generally find your Self after you quit looking for it. Peg Bracken, in On Getting Old for the First Time (1997)

• The fundamental conflict of life is The Self versus the Self. Rita Mae Brown, in Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer’s Manual (1988)

Brown preceded the thought by writing: “For 99 percent of all novels, conflict is the core of the plot. Without it there is no tension and there’s no reason to turn the page. Essays are the place for gentle reflection. Novels are not.”

• The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Frederick Buechner, in Telling Secrets (1991)

Buechner continued: “Instead we live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.”

• One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. G. K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” in Orthodoxy (1908)

• We are all serving a life-sentence in the dungeon of self. Cyril Connolly, in The Unquiet Grave (1944)

• The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action. John Dewey, in Democracy and Education (1916)

• To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self. Joan Didion, “Jealousy: Is It a Curable Illness?” in Vogue magazine (June, 1961)

• Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that we’ll never be. René Dubos, in Louis Pasteur: Free Lance of Science (1950)

• Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste. Patricia Hampl, “The Need to Say It,” in Janet Sternburg (ed.), The Writer on Her Work, Vol. II (1991)

Hample was writing about finding her voice—and herself—as a writer. She went on to add: “The recognition of one’s genuine material seems to involve a fall from the phony grace of good intentions and elevated expectations.”

• You can’t change the music of your soul. Katharine Hepburn, quoted in Lee Israel, “Last of the Honest-To-God Ladies,” Esquire magazine (Nov., 1967)

• There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. Aldous Huxley, the character Carlo quoting his friend Bruno, in Time Must Have a Stop (1944)

Carlo continued: “So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterward, when you’ve worked on your own corner. You’ve got to be good before you can do good—or at any rate do good without doing harm at the same time.”

• The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed. Søren Kierkegaard, in The Sickness Unto Death (1849)

• The Divided Self. R. D. Laing, title of 1960 book

QUOTE NOTE: The title of Laing’s book was considered quite provocative when it was first published, but the concept of a divided self was first advanced fifteen centuries earlier (see the St. Augustine entry above).

• The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into luster. D. H. Lawrence, “Democracy,” in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays (1925; Michael Herbert, ed.)

• Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self. Harriet Lerner, in The Dance of Anger (1985)

• Envy is stimulated by a disappointment with the self—a sense that one is lacking in some way and that all the good exists outside oneself. Nic Liberman, “Envy,” in Being Warren Buffett: Life Lessons From a Cheerful Billionaire (2014)

Liberman continued: “The good is removed from the self and transferred to the thing or person one envies; and this thing or person becomes the container of all that is desirable.”

• The self holds both a hell and a heaven. Lewis Mumford, in The Conduct of Life (1951)

• The self is merely the lens through which we see others and the world, and if this lens is not clear of distortions, we cannot perceive others. Anaïs Nin, in The Novel of the Future (1968)

• This above all: to thine own self be true,/And it must follow, as the night the day,/Thou canst not then be false to any man. William Shakespeare, the character Polonius speaking to Laertes, in Hamlet (1601)

• People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. Thomas Szasz, in The Second Sin (1973)

• Men may rise on stepping-stones/Of their dead selves to higher things. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in “In Memoriam A. H. H.” (1850)

• No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself. Anthony Trollope, the character Mr. Bertram playing off the title of a Shakespeare play, in The Bertrams (1859)

• I have no home but me. Anne Truitt, in Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (1982)

• A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living. Virginia Woolf, quoted in Virginia Lee (2008) by Hermione Lee

(see also AFFECTATION and ARTIFICIALITY and AUTHENTICITY and IDENTITY and IMAGE and IMITATION and INDIVIDUALISM and INSINCERITY and INTEGRITY and PRETENSE and SELF and SELF-ACCEPTANCE and SELF-ESTEEM and SINCERITY)

• Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he/Who finds himself, loses his misery. Matthew Arnold, in “Self-Dependence” (1852)

• My inner self was a house divided against itself. St. Augustine, in Confessions (5th c. A.D.)

• You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. Richard Bach, the title character, speaking to Maynard Gull, in Jonathan Livingtson Seagull (1970)

• You know who you are inside, but people outside see something different. You can choose to become the image, and let go of who you are, or continue as you are and feel phony when you play the image. Richard Bach, in Bridge Across Forever (1984)

• Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you? Fanny Brice, quoted in Norman Katkov, The Fabulous Fanny (1952)

• The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all. Frederick Buechner, in Telling Secrets (1991)

Buechner continued: “Instead we live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.”

• Action is the language of the body and should harmonize with the spirit within. Marcus Tullius Cicero, in De Oratore (55 B.C.)

• To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. e. e. cummings, quoted in Charles Norman, The Magic Maker: E. E. Cummings (1958)

QUOTE NOTE: Cummings wrote these words in a 1955 letter to a high school student who had asked what advice he had for young people who wanted to write poetry. Cummings continued: “As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time—and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.”

• To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. Fyodor Dostevsky, the character Razumikhin speaking, in Crime and Punishment (1866)

• I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. Frederick Douglass, in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave (1845)

• Every time I deny myself I commit a kind of suicide. Susan Griffin, in Pornography and Silence (1981)

• Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste. Patricia Hampl, “The Need to Say It,” in Janet Sternburg (ed.), The Writer on Her Work, Vol. II (1991)

Hampl was writing about finding her voice—and herself—as a writer. She went on to add: “The recognition of one’s genuine material seems to involve a fall from the phony grace of good intentions and elevated expectations.”

• There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home. Josephine Hart, the voice of the narrator, in Damage: A Novel (1991)

A moment later, the narrator went on to explain: “We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.”

• You can’t change the music of your soul. Katharine Hepburn, quoted in Lee Israel, “Last of the Honest-To-God Ladies,” Esquire magazine (Nov., 1967)

• I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? Hermann Hesse, the protagonist Emil Sinclair speaking, in Demian (1919)

• What’s a man’s first duty? The answer’s brief: to be himself. Henrik Ibsen, the title character speaking, in Peer Gynt (1867)

Gynt went on to add: “But how/Can he do this if his existence/Is that of a pack-camel, laden/With some one else’s weal and woe.”

• The best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “This is the real me!” William James, in letter to wife Alice (June, 1878)

• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Steve Jobs, commencement address at Stanford University (June 12, 2005)

• To be a gentleman is to be oneself, all of a seam, on camera and off. Murray Kempton, “The Party’s Over,” in America Comes of Age (1963)

• One should stick by one’s own soul, and by nothing else. In one’s soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one’s own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors. D. H. Lawrence, in letter to Cynthia Asquith (April 28, 1917)

• Now man cannot live without some vision of himself. But still less can he live with a vision that is not true to his inner experience and inner feeling. D. H. Lawrence, “The Risen Lord,” in Everyman magazine (Oct. 3, 1929); reprinted in D. H. Lawrence: Late Essays and Articles, Vol. 2 (2004; James T. Boulton, ed.)

• Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way. Ursula K. Le Guin, the character Ged speaking, in The Farthest Shore (1972)

• One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself. Jack London, the narrator, describing the essential struggle of the protagonist, in White Fang (1906)

• You’re Born An Original, Don’t Die a Copy! John Mason, title of 1993 book

QUOTE NOTE: Mason is probably not the original author of the saying “You were born an original, so don’t die a copy,” but he certainly helped to popularize the sentiment. Later in his book, Mason played off another famous saying (by George Bernard Shaw) by writing: “The copy adapts himself to the world, but the original tries to adapt the world to him” (see the Shaw entry in PROGRESS).

• At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique human being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is ever be put together a second time. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator” (1874), in Untimely Meditations (1876)

Nietzsche continued: “He knows this, but hides it like an evil conscience—and why? From fear of his neighbor, who looks for the latest conventionalities in him, and is wrapped up in them himself.” The complete essay may be seen at ”Schopenhauer as Educator”.

• The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only to cease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which calls to him: “Be your self!” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Untimely Meditations (1876)

• When one is pretending the entire body revolts. Anaïs Nin, the voice of the narrator, in Winter of Artifice (1939)

• If a man can reach the latter days of his life with his soul intact, he has mastered life. Gordon Parks, citing a lesson he learned from his father, in To Smile in Autumn: A Memoir (1979)

• This above all: to thine own self be true,/And it must follow, as the night the day,/Thou canst not then be false to any man. William Shakespeare, the character Polonius speaking to Laertes, in Hamlet (1601)

• To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Royal Sport Nautique,” in An Inland Voyage (1877)

• I have no home but me. Anne Truitt, in Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (1982)

• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde, in De Profundis (pub. posthumously in 1905)

QUOTE NOTE: De Profundis, a Latin term meaning “from the depths,” was the title Robert Ross—Wilde’s former lover and a lifelong friend—gave to a lengthy 1897 letter Wilde wrote, but never actually sent, to Lord Alfred Douglass (also a former lover). Wilde, a prisoner in Reading Gaol at the time, was so deeply depressed that the prison’s new governor granted him permission to write “for medicinal purposes.” After each day’s writing, prison guards gathered up all the writing materials for safekeeping and, ultimately, the full letter was given to Wilde upon his release on May 18, 1897. Wilde entrusted the letter to Ross, who waited for five years after Wilde’s death to bring it to publication.

(see also EGO, EGOISM, & EGOTISM and EGOCENTRICITY and SELF and SELF-CENTEREDNESS and SELFISHNESS)

• An empty man is full of himself. Edward Abbey, in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis en Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal (1990)

• Never underestimate the power of self-absorption, including your parents’ self-absorption. Rita Mae Brown, in Starting From Scratch (1988)

QUOTE NOTE: This admonition came shortly after Brown had written, “Never expect your partner to understand your work” (she went on to put friends and parents in the same camp). She also advised writers against burdening friends and family with problems associated with their craft, suggesting they “probably aren’t that interested in your sufferings at the keyboard.”

• At times…one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people. Gail Godwin, the character Walter Gower (the narrator’s father) speaking, in Father Melancholy’s Daughter (1991)

• Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. Daniel Goleman, in Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (2006)

Goleman continued: “But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection—or compassionate action.”

• What might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression. Wendy Kaminer, in I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional (1992)

• It was hard to communicate with you. You were always communicating with yourself. The line was busy. Jean Kerr, the character Mary speaking to ex-husband Bob about their marital relationship, in Mary, Mary (1961)

• Hey, I may not be much, but I’m all I think about. Anne Lamott, quoting a voice in her imagination, in Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year (1993)

• The next voice you hear will undoubtedly be your own. Mignon McLaughlin, in The Second Neurotic’s Notebook (1966)

• There is no American border as perilous as the one separating self-knowledge from self-absorption. Mary McNamara, in her review of Amazon Prime’s television series “Transparent,” in the Los Angeles Times (Dec 5, 2015)

This was the opening line of McNamara’s review of Transparent, which she described as “one of the richest and most ambitious half-hour comedies ever.” She goes on to write that the show raises many important questions, including “How does one search for personal truth without collapsing into narcissism?”

• [He} was his own world, and nothing that concerned anyone else was important to him, and nothing that touched him unimportant. Kathleen Thompson Norris, the narrator describing the character Gordon, in Walls of Gold (1933)

• Why hope to live a long life if we’re only going to fill it with self-absorption, body maintenance, and image repair? Letty Cottin Pogrebin, in Getting Over Getting Older (1996)

Pogrebin added: “When we die, do we want people to exclaim ‘She looked ten years younger,’ or do we want them to say ‘She lived a great life’?”

• Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption. Paul Reiser, quoted in a 1997 issue of Good Housekeeping (specific issue undetermined)

• Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed. Leo Rosten, in The Return of H*y*m*a*n K*a*p*l*a*n (1959)

• He talked to her of himself, always of himself. George Sand, the narrator describing the character Laurent, in She and He (1859)

• Self-absorption is different from self-love. Diana Spechler, the narrator and protagonist Gray Lachmann speaking, in Skinny: A Novel (2011)

• None so empty as those who are full of themselves. Benjamin Whichcote, in Moral and Religious Aphorisms (1753)

QUOTE NOTE: In this observation, Whichcote is playing off “None so blind as those that will not see,” a proverbial English saying popularized by Matthew Henry in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708)

(see also ACCEPTANCE and CONFLICT—WITHIN ONESELF and SELF and (True to) SELF and SELF-ESTEEM)

• Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with myself. Nathaniel Branden, in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (1994)

• At thirty, a man should have himself well in hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures—be what he is. And above all accept these things. Albert Camus, notebook entry (July 30, 1945), in Carnets: 1942–1951 (1963)

• Until we can tolerate our own company, we cannot expect other people to be overjoyed by our presence. Dorothy Carnegie, in Don’t Grow Old—Grow Up! (1956)

• During much of my life, I was anxious to be what someone else wanted me to be. Now I have given up that struggle. I am what I am. Elizabeth Coatsworth, in Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography (1976)

• I’m Not OK, You’re Not OK—and That’s OK. William Sloane Coffin, title of book he said he would like to write, offered in a Riverside Church sermon (July 12, 1987)

• Accept the place the divine providence has found for you. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Essays: First Series (1841)

• There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. John Fowles, the character Maurice Conchis speaking, in The Magus (1965)

QUOTE NOTE: Conchis is speaking to Nichoas Urfe, the narrator and protagonist, and, at age twenty-five, many decades younger. Conchis added: “You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.”

• He who seeks for applause only from without, has all his happiness in another’s keeping. Oliver Goldsmith, the character Sir William speaking, in The Good-Natur’d Man (1768)

• Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. Audre Lorde, “Eye to Eye,” in Sister Outsider (1984)

Lorde continued: “I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.”

• Self-acceptance begets acceptance from others, which begets even deeper, more genuine self-acceptance. It can be done. But no one is going to bestow it on you. It is a gift only you can give yourself. Camryn Manheim, in Wake Up, I’m Fat! (1999)

• I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself. I want to be rich my myself, not by borrowing. Michel de Montaigne, “On Glory,” in Essays (1580-88)

• Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have. Doris Mortman, in Circles (1984)

• The best-adjusted people are the “psychologically patriotic,” who are glad to be what they are. Isabel Briggs Myers, in Gifts Differing (1980; with Peter B. Myers)

• Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. Flannery O’Connor, in letter to “A” (Dec. 9, 1961); reprinted in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor (1979; Sally Fitzgerald. ed.)

• Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves. Bonaro Overstreet, in The World Book Complete Word Power Library, Vol. 1 (1981)

• Unless I accept my faults I will most certainly doubt my virtues. Hugh Prather, in Notes to Myself (1983)

• The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. Carl Rogers, in On Becoming a Person (1961)

A moment later, Rogers went on to add: “We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.”

• Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it, one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world. Eleanor Roosevelt, the concluding words of the essay “How to Take Criticism,” in Ladies' Home Journal (Nov., 1944)

• The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else. J. K. Rowling, the narrator describing a belief of the character Stuart “Fats” Wall, in The Casual Vacancy (2012)

The narrator continued: “Honesty was Fats’ currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them. Other people Fats had discovered, were mired in embarrassment and pretense, terrified that their truths might leak out.”

• We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be. May Sarton, a reflection of the protagonist Hilary Stevens, in Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965)

• It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble, but we do know it is our sacred duty. Florida Scott Maxwell, in The Measure of My Days (1968)

• What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Henry David Thoreau, in Walden (1854)

• It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. Henry David Thoreau, in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

• A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. Mark Twain, the Old Man speaking, in title essay, in What is Man? And Other Essays (1917)

(see also BECOMING and CHANGE and GROWTH and EVOLUTION and SELF-CREATION)

• The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into luster. D. H. Lawrence, “Democracy,” in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays (1925; Michael Herbert, ed.)

(includes SELF-ASSESSMENT; see also SELF-ESTEEM and SELF-EXAMINATION)

• When, like me, one has nothing in oneself one hopes for everything from another. Colette (pen name of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette), the narrator Annie, comparing herself to protagonist Claudine, in Claudine and Annie (1903)

• It is the common failing of an ambitious mind to over-rate itself. Caroline Lamb, the voice of the narrator, in Glenaryon (1816)

• Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself. Anthony Trollope, the character Felix speaking, in Orly Farm: A Novel (1862)

Trollope returned to the theme in the 1864 novel Small House at Allington, where he had the character Lord De Guest say: “Above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.”

• One advantage of introspection is self-appraisal. Monitoring my behavior makes me behave better. When I err I’m forced to explain. Carll Tucker, in privately-circulated e-missive (Nov. 3, 2018)

(includes ASSURANCE; see also ASSERTION & ASSERTIVENESS and CONFIDENCE and SELF-CONFIDENCE and SELF-DOUBT and SELF-ESTEEM)

• Self-assurance reassures others. Garry Wills, in Introduction to Reagan’s America (1987)

(see also SELF-DECEPTION and SELF-KNOWLEDGE)

• All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. James Thurber, moral to the fable “The Shore and the Sea,” in Further Fables for Our Time (1956)

• Self-awareness is not self-centeredness and spirituality is not narcissism. Know thyself is not a narcissistic pursuit. Marianne Williamson, quoted in Lynda Gorov, “Faith: Marianne Williamson is Full of It,” in Mother Jones magazine (Nov.-Dec, 1997)

(see also INDULGENCE and PAMPERING and SELF-INDULGENCE)

• Women who buy perfume and flowers for themselves because men don’t do it are called “self-basting.” Adair Lara, in The San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 19, 1990)

(see also EGO and EGOCENTRICITY and SELF and SELF-ABSORPTION and SELFISHNESS)

• A person completely wrapped up in himself makes a small package. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in On Being a Real Person (1943)

• Life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. Betty Friedan, in The Second Stage (1981)

• People are self-centered/to a nauseous degree./They will keep on about themselves/while I'm explaining me. Piet Hein, “The Egocentrics,” in Grooks (1966)

• It was hard to communicate with you. You were always communicating with yourself. The line was busy. Jean Kerr, the character Mary speaking to ex-husband Bob about their marital relationship, in Mary, Mary (1961)

• The next voice you hear will undoubtedly be your own. Mignon McLaughlin, in The Second Neurotic’s Notebook (1966)

• [He} was his own world, and nothing that concerned anyone else was important to him, and nothing that touched him unimportant. Kathleen Thompson Norris, the narrator describing the character Gordon, in Walls of Gold (1933)

• He talked to her of himself, always of himself. George Sand, the narrator describing the character Laurent, in She and He (1859)

• None so empty as those who are full of themselves. Benjamin Whichcote, in Moral and Religious Aphorisms (1753)

QUOTE NOTE: In this observation, Whichcote is playing off “None so blind as those that will not see,” a proverbial English saying popularized by Matthew Henry in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708)

(see also ASSURANCE and CERTAINTY and CONFIDENCE and COMPETENCE and OVERCONFIDENCE and SELF-ASSURANCE and SELF-DOUBT and SELF-ESTEEM)

• Maturity is gratification delayed,/Self-confidence conveyed,/Opportunity parlayed,/Risk delayed,/Self-esteem displayed,/And self-denial repaid. Marlene Caroselli, in a personal communication to the compiler

QUOTE NOTE: This was the winning entry in a 2012 “Maturity Quotations Contest” sponsored through my weekly e-newsletter: Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week. To see the other top winners and twenty “Honorable Mentions” go to Dr. Mardy Newsletter.

• To have “It,' the fortunate possessor must have that strange magnetism which attracts both sexes. He or she must be entirely unself-conscious and full of self-confidence, indifferent to the effect he or she is producing, and uninfluenced by others. There must be physical attraction, but beauty is unnecessary. Elinor Glyn, in the title story of “It” and Other Stories (1927)

• Self-confidence is a healthy quality when it is grounded in competence, but a disabling one when one tries to bolster ineptitude and succeeds only in compounding it. Sydney J. Harris, in his “Strictly Personal” syndicated column (Oct. 23, 1985)

• Bragging is not merely designed to impress. Bragging is designed to produce envy and assert superiority. It is, therefore, an act of hostility. Bragging is also a transparent ploy. It reveals your lack of self-confidence. “I am not enough,” you feel. So you resort to showering me with your “achievements,” in order to mask your perceived deficiencies. Aaron Hass, in Doing the Right Thing: Cultivating Your Moral Intelligence (1998)

• The real “haves” are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. Eric Hoffer, in The True Believer (1951)

Hoffer continued: “On the other hand, the real ‘have nots’ are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.”

• I have confidence in fools…self-confidence is what my friends call it. Edgar Allan Poe, “Marginalia.” in Democratic Review (Nov. 1844)

• There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open—to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren’t afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas. Jack Welch, in Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)

• Life for both sexes…is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own (1929)

(includes SELF-DISCIPLINE and SELF-RESTRAINT; see also ABSTINENCE and DISCIPLINE and SELF-DISCIPLINE and SELF-RELIANCE and VICTORY OVER SELF and WILL and WILLPOWER)

• A little kingdom I possess,/Where thoughts and feelings dwell;/And very hard the task I find/Of governing it well. Louisa May Alcott, in the poem “My Kingdom” (1845), first published in The Sunny Side (1875)

QUOTE NOTE: Alcott said about the poem when it was finally published thirty years later: “It is the only hymn I ever wrote. It was composed at age thirteen, and as I still find the same difficulty in governing my kingdom, it still expresses my soul’s desire, and I have nothing better to offer.”

• It is a question whether the great majority of people do not ruin their lives and mar their happiness by lack of self-control. James Allen, in As a Man Thinketh (1903)

Allen added: “How few people we meet in life who are well-balanced, who have that exquisite poise which is characteristic of the finished character!”

• Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. James Allen, in As a Man Thinketh (1903)

Earlier in the book, a classic in self-help literature, Allen wrote: “A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought-forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought.”

• I am,/indeed,/a king,/because I know how.to rule myself. Pietro Aretino, in letter to Agostino Ricchi (May 10, 1537)

• If, in a word, it be in our power to do what is noble and what is disgraceful, it is equally in our power not to do it. Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics (4th c. B.C.)

QUOTE NOTE: This is the classical translation of Aristotle’s thought, which is now more likely to be seen in this pithier version: “What lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”

• I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self. Aristotle, quoted in Johannes Stobaeus, Florilegium (5th c. A.D.)

• No man is such a conqueror as the man who has defeated himself. Henry Ward Beecher, “The Temporal Advantages of Religion,” in The Original Plymouth Pulpit Sermons, Sep. 1872–March 1873 (1893)

• He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. The Bible—Proverbs 16:32 (RSV)

• Strict exercise of self-control is an essential feature of the Christian’s life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship (1937)

• Nothing ever really sets human nature free, but self-control. Phyllis Bottome, in Not in Our Stars (1955)

• Prudent, cautious self-control/Is wisdom’s root. Robert Burns, in “A Bard’s Epitaph” (1786)

QUOTE NOTE: This is a snippet from the closing words of one of Burns’s most celebrated poems. The fuller passage went this way: “Reader, attend! whether thy soul/Soars fancy’s flights beyond the pole,/Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,/In low pursuit;/Know, prudent, cautious self-control/Is wisdom’s root.”

• Is there no danger of our self-control degenerating into tyranny? A man may lay severe rules on himself as truly as another may. William Ellery Channing, in Dr. Channing’s Note-Book: Passages from the Unpublished Manuscripts of William Ellery Channing (1887; Grace Ellery Channing, ed.)

• The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our own thoughts. Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man (1871)

• You can have neither a greater nor a less dominion than over yourself. Leonardo da Vinci, a circa 1500 entry, in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1957; Robert Newton Linscott, ed.)

• The discipline of desire is the backbone of character. Will Durant & Ariel Durant, in The Story of Civilization: The Age of Louis XIV, Vol. VIII (1963)

ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, this observation is mistakenly attributed to John Locke. In truth, the Durants were summarizing Locke’s approach to the education of children. They continued by writing: “This discipline is to be made as pleasant as possible, but it is to be insisted upon throughout [childhood].”

• As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, in Aphorisms (1880–93)

• Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society. Tryon Edwards, in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1891)

ERROR ALERT: On almost all internet sites, this quotation is mistakenly attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

• Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire. Epictetus, in Discourses (2nd c. A.D.)

• Self-discipline is the free man’s yoke. Either he is his own master or he will be his own slave—not merely as slave to his passions, as an earlier generation might have feared, but a slave to his unbounded ego. John W. Gardner, in The Recovery of Confidence (1970)

Gardner introduced the thought by writing: “Every step toward removal of arbitrary constraints on individual behavior must be accompanied by increments in self-imposed controls.”

• Everything that frees our spirit without giving us control of ourselves is ruinous. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe (1892; T. Bailey Saunders, ed.)

• Self-control, in every station and to every individual, is indispensable, if people would retain that equanimity of mind, which, depending on self-respect, is the essential of contentment and happiness. Sarah Josepha Hale, in Sketches of American Character (1929)

• Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure. Sydney J. Harris, in Pieces of Eight (1982)

• Discipline comes through self-control. If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self. You may see at one and the same time both your best friend and your greatest enemy, by stepping in front of a mirror. Napoleon Hill, in Think and Grow Rich (1937)

• The control of our being is not unlike the combination of a safe. One turn of the know rarely unlocks the safe. Each advance and retreat is a step toward one’s goal. Eric Hoffer, in The Passionate State of Mind (1955)

• Rule your mind, which, if it is not your servant, is your master. Horace, in Odes (1st c. B.C.)

QUOTE NOTE: These days, this observation is almost always presented in a leaner translation: “Rule your mind, or it will rule you.”

• He who overcomes others is strong, but he who overcomes himself is mightier still. Lao-Tzu, in Tao-te Ching (6th c. B.C.)

• The middle gear of any man is self-discipline. John le Carré, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Bruno Salvador, in The Mission Song: A Novel (2006)

• I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who cannot control himself. Robert E. Lee, quoted in Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee (1875; John William Jones, ed.)

QUOTE NOTE: According to his biographers, Lee made this remark after refusing to promote several Confederate officers who were unable to control their fondness for hard liquor.

• Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint. James Russell Lowell, in “Under the Old Elm” (1875)

• Self-control is at the root of all the virtues. Let a man yield to his impulses and passions, and from that moment he gives up his moral freedom. Orison Swett Marden, in Rising in the World: Or, Architects of Fate (1895)

• He that would govern others, first should be/The master of himself. Phillip Massinger, the character Timoleon speaking, in The Bondman (1624)

• Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion. W. Somerset Maugham, a reflection of protagonist Philip Carey, in Of Human Bondage (1915)

QUOTE NOTE: This thought comes to Philip as he is reflecting on where he’s going with his life and career, and feeling “strangely that he was on the threshold of some new discovery in life.” Here’s the full passage from which this snippet was taken: “He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.”

• He who reigns within himself, and rules/Passions, desires, and fears, is more than a king. John Milton, in Paradise Regained (1671)

• Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them, if they will not apply themselves to me. Michel de Montaigne, “Of Presumption,” in Essays (1580–88)

• The success of life, the formation of character, is in proportion to the courage one has to say to one’s ownself: “Thou shalt not.” Carry Nation, in The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation (1905)

• The poorest education that teaches self-control is better than the best that neglects it. Dorothy Nevill, in My Own Times (1912)

• He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Of Self-Overcoming,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)

• No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself. William Penn, in No Cross, No Crown (1669)

• What self is employed to control the self that is out of control? Hart Pomerantz, in personal communication to the compiler (Sep. 12, 2018)

• It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn. George Santayana, in Winds of Doctrine (1913)

• Man who man would be,/Must rule the empire of himself. Percy Bysshe Shelley, in the poem “Political Greatness” (1821)

• A little self-control at the right moment may prevent much subsequent compulsion at the hands of others. Arthur Schopenhauer, “Counsels and Maxims,” in Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer (1851; T. Bailey Saunders, ed.)

• What now is the most important attribute of man as a moral being? May we not answer—the faculty of self-control? This it is which forms a chief distinction between the human being and the brute. Herbert Spencer, in Social Statics: Or, the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness (1850)

• Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,/These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in “Oenone” (1832)

• Who has a fiercer struggle than he who strives to conquer himself? Thomas à Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (c. 1420)

• Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage. Thucydides, in History of the Pelopennesian War (5th c. B.C.)

• There never has been, and cannot be, a good life without self-control. Apart from self-control, no good life is imaginable. The attainment of goodness must begin with that. Leo Tolstoy, “The First Step” (1892) in Essays and Letters (1904)

• I cannot conceive of a good life which isn’t, in some sense, a self-disciplined life. Philip Toynbee, in The Distant Drum: Reflections on the Spanish Civil War (1976)

• In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves and their carnal urges. Self-discipline with all of them came first. Harry S Truman, in The Autobiography of Harry S Truman (pub. posthumously in 1980; Robert H. Ferrell, ed).

• I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest results are those…who never grow excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed, patient, and polite. Booker T. Washington, in Up From Slavery (1901)

• There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within—not without. It is each man’s own affair. H. G. Wells, the character Ostrog speaking, in When the Sleeper Wakes (1910)

• Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. Elie Wiesel, in All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (1995)

• A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. Oscar Wilde, the title character speaking, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Speaking to his friend Basil, Dorian continues: “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoiy them, to dominate them.”

• If you lose self-control everything will fall. You cannot function physically or mentally or in any other way unless your emotions are under control. John Wooden, in They Call Me Coach (2003; with Jack Tobin).

(see also BECOMING and PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT and SELF-ACTUALIZATION and SELF-HELP)

• Everyone gets to be something by starting as something else—either that or he stays unevolved. John Ciardi, quoted in Vince Clemente, “‘A Man is What He Does with His Attention’: A Conversation with John Ciardi,’ in Vince Clemente, John Ciardi: Measure of the Man (1987)

• We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, and meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Henry David Thoreau, in Walden (1854)

Thoreau introduced the thought by writing: “Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own.”

• Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Louis L’Amour, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Mathurin Kerbouchard, in The Walking Drum (1984)

Kerbouchard continued: “Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I will be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.”

(see also ABUSE and CRITICISM and SELF-REPROACH)

• What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism. G. K. Chesterton, “On Bright Old Things—And Other Things,” in Sidelights on New London and Newer New York: And Other Essays (1932)

Chesterton continued: “It is comparatively of little consequence that you occasionally break out and abuse other people, so long as you do not absolve yourself. The former is a natural collapse of human weakness; the latter is a blasphemous assumption of divine power.”

(includes FOOLING OURSELFES; see also DECEPTION and DUPES & DUPING and ERROR and FALSEHOOD & HONESTY and ILLUSION and RATIONALIZATION and SELF-KNOWLEDGE and TRUTH)

• The fly sat upon the axel-tree of the chariot wheel and said, “What a dust do I raise!” Aesop, “The Fly on the Wheel,” in Fables (6th c. B.C.)

• The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, in “Leaves From a Notebook,” in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• His mistaken belief in his own superiority cut him off from reality as completely as if he were living in a colored glass jar. Margery Allingham, protagonist Albert Campion’s reflection the character Lee Aubrey, a brilliant, but sinister megalomaniac, in Traitor’s Purse (1941)

• The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception. Gertrude Atherton, in The Adventures of a Novelist (1932)

• There is no such flatterer as is a man’s self. Francis Bacon, “Of Friendship,” in Essays (1625)

QUOTE NOTE: In his “On Love” essay in the same collection, Bacon further explored the topic, this time quoting an unnamed source: “It hath been well said, ‘That the arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self.’” Many reference sources mistakenly attribute the quotation directly to Bacon.

• If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. The Bible—I John 1:8 (KJV)

• Self-esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

• In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism. David Brin, in The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? (1998)

• I fear one lies more to one’s self than to any one else. George Noel Gordon (Lord Byron), a notebook entry (Dec. 6, 1813), in Byron’s Letters and Journals, Vol. 3 (1974; Leslie Marchand, ed.)

• O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as others see us!/It would frae mony a blunder free us,/And foolish notion. Robert Burns, in “To a Louse” (1786)

QUOTE NOTE: This legendary quatrain is the source of the popular expression to see ourselves as other see us. In the poem, Burns is suggesting that God would be giving us a great gift indeed if he granted us such a power—for if we could only see ourselves as others do, we would be far less likely to blunder or hold foolish notions.

• The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

• Self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally more and more. Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as King,” in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)

QUOTE NOTE: Carlyle was writing this about Napoleon I after he had ascended to power. He introduced the thought by writing that Napoleon began to renounce “his old faith in Facts, took to believing in Semblances; strove to connect himself with Austrian Dynasties, Popedoms, with the old false Feudalities, which he once saw clearly to be false.” He continued about the French emperor near the end of his reign: “He did not know true from false now when he looked at them—the fearfulest (sic) penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. Self and false ambition had now become his god.”

• No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind. Miguel de Cervantes, the title character speaking, in Don Quixote (1605)

• The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions. Leonardo da Vinci, in Notebooks (1508–18)

• When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something…but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen…and then is when we are in bad trouble. Joan Didion, “On Morality,” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

• Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself. Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect,” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

QUOTE NOTE: Metaphors often clarify, but they sometimes confuse—and that appears to be the case with this otherwise wonderful observation. The concept of self-deception suggests that we are in the dark about something, so the notion of a very well-lit back alley simply doesn’t work here.

• We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. Annie Dillard, in Holy the Firm (1977)

• Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the character Father Zosima speaking, in The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

QUOTE NOTE: After continuing with a few more thoughts on the dangers of lying to oneself, Father Zosima concludes by saying: “A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility.”

• No man is wise at all times, or is without his blind side. Desiderius Erasmus, in Colloquies of Erasmus (1518)

• The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. Richard Feynman, in a 1974 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology; later published in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

• Self-deception, n. The low road to peace of mind. Leonard Roy Frank, a Tweet (Aug., 1, 2013)

• Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thyself? Benjamin Franklin, in a 1738 issue of Poor Richard’s Almanack

• Until the Donkey tried to clear/The Fence, he thought himself a Deer. Arthur Guiterman, in A Poet’s Proverbs (1924)

• There is no delusion more fatal, no folly more profound, than a man’s belief that he can kick and gouge and scheme his way to the top—and then afford the luxury of being a good person; for no consequence is more certain than that we become what we do. Sydney J. Harris, in Last Things First (1961)

• Everyone admits that “the truth hurts” but no one applies this adage to himself—and as soon as it begins to hurt us, we quickly repudiate it and call it a lie. Sydney J. Harris, in On the Contrary (1964).

Harris continued: “It is this tendency toward self-deception (more than any active sin) that makes human progress slow and almost imperceptible.”

• Self-deception is sometimes as necessary a tool as a crowbar. Moss Hart, in Act One (1959)

• If tempted by something that feels “altruistic,” examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it! Robert A. Heinlein, an entry in “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,” in Time Enough for Love (1973)

Long preceded this observation by writing: “Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.”

• We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves. Eric Hoffer, in The Passionate State of Mind (1955)

• Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning. Karen Horney, in Our Inner Conflicts (1945)

• I’m interested in memory because it’s a filter through which we see our lives, and because it’s foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened. Kazuo Ishiguro, quoted in “In the Land of Memory,” a 2001 CNN “Book News” broadcast by Adam Dunn (specific date undetermined)

• No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculation than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius. Samuel Johnson, in The Rambler (Sep. 7, 1751)

• It is the common failing of an ambitious mind to over-rate itself. Caroline Lamb, the voice of the narrator, in Glenaryon (1816)

• It is as easy to deceive ourselves without noticing as it is hard to deceive others without their noticing. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)

• Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)

This observation has also been popularly translated this way: “Our enemies come nearer the truth in their judgment of us than we do ourselves.”

• Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, in Unkempt Thoughts (1957)

• Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable. W. Somerset Maugham, an 1896 journal entry, in A Writer’s Notebook (1949)

• Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself,but also and more particularly by himself—by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true. H. L. Mencken, in Prejudices: Third Series (1922)

• We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1962)

• While every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty (1859)

• The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible. Hannah More, “Self-Love,” in Practical Piety (1811)

• There are certain faults which press too near our self-love to be even perceptible to us. Hannah More, in Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society (1788)

More preceded the thought by writing: “It may be in morals as it is in optics, the eye and the object may come too close to each other, to answer the end of vision.”

• It is amazing how people deceive themselves and others when it is in their interest to do so. Jawaharlal Nehru, in letter to daughter Indira (Sep. 27, 1932); reprinted in Glimpses of World History (1934)

• The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one’s self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Antichrist (1888)

• The worst of all deceptions is self-deception. Plato, quoted in Victorino Tejera, Plato’s Dialogues One by One: A Structural Interpretation (1984)

• Things are as they are, and no amount of self-deception makes them otherwise. Agnes Repplier, “The Cheerful Clan,” in Points of Friction (1920)

• Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. Bertrand Russell, “Dreams and Facts,” in Sceptical Essays (1928)

• No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid, and, however unpleasant the truth may be, it is better to face it once for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to build your life in accordance with it. Bertrand Russell, in The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

• Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves. Carl Sagan, in Cosmos (1980)

• Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred. Carl Sagan, in Cosmos (1980)

• For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. Carl Sagan, in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

• Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer, “Psychological Observations,” in Studies in Pessimism (1851)

• We all have our little illusions about our own mental capacities. Cornelia Otis Skinner, “The Sea-Tossed Muse,” in Bottoms Up! (1955)

• It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions—especially selfish ones. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974; Leopold Labedz, ed.)

• The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty. Publilius Syrus, in Sententiae (1st c. B.C.)

• Man persuades himself that he is emancipated every time that he decorates a new servitude with the name of liberty. Achille Tournier, in Autumn Thoughts (1888)

• Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. Barbara W. Tuchman, in The March of Folly (1984)

• We do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves. Mark Twain, “Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?” in The North American Review (April, 1902)

• What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it. Miguel de Unamuno, in The Tragic Sense of Life (1912)

• If there were a verb meaning “to believe falsely,” it would not have any significant first-person, present indicative. Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Philosophical Investigations (1953)

QUOTE NOTE: In plain English, this means that it is virtually impossible for people to say “I am currently believing falsely” when they’re in the middle of falsely believing something. Of course, they might—and often do—say in the past tense, “I have believed falsely.” But when people believe something, at the very moment they express the belief, they invariably conclude that it is true.

• The instinct for self-deception in human beings makes them try to banish from their minds dangers of which at bottom they are perfectly aware by declaring them non-existent. Stefan Zweig, in Beware of Pity (1939).

(see also DESTRUCTION and ENEMIES and FOLLY and [Self-Inflicted] WOUNDS)

• We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction. Aesop, “The Eagle and the Arrow,” in Fables (6th c. B.C.)

• Yet is every man his own greatest enemy, and as if were his own executioner. Sir Thomas Browne, in Religio Medici (1643)

QUOTE NOTE: The first portion of this observation is also commonly translated: “Every man is his own greatest enemy.”

• All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. Edmund Burke, in Two Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory (9th ed.; 1796)

• Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within. Miguel de Cervantes, the title character speaking, in Don Quixote (1605)

• When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand. John Cheever, a 1952 diary entry, in John Cheever: The Journals (1991; Robert Gottlieb, ed.)

• Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes. Anaïs Nin, a 1961 diary entry, in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 6 (1976)

• Misfortunes one can endure—they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults—ah! There is the sting of life. Oscar Wilde, the character Lord Windermere speaking, in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)

(see also BECOMING and RESPONSIBILITY and SELF-ACTUALIZATION and SELF-CONTROL and SELF-HELP and SELF-RELIANCE and SELF-SACRIFICE and SELF-SUFFICIENCY)

• My first duty is to develop all the powers given to me and to make the most of myself and my own life. Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in The Woman’s Bible (1895)

QUOTE NOTE: Almost all reference sources attribute this quotation directly to Stanton, and it certainly captures one of her core beliefs. In the book, however, Stanton is wishing that the biblical character known as Jephthah’s daughter—who had willingly accepted a life of total self-sacrifice to her father—had made the foregoing statement as a rebuke to her father. In fact, here’s the full version of what Stanton wished the daughter had said (note how modern-sounding the words are):

“I will not consent to such a sacrifice. Your vow must be disallowed. You may sacrifice your own life as you please, but you have no right over mine. I am on the threshold of life, the joys of youth and of middle age are all before me. You are in the sunset; you have had your blessings and your triumphs; but mine are yet to come. Life is to me full of hope and of happiness. Better that you die than I, if the God whom you worship is pleased with the sacrifice of human life. I consider that God has made me the arbiter of my own fate and all my possibilities. My first duty is to develop all the powers given to me and to make the most of myself and my own life. Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”

(see also ABSTINENCE and CHARACTER and DISCIPLINE and RESPONSIBILITY and SELF-CONTROL and VICTORY OVER SELF)

• Self-discipline is the free man’s yoke. Either he is his own master or he will be his own slave—not merely as slave to his passions, as an earlier generation might have feared, but a slave to his unbounded ego. John W. Gardner, in The Recovery of Confidence (1970)

Gardner introduced the thought by writing: “Every step toward removal of arbitrary constraints on individual behavior must be accompanied by increments in self-imposed controls.”

• Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure. Sydney J. Harris, in Pieces of Eight (1982)

• The middle gear of any man is self-discipline. John le Carré, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Bruno Salvador, in The Mission Song: A Novel (2006)

• I cannot conceive of a good life which isn’t, in some sense, a self-disciplined life. Philip Toynbee, in The Distant Drum: Reflections on the Spanish Civil War (1976)

• In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves and their carnal urges. Self-discipline with all of them came first. Harry S Truman, in The Autobiography of Harry S Truman (pub. posthumously in 1980; Robert H. Ferrell, ed).

(see also SELF-AWARENESS and SELF-EXAMINATION and SELF-KNOWLEDGE)

• There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storm. George Eliot, the voice of the narrator, in Daniel Deronda (1874)

(see also CONFIDENCE and DOUBT and SELF-APPRAISAL and SELF-CONFIDENCE and SELF-ESTEEM)

• Doubt comes to the door in darkness, pretending to be alone and in need of your compassionate ear. But if you let him in, he’ll bring his friends, and doubt can be very persuasive in getting in. Julia Cameron, in Walking in This World: The Practical Art of Creativity (2002)

Writing about self-doubt, Cameron continued: “Doubt is a great seducer. ‘I just want you to think about this,’ it whispers. Out comes the artist’s ears. Out comes the dagger. ‘Maybe you didn’t and don’t have enough talent after al. . . .’ Feel the sharp piercing? It might be your creative lung collapsing around the table.”

• The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt. If every day I find myself more circumspect toward my work, and more uncertain as to whether I should continue, my only self-assurance comes from my fear itself. For when a writer loses his self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside his pen. Colette, in a letter to Francis Carco, reprinted in Belles Saisons: A Colette Scrapbook (1978; Robert Phelps, ed.)

In that same letter, Colette wrote: “It’s terrible to think, as I do every time I begin a book, that I no longer have, and never have had, any talent.”

• The future has a way of embarrassing the present, and…a pinch of self-doubt is never more needful than at just the moment when any doubt is deemed heretical. Jeff Jacoby, “The House of Tudor Didn’t Get the Last Word,” in The Boston Globe (March 26, 2015)

Jacoby added: “To err is human, to be human is to err. Don’t be too sure that history, or the moral arc of the universe, will approve of your preferences and convictions.”

• Self-doubt is insidious, and gnaws away at the self-image as cancer eats away at the body’s organs. Maxwell Maltz, in The New Psycho-Cybernetics (2001; Dan S. Kennedy, ed.)

• Our doubts are traitors/And make us lose the good we oft might win/By fearing to attempt. William Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure (1604-05)

(see also CONFIDENCE and ESTEEM and SELF-APPRAISAL and SELF-CONFIDENCE and SELF-REGARD and SELF-RESPECT)

• Self-esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

• Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. Nathaniel Branden, in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (1994)

Later in the book, Branden wrote: “When it comes to matters of self-esteem, I have more to fear from my own judgment than from anyone else’s. In the inner courtroom of my mind, mine is the only judgment that counts (italics in original).

• When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves. Clayton M. Christensen, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” Harvard Business Review (July-August 2010)

• The world is terribly apt to take people at their own valuation. Amelila B. Edwards, the voice of the narrator, in Half a Million of Money (1865)

• The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others. Sonya Friedman, in On a Clear Day You Can See Yourself: Turning the Life You Have Into the Life You Want (1994)

• People take you at your own valuation; might as well set it high. Alice Walworth Graham, in The Natchez Woman (1950)

• Self-esteem = Success divided by Pretensions. William James, in The Principles of Psychology (1890)

QUOTE NOTE: In his classic text, James presented the observation as if it were a mathematical formula (see at Self-Esteem). He introduced the thought by writing: “Our self-feeling in this world…is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities.” And he concluded by writing: “Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator.”

• Learning to deal with setbacks, and maintaining the persistence and optimism necessary for childhood's long road to mastery are the real foundations of lasting self-esteem. Lilian G. Katz, “Reading, Writing, Narcissism,” in The New York Times (July 15, 1993)

• Of all traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome; for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase, “It’s no use—I can’t do it.” Maxwell Maltz, in The New Psycho-Cybernetics (2001; Dan S. Kennedy, ed.)

• You can be pleased with nothing when you are not pleased with yourself. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, from a 1712 letter, in The Best Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1901; Octave Thanet, ed.)

• Nothing enhances self-esteem so much as the ability to do something well. Susan Ohanian, in Ask Ms. Class (1996)

• Honor is self-esteem made visible in action. Ayn Rand, in the title essay of Philosophy: Who Needs It? (1982)

QUOTE NOTE: The title essay is a reprint of a March 6, 1974 speech Rand gave to the graduating class of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point. In the speech, she argued that philosophy can and should play a pivotal role in human life. In particular, she further argued that people needed to occasionally examine the assumptions that undergird their thoughts and actions if they are to live a productive and meaningful life.

• Self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it. Gloria Steinem, in Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (1992)

• As the internal-combustion engine runs on gasoline, so the person runs on self-esteem. Thomas Szasz, in The Second Sin (1973)

Szasz continued: “If he is full of it, he is good for a long run; if he is partly filled, he will soon need to be refueled; and if he is empty, he will come to a stop.”

• Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. Thomas Szasz, in Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary (2004)

Szasz continued: “That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”

• Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself. Anthony Trollope, the character Felix speaking, in Orley Farm: A Novel (1862)

Trollope returned to the theme in the 1864 novel Small House at Allington, where he had the character Lord De Guest say: “Above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.”

• lack of self-esteem is what causes wars because people who really love themselves don't go out and try to fight other people. Oprah Winfrey, quoted in Nellie Bly, Oprah: Up Close and Down Home (1993)

Winfrey went on to add about self-esteem: “It’s the root of all the problems.”

(see also SELF-APPRAISAL)

• Introspection is the process of self-examination. It occurs naturally over the life span, although some people are naturally more introspective than others. James Thorson, in Aging in a Changing Society (2000)

• When something bad happens is when you really learn. It causes self-examination, it causes you to take a look at yourself. You naturally start analyzing. It’s not that you’re wrong; it’s that sometimes you just need to make adjustments. Jennifer Lopez, “Jennifer Lopez: The All-Star” (interview with Jane Fonda), Glamour magazine (Oct. 31, 2011)

Lopez added: “Change your way of thinking, change your way of doing, change your way of choosing.”

(see also BELIEF and DELUSION and ERROR and SELF-DECEPTION and PROPHECY and TRUTH & FALSEHOOD)

• Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true. Sydney J. Harris, in his “Strictly Personal” syndicated column (May 16, 1974)

• This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. Robert K. Merton, “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” in The Antioch Review (Summer, 1948)

QUOTE NOTE: In this 1948 article, Merton, a prominent American sociologist, coined the term self-fulfilling prophecy to describe false or mistaken notions that, because are believed, cause themselves to become true (note how he cleverly tweaks the concept of a reign of terror in the process). Citing numerous historical examples of the phenomenon, Merton more fully expressed the thought this way:

“The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.”

(see also GLORY and EGOCENTRICITY and INSECURITY and NARCISSISM & NARCISSISTS and SELF-ABSORPTION and SELF-CENTEREDNESS and SELF-PROMOTION and SELFISHNESS)

• No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculation than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius. Samuel Johnson, in The Rambler (Sep. 7, 1751)

• Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. Robert M. Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Pirsig went on to add: “When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out.”

• It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”), in a 1991 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine (specific issue undetermined)

• If you want people to think well of you, do not speak well of yourself. Blaise Pascal, in Pensées (1670)

• Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar,” in Following the Equator (1897)

(including SELF-HELP BOOKS; see also BECOMING and PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT and SELF-ACTUALIZATION and SELF-CREATION and SELF-RELIANCE)

• Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Essays: First Series (1841)

Emerson continued: “Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him.”

• The buying of a self-help book is the most desperate of all human acts. It means you’ve lost your mind completely: You’ve entrusted your mental health to a self-aggrandizing twit with a psychology degree and a yen for a yacht. Cynthia Heimel, in Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-Bye (1993)

(see also SELF and SELF-APPRAISAL and SELF-CONFIDENCE and SELF-ESTEEM and SELF-REGARD and SELF-RESPECT)

• Hair is sexy. Hair brings one’s self-image into focus; it is vanity’s proving ground. Shana Alexander, “Hair Is Terribly Personal,” in Life magazine (1966)

Alexander went on to add: “Hair is terribly personal, a tangle of mysterious prejudices.”

• The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image. Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Angles of Vision,” in Marc Patcher, Telling Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography (1979)

• It is terrible to destroy a person’s picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. Doris Lessing, a reflection of protagonist Mary Turner, in The Grass is Singing (1950)

Turner continued: “How can one know he will be able to create another to enable him to go on living?”

• Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself. Anthony Trollope, the character Felix speaking, in Orly Farm: A Novel (1862)

Trollope returned to the theme in the 1864 novel Small House at Allington, where he had the character Lord De Guest say: “Above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning.”

• You cannot consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way you see yourself. Your self-image will lead you to the top of the stairway or put you on an escalator to the basement. Zig Ziglar, in See You at the Top (1975)

(includes INTEREST; see also EGO and EGOCENTRICITY and SELF and SELF-ABSORPTION and SELFISHNESS and STINGINESS)

• Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves. Gene Fowler, in Skyline: A Reporter’s Reminiscence of The 1920s (1961)

• Never appeal to a man’s “better nature.” He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage. Robert A. Heinlein, a passage from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,” in Time Enough for Love (1973)

• Love is the most subtle form of self-interest. Holbrook Jackson, in Platitudes in the Making (1911)

• Every man’s affairs, however little, are important to himself. Samuel Johnson, in letter to the Earl of Bute (Nov. 3, 1762); reprinted in James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

• We talk on principle, but we act on interest. Walter Savage Landor, Lopez Baños speaking, in “Baños and Alpuente,” Imaginary Conversations, Fourth Series (1829)

Baños preceded the thought by writing: “Principles do not mainly influence even the principled.”

• Interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665). Also an example of oxymoronica.

• There are two levers for moving men—interest and fear. Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), quoted in Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Napoleon; or The Man of the World,” Representative Men (1850)

(see also DECEPTION and ERROR and KNOWLEDGE and SELF-DECEPTION and TRUTH and WISDOM)

• There’s a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves, and it becomes either good or sour inside. Pearl Bailey, in The Raw Pearl (1968)

• When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea (1955)

• You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. Beryl Markham, in West With the Night (1942)

• Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed off wings where he never ventures. François Mauriac, in Second Thoughts: Reflections on Literature and on Life (1961)

• Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,/These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in the poem “Oenone” (1832)

(includes SELF-HATRED; see also SELF-APPRAISAL and SELF CONCEPT and SELF IMAGE)

• Insecurity breeds treachery: if you are kind to people who hate themselves, they will hate you as well. Florence King, in With Charity Toward None (1992)

(see also SELF-ABSORPTION and EGOCENTRICITY and LOVE and NARCISSISM)

• Service is love made visible. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself. Stephen Colbert, in 2011 Commencement Address at Northwestern University (his alma mater)

• Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others. Germaine de Staël, the voice of the narrator, in Corinne (1807)

• We cease loving ourselves when no one loves us. Germaine de Staël, quoted in C. A. Sainte-Beuve, “Madame de Staël” (1835), in Portraits of Women (1891)

• As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love—when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them. George Eliot, “The Wasp Credited with the Honey-Comb,” in Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

QUOTE NOTE: There are two complete thoughts in this observation, and both are interesting. The first is an intrapersonal one: we often tend to forget things that are inconsistent with (or worse, unflattering to) the way we view ourselves. The second is interpersonal: when we do remember these less flattering things about ourselves, other people can only mention them at some risk to themselves.

• I thought narcissism meant you loved yourself. And then someone told me there is a flip side to it. So it’s actually drearier than self-love; it’s unrequited self-love. Emily Levin, in TEDTalk (Feb., 2002)

• Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)

• In jealousy there is more of self-love than love. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)

• There are certain faults which press too near our self-love to be even perceptible to us. Hannah More, in Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society (1788)

More preceded the thought by writing: “It may be in morals as it is in optics, the eye and the object may come too close to each other, to answer the end of vision.”

• Self-absorption is different from self-love. Diana Spechler, the narrator and protagonist Gray Lachmann speaking, in Skinny: A Novel (2011)

• Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults. Philip Dormer Stanhope (Lord Chesterfield), in letter to his son (June 21, 1748)

(see also INTROSPECTION)

• Association with human beings lures one into self-observation. Franz Kafka, notebook entry #77 (written 1917-18), in The Zürau Aphorisms (original published posthumously in 1931 by Kafka friend Max Brod under the title Reflections of Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way)

(see also CONFIDENCE and SELF-CONFIDENCE and SELF-DOUBT and SELF-ESTEEM and TRUST & DISTRUST)

• It is well known that those who do not trust themselves never trust others. Alfred Adler, in Understanding Human Nature (1928)

QUOTE NOTE: This maxim about self-trust has been well known for centuries. In his Memoirs (1717), the French clergyman known to history as Cardinal de Retz (formally, Jean-François Paul de Gondi) expressed it this way: “A man who does not trust himself will never really trust anybody.”

• Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below your conscious level. Joyce Brothers, in How to Get Whatever You Want Out of Life (1978)

• In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in The American Scholar (1837)

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Essays: First Series (1841)

Emerson went on to add: “Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.”

• Self-trust is the essence of heroism. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism,” in Essays: First Series (1841)

• Self-trust, we know is the first secret of success. Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, in Notes on Men, Women, and Books (1891)

AUTHOR NOTE: Lady Jane, a linguist, poet, and outspoken Irish nationalist, was the wife of eminent eye surgeon William Wilde and mother of Oscar Wilde. Many of her works appeared under the pen name Speranza, the Italian word for hope. After Sir William’s death in 1879, she moved from Dublin to London, where she joined her son Oscar and befriended other Irish writers, including George Bernard Shaw and William Butler Yeats.

(see also DESPAIR and MISERY and PITY and SORROW)

• Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. Maya Angelou, in Gather Together in My Name (1974)

ERROR ALERT: Many internet quotation collections mistakenly have early stages.

• Self-pity is, perhaps, the least becoming of all emotions, and we often indulge in it only because we are too exhausted to resist. Ivy Baker Priest, in Green Grows Ivy (1958)

• Self-pity is the simplest luxury. Peg Bracken, in Bingo (1988)

• Self-sacrifice is one of a woman’s seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation). Sarah Ban Breathnach, in Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self (1998)

• Self-pity dries up our sympathy for others. Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 9th Selection (1992)

• Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice. Cyril Connolly, in The Unquiet Grave (1944)

• Self-pity is better than none. Phyllis Diller, in Phyllis Diller’s Marriage Manual (1967)

• Her own misery filled her heart; there was no room in it for other people's sorrow. George Eliot, the narrator describing the character Hetty, in Adam Bede (1859)

• Self-pity is a death that has no resurrection, a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to sink. Elisabeth Elliot, quoted in Leslie Ann Gibson, The Woman's Book of Positive Quotations (2002)

• Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self. Millicent Fenwick

QUOTATION CAUTION: Even though no formal documentation has ever been provided for this quotation, it is enormously popular on internet quotation sites and may even be regarded as the single best thing ever said on the subject of self-pity. It also comes from one of my all-time favorite politicians (see Millicent Fenwick).

• “You’ve totally taken all the charm and romance out of self-pity for me, I’ll tell you that for nothing,” Suzanne’s best friend Lucy told her one day. Carrie Fisher, in The Best Awful (2003)

• Self-pity gets you nowhere. But insight to see that something can be done with the second-bests and adventurous daring to try might be a handle to take hold of. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in Riverside Sermons (1958)

• It was strange that self-pity wasn’t on the list of deadly sins; none was deadlier. Jonathan Franzen, a reflection of protagonist Russ Hildebrandt, in Crossroads (2021)

• Certainly the most destructive vice, if you like, that a person can have, more than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins, is self-pity. I think self-pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. Stephen Fry, in BBC interview with Mark Lawson (September, 2008)

Fry went on to add: “It destroys everything around it, except itself. Self-pity will destroy relationships, it’ll destroy anything that’s good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes, and leave only itself.” To see full observation, go to Fry on Self-Pity.

• Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. John W. Gardner, in The Recovery of Confidence (1970)

• The teeth of self-pity had gnawed away her essential self. Willa Gibbs, in Seed of Mischief (1953)

• I think it's very important to be alone. Loneliness is just an idea that, I'm afraid, has something to do with self-pity. Helen Hayes, in A Gathering of Hope (1983)

• Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul. Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation. Paul Hoffman, the narrator speaking, in The Last Four Things (2011)

• I never saw a wild thing/Sorry for itself./A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough/Without ever having felt sorry for itself. D. H. Lawrence, “Self-Pity” (1929), in The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence (1994; David Ellis, ed.)

• You can never win when you wear the ugly cloak of self-pity, and the sour sound of whining will certainly frighten away any opportunity for success. Og Mandino, in A Better Way to Live (1990)

Mandino began by writing: “While life may not always be fair, you must never allow the pains, hurdles, and handicaps of the moment to poison your attitude and plans for yourself and your future.”

• Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us, that the most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool. Andrè Maurois, in Ariel (1924)

• Laughter is the great antidote for self-pity, maybe a specific for the malady, yet probably does tend to dry one's feelings out a little, as if by exposing them to a vigorous wind. Mary McCarthy, in How I Grew (1987)

• All pity is self-pity. Cynthia Ozick, “Envy; Or, Yiddish in America,” in The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1969)

• There are few human emotions as warm, comforting, and enveloping as self-pity. And nothing is more corrosive and destructive. There is only one answer: turn away from it and move on. Megan Reik, quoted in Richard Shea, The Book of Success (1993)

• Self-sacrifice is a boomerang; it comes back as self-pity. Henrietta Sperry Ripperger, in A Home of Your Own and How to Run It (1940)

• Self-pity shortens your life. Joan Rivers, in Bouncing Back (1997)

• All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously. Tom Robbins, a favorite saying from the character Maestra, recalled by her grandson Switters, in Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

• Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Henry David Thoreau, “Conclusion,” in Walden (1854)

• People sinking into self-pity and depression are dreary, but they can’t get out of it by themselves. So every now and then, just sit there and listen, and listen, and listen. You’re paying your membership dues in the human race. Barbara Walters, in How to Talk With Practically Anybody About Practically Anything (1970)

(includes SELF-PROMOTION; see also BOASTING and PRAISE and SELF-GLORIFICATION)

• Boldly sound your own praises, and some of them will stick. Francis Bacon, in De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623)

QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the observation is commonly presented, but it was initially offered as the concluding line of a longer passage: “For as it is said of calumny, ‘calumniate boldly, for some of it will stick’ so it may be said of ostentation (except it be in a ridiculous degree of deformity), ‘boldly sound your own praises, and some of them will stick.’” De Augmentis Scientiarum, originally written in Latin, was an expanded version of Bacon’s 1605 classic The Advancement of Learning.

• Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips. The Bible—Book of Proverbs 27:2 (KJV)

• The advantage of doing one’s praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. Samuel Butler, in The Way of All Flesh (1903)

• If I do not praise myself, it is because, as is commonly said, self-praise depreciates. Miguel de Cervantes, the title character speaking, in Don Quixote (1605)

• The praise you take, altho’ it be your due,/Will be suspected if it come from you. Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack (Sep., 1757)

• Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble. John Madden, widely quoted (specific source not yet determined)

• It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”), in a 1991 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine (specific issue undetermined)

• A man’s accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never. Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Art of Conference,” in Essays (1580–88)

• If you want people to think well of you, do not speak well of yourself. Blaise Pascal, in Pensées (1670)

• Self-praise is no praise. Proverb (English)

QUOTE NOTE: This saying has been proverbial since the early eighteenth century, and is often expressed in such variant forms as “Self-praise is no commendation” and “Self-praise is no recommendation”(Charles Dickens used this latter phrasing in Bleak House, (1853), where he had the character Mr. Guppy say, “Self-praise is no recommendation; but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man of business neither”). The idea behind the proverb is ancient (see the Bible’s Book of Proverbs entry above and the Latin proverb below).

• Praise from one’s own mouth is offensive (laus in proprio ore sordescit. Proverb (Latin)

QUOTE NOTE: The saying literally translates as: “Praise in its own foul mouth”

• There’s not one wise man among twenty will praise himself. William Shakespeare, the character Beatrice speaking, in Much Ado About Nothing (1598)

• This is the only country where failure to promote yourself is widely considered arrogant. Garry Trudeau, on America, quoted in Newsweek magazine (Oct. 15, 1990)

(see SELF-PRAISE)

(includes SELF-DETERMINATION and SELF-SUFFICIENCY; see also AUTONOMY and DEPENDENCY & CO-DEPENDENCY and INDEPENDENCE and RESPONSIBILITY and SELF-CREATION and SELF-IMPROVEMENT)

• The gods help them that help themselves. Aesop, “Hercules and the Wagoner,” in Fables (6th c. B.C.)

• I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship. Louisa May Alcott, the character Amy speaking, in Little Women (1868–1869)

• It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate. Charlotte Brontë, the character St. John speaking , in Jane Eyre (1847)

• If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. Benjamin Franklin, in The Way to Wealth (1758)

• God has placed in each soul an apostle to lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without, unaware that it is within them. Kahlil Gibran, in Kahlil Gibran: Wings of Thought (1973; J. P. Ghougassian, ed.)

• As one goes through life one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move. Katharine Hepburn, in Me: Stories of My Life (1991)

• God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest. P. D. James, the character Jonah, quoting a saying he'd seen on a church pulpit, in Devices and Desires (1989)

• Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us. Joseph Joubert, in Pensées (1842)

• It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.” Sam Levenson, the opening line of In One Era and Out the Other (1973)

• I think it’s a mistake to ever look for hope outside of one’s help. Arthur Miller, the character Holga speaking, in After the Fall (1964)

• Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don’t be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked. Tom Robbins, the voice of the narrator, in Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

ERROR ALERT: Numerous anthologies mistakenly present this observation as if it began “If you fail to pilot….”

• Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,/Which we ascribe to heaven. William Shakespeare, the character Helena speaking, in All’s Well That Ends Well (1603-04)

(see also ESTEEM and DIGNITY and HONOR and RESPECT and PRIDE and SELF-CONFIDENCE and SELF-DOUBT and SELF-ESTEEM and SELF-WORTH)

• The more we learn to love and respect ourselves, the more we will become attracted to people who will love and respect us and who we can safely love and respect. Melody Beattie, in The Language of Letting Go (1990)

• Most of the excellence we see in the world is the product not of talent or genius but of self-respect. Robert Brault, in The Second Collection (2015)

• To free ourselves from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, singular power of self-respect. Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect” (1961), in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

In that same essay, Didion also wrote: “To have the sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love, and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself , paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.”

• Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs. Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect” (1961), in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

• If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the character Alyosha speaking, in The Insulted and Injured (1861)

• Deal with yourself as an individual worthy of respect, and make everyone else deal with you the same way. Nikki Giovanni, in Racism 101 (1994)

• Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. Abraham Joshua Heschel, in The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (1967)

• He that respects himself is safe from others;/He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the title character speaking, in “Michael Angelo: A Fragment” (pub. posthumously; 1883)

• True self-respect, being very different from false pride, leads inevitably to respecting others. Virginia Moore, in Virginia Is a State of Mind (1942)

• The need to treat ourselves as well as we treat others. It’s women’s version of the Golden Rule. Gloria Steinem, in Moving Beyond Words (1994)

• Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body; deprive him of self-respect, and you kill his spirit. Thomas Szasz, in The Second Sin (1973)

(see SELF-CONTROL)

(see also DUTY and SACRIFICE)

• self-sacrifice is one of a woman’s seven deadly sins (along with self-abuse, self-loathing, self-deception, self-pity, self-serving, and self-immolation). Sarah Ban Breathnach, in Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self (1998)

• I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else? Ivy Compton-Burnett, in Mother and Son (1955)

• self-sacrifice which denies common sense isn’t virtue; it’s spiritual dissipation! Margaret Deland, in The Rising Tide (1916)

• Self-sacrifice is a boomerang; it comes back as self-pity. Henrietta Sperry Ripperger, in A Home of Your Own and How to Run It (1940)

• My first duty is to develop all the powers given to me and to make the most of myself and my own life. Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in The Woman’s Bible (1895)

QUOTE NOTE: Almost all reference sources attribute this quotation directly to Stanton, and it certainly captures one of her core beliefs. In the book, however, Stanton is wishing that the biblical character known as Jephthah’s daughter—who had willingly accepted a life of total self-sacrifice to her father—had made the foregoing statement as a rebuke to her father. In fact, here’s the full version of what Stanton wished the daughter had said (note how modern-sounding the words are):

“I will not consent to such a sacrifice. Your vow must be disallowed. You may sacrifice your own life as you please, but you have no right over mine. I am on the threshold of life, the joys of youth and of middle age are all before me. You are in the sunset; you have had your blessings and your triumphs; but mine are yet to come. Life is to me full of hope and of happiness. Better that you die than I, if the God whom you worship is pleased with the sacrifice of human life. I consider that God has made me the arbiter of my own fate and all my possibilities. My first duty is to develop all the powers given to me and to make the most of myself and my own life. Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”

• It is a sign of feeble character to seek for a shortcut to fulfillment through the favor of those whose interest lies in keeping it barred—the one path to fulfillment is the difficult path of suffering and self-sacrifice. Rabindranath Tagore, in Letters to a Friend (1928)

(see also COMPLACENCY and CONCEIT and SMUGNESS)

• There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon, and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster…. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep. Meg Greenfield, “The Rope and the Rack,” in Newsweek (March 17, 1991)

(see also INDEPENDENCE and INDIVIDUALISM)

• We in the West seem to have made a fetish out of complete individual self-sufficiency, of not needing help, of being completely private except in a very few selected relationships. Carl Rogers, in A Way of Being (1980)

(see also PHOTOGRAPHY SELF-PORTRAIT)

• The selfie is the narcissistic mugshot of privilege. Dan Brooks, in Brook’s Book (2017)

(see also EGO and GENEROSITY and GREED and SELF-INTEREST and SERVICE and STINGINESS)

• I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. Jane Austen, the character Mr. Darcy speaking, in Pride and Prejudice (1813)

• Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure. Jane Austen, the character Miss Crawford speaking, in Mansfield Park (1814)

• Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. Richard Bach, in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

• Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself. Henry Ward Beecher, in Life Thoughts (1858)

• There is a benevolence in all wise selfishness. Henry Ward Beecher, in Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

• Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

• You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish. Anita Brookner, the character Mr. Neville in Hotel du Lac (1984)

QUOTE NOTE: Mr. Neville is giving advice to the protagonist, Edith Hope. He continues: “It is the simplest thing in the world to decide what you want to do—or, rather, what you don’t want to do—and just to act on that.”

• We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive. George Noel Gordon (Lord Byron), in letter to Lady Melbourne (Sep. 28, 1813)

• That we are selfish gives us the opportunity to gain the power so that, in time, we might be selfless. To give back what we have learned. To teach what we know, and shorten the journey for those who will come after us. Margaret Cho, in I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (2005)

• Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, when alive, would part with nothing. Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820)

• Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years. Amanda Cross, the title character speaking to protagonist Kate Fansler, in The Question of Max (1976)

• Man hoards himself when he has nothing to give away. Edward Dahlberg, “On Love and Friendship,” in Reasons of the Heart (1965)

• Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs. Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene (1976)

• Love is the most selfish of all the passions. Alexandre Dumas, the voice of the narrator, in The Three Musketeers (1844)

• Life lived only for oneself does not truly satisfy men or women. There is a hunger in Americans today for larger purposes beyond the self. Betty Friedan, in The Second Stage (1981)

• Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either. Erich Fromm, in The Art of Loving (1956)

• He was really quite a selfish person—I think most unhappy people are, don’t you? Dorothy Gilman, in Incident at Badamyâ (1989)

• The so-called selfishness of moderns is partly due to the tremendous amount of stimulation received. They are aroused and drawn into experience by theaters, books, automobiles, great cities. The current is quick and strong. Katharine Butler Hathaway, in The Journals and Letters of the Little Locksmith (1946)

• The greatest productive force is human selfishness. Robert A. Heinlein, entry in “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,” in Time Enough for Love (1973)

• If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? Hillel, in The Talmud—Pirkei Avot 1:14

• The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing. Leigh Hunt, in Table Talk (1851)

• Even generous actions can be selfish if the motive is to gain bragging rights or receive a reward. Almost every sinful action can be traced back to a selfish motive. Stephen & Alex Kendrick, in The Love Dare (2008)

• Selfishness is like a disease that suffocates our capacity to love. Stephen & Alex Kendrick, in The Love Dare (2008)

The Kendrick’s preceded the thought by writing: “Selfishness and love are in constant opposition to one another. While love asks us to deny ourselves for the sake of someone else, selfishness compels us to focus on ourselves at their expense.”

• At the heart of every vice sits selfishness, yawning. Yahia Lababidi, “Aphorisms on Art, Morality & Spirit,” Elephant Journal Nov. 3, 2013)

• Maybe selflessness was only selfishness on another level. Margaret Landon, the voice of the narrator, in Anna and the King of Siam (1944)

• No people complain so much of selfishness as the selfish. Hannah Farnham Lee, a reflection of narrator Henry Green, in The Log-Cabin (1844)

• A selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others. Thomas Merton, in No Man is an Island (1955)

QUOTE NOTE: This observation was originally part of the following fuller thought: “We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.”

• Perhaps evil isn’t a cosmological riddle, only just selfish human behavior, and this behavior the result of conscious, accountable choice. Joyce Carol Oates, “Crime and Punishment” (a review of Why They Kill by Richard Rhodes), in The New York Times (Sep. 19, 1999)

• Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. That is in itself a great force: they do not waste their energies in considering the good of others. Ouida, the character Sabran speaking, in Wanda, Countess von Szalras: A Novel (1883)

• The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Selfishness. Ayn Rand, title of 1964 book

• Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness. Agnes Repplier, “Allies,” in Under Dispute (1924)

• The fun, joy, and humor dry up in a relationship when one of the partners is swimming in gin. To my way of thinking, it is selfishness personified to see life through the bottom of a liquor bottle. Ginger Rogers, in Ginger: My Story (1991)

• Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect. George Sand, a reflection of the title character, in Indiana (1832)

• This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. George Bernard Shaw, “Epistle Dedicatory,” in Man and Superman (1903)

QUOTE NOTE: This has become one of Shaw’s most popular quotations. He continued with this less familiar thought: “And also the only real tragedy in life is the being used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base.”

• It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions—especially selfish ones. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974; Leopold Labedz, ed.)

• What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. Herbert Spencer, in Social Statics (1850)

• Charity, to be fruitful, must cost us. Give until it hurts. To love it is necessary to give; to give it is necessary to be free from selfishness. Mother Teresa, in The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living (1996; Jaya Chalila & Edward Le Joly, eds.)

• Next to the very young, I suspect the very old are the most selfish. William Makepeace Thackeray, the voice of the narrator, in The Virginians (1857-59)

• Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oscar Wilde, in The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Wilde continued: “And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them.”

• Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. Oscar Wilde, in The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

A bit later in the piece, Wilde went on to write: “A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.”

• If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig. Woodrow Wilson, in speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Oct. 24, 1914)

(see also EARS and EYES and HEARING and PERCEPTION and SMELL and TASTE and TOUCH and VISION)

• Our sense of safety depends on predictability, so anything living outside the usual rules we suspect to be an outlaw, a ghoul. Diane Ackerman, in The Moon by Whale Light: And Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales (1991)

• Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. Edwin Hubble, “The Exploration of Space,” in Harper’s Magazine (May, 1929)

• I found that of the senses, the eye is the most superficial, the ear the most arrogant, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and fickle, touch the most profound and the most philosophical. Helen Keller, “Sense and Sensibility,” in a 1908 issue of Century magazine (specific issue undetermined)

(see also AUTHORS and EDITING & EDITORS and GRAMMAR and LANGUAGE and PARAGRAPH and PUNCTUATION and REVISION & REWRITING and WRITERS and WRITING)

• He talked as if every sentence had been carefully rehearsed; every semicolon, every comma , was in exactly the right place, and his rounded periods dropped to the floor and bounced about like tiny rubber balls. Gertrude Atherton, on Henry James, in The Adventures of a Novelist (1932)

• If you can’t write your message in a sentence, you can’t say it in an hour. Dianne Booher, in Creating Personal Presence: Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader (2011)

• To hurry through the rise and fall of a fine, full sentence is like defying the role of time in human life. Anatole Broyard, in a 1985 issue of The New York Times Book Review (specific issue undetermined)

• It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple beautiful sentence. Isadora Duncan, in My Life (1927)

• I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat it and flatter it. Janet Flanner, in Lost General Journal (1979)

• Almost all American writers tend to overwrite, to tell too much. I get the disillusioned feeling that novels, today, are sold by the pound, like groceries. It actually takes a great deal more discipline to be able to leave out rather than to throw in everything. This means that you have to say in one sentence precisely what you mean, instead of saying sort of what you kind of mean in hundreds of sentences and hoping the sum total will add up. Rona Jaffe, quoted in Roy Newquist, Conversations (1967)

• Short sentences put me in a good mood. Wayne Kostenban, “Punctuation” in

The Iowa Review (Spring 2018)

• I like to use as few commas as possible so that sentences will go down in one swallow without touching the sides. Florence King, in Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye (1989)

• If an essayist can not only charm but write the unforgettable sentence, one that reveals the heart in a few words, I’m her slave. Cyra McFadden, in a 1995 issue of The Boston Sunday Globe (specific issue undetermined)

McFadden continued: “Essayists must not only be succinct but have original ideas and, even harder to come by, or to fake, likable voices. Consciously or not, they endeavor to win us over by charm.”

• One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work. Gloria Naylor, in a 1985 issue of The New York Times Book Review (specific issue undetermined)

• Begin your story with a sentence that will immediately grab hold of your listener’s ears like a surly nun in a Catholic school. Amy Sedaris, in Simple Times: Crafts For Poor People (2010)

• The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence. Susan Sontag, a 1980 observation, quoted in David Rieff, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (2012)

• A perfectly healthy sentence is extremely rare. Henry David Thoreau, journal entry (Jan. 10, 1841)

• A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end. Henry David Thoreau, in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

• I very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American. Frances Trollope, in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)

• To survive, each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze. Virginia Woolf, “Life and the Novelist,” in The Common Reader, 1st series (1925)

• What a labor writing is…making one sentence do the work of a page; that’s what I call hard work. Virginia Woolf, in a 1935 letter, quoted in Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. V, 1932-1935 (1979)

• Writing is the handmaiden of leadership. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence. William Zinsser, in Writing to Learn: How to Write—and Think—Clearly About Any Subject at All (1988)

(see also ACTION and INACTION and DEED and EMOTION and FEELINGS and IDEAS and INTENTION and MIND and REASON and SENTIMENTALITY and THOUGHT and THOUGHT & ACTION and THINKING & THINKERS and WORD & DEED)

• Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. Edward Abbey, in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (1989)

ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites mistakenly present this quotation as follows: “Belief without action is the ruin of the soul.”

• No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. William James, “Habit,” in The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (1890)

James went on to add: “There is no more contemptible type of human character that that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a Weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed.”

• Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action. James Russell Lowell, in North American Review (July, 1867)

• There is nothing which spreads more contagiously from teacher to pupil than elevation of sentiment. John Stuart Mill, in inaugural address (Feb. 1, 1867) after being installed as rector, University of St Andrews (Scotland)

Mill continued: “Often and often have students caught from the living influence of a professor a contempt for mean and selfish objects, and a noble ambition to leave the world better than they found it; which they have carried with them throughout life.”

(see also EMOTION and FEELINGS)

• Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment. Norman Mailer, “My Hope for America,” in Cannibals and Christians (1966)

• Sentimentality is superficial, easy listening that does nothing to expand our understanding. Compassion is quite different. Risky and exigent, it puts you inside someone else. This is one of literature’s greatest strengths. Roxana Robinson, “The Writer’s Life”, in The Author’s Guild Bulletin (April 8, 2015)

QUOTE NOTE: Robinson, the Author’s Guild president at the time of the article, began the article by suggesting that compassion is often confused with sentimentality, and, as a result, has become somewhat unfashionable. She introduced the thought by writing: “Sentimentality is emotion without responsibility; compassion is the recognition of shared humanity. Chalk and cheese.”

(see also BOOKS and FILMS and MOVIES)

• A sequel is an admission that you’ve been reduced to imitating yourself. Don Marquis, quoted in Edward Anthony, O Rare Don Marquis (1962)

• I have often noticed that when Fate has a phenomenal run of ill luck in store for you, she begins by dropping a rare piece of good fortune into your lap, thereby enhancing the artistic effect of the sequel. Ethel Smyth, in Impressions That Remained (1919)

(see also FRIVOLITY and GRAVITY and SINCERITY and SOLEMN and SOMBER)

• Seriousness is the refuge of the shallow. There are events and personal experiences that call forth seriousness but they are fewer than most of us think. Rita Mae Brown, in Starting From Scratch (1988)

• It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. Robert M. Hutchins, in Quote magazine (Aug. 3, 1958). An example of chiasmus.

Hutchins added: “The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the monkey is serious because he itches.”

• Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously. Iris Murdoch, in Henry and Cato (1976)

• Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused. Agnes Repplier, “The American Laughs,” in Under Dispute (1924)

• Sometimes we must make a serious effort to be frivolous. Theodore Isaac Rubin, an oxymoronic observation from Love Me, Love My Fool (1976)

• Even when I’m being funny, I’m deadly serious. Lily Tomlin, quoted in Jeff Sorensen, Lily Tomlin (1989)

• We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious Brenda Ueland, in If You Want to Write (1938)

(see also CHURCH and CLERGY and PREACHERS & PREACHING and RELIGION)

• A good sermon should have a good beginning and a good ending, and they should be as close together as possible. Author Unknown

QUOTATION CAUTION: All over the internet, this quotation is attributed to George Burns, but without source information.

• A good ad should be like a good sermon: It must not only comfort the afflicted—it also must afflict the comfortable! Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, in Macy’s, Gimbels, and Me (1967). An example of chiasmus.

• It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, in 1771 letter; reprinted in The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Vol. 2 (1825). Yet another example of chiasmus.

• That’s all one asks of a sermon. No possible relevance to anything but itself. P. D. James, the character Ivo Whittingham speaking to Cordelia Gray, in The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982)

• I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day;/I’d rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way. Edgar A. Guest, the opening lines of the poem “Sermons We See” (1881) reprinted in The Mentor (Sep., 1919)

• You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave. Billie Holiday, in Lady Sings the Blues (1956; with William Dufty)

• Most sermons sound to me like commercials—but I can’t make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product. Mignon McLaughlin, in The Second Neurotic’s Notebook (1966)

• Art is never didactic, does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon. Agnes Repplier, “Fiction in the Pulpit,” in Points of View (1891)

• There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. Anthony Trollope, the voice of the narrator, in Barchester Towers (1857)

The narrator continued: “No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanor as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips.”

• Every time I meet a tree, if I am truly awake, I stand in awe before it. I listen to its voice, a silent sermon moving me to the depths, touching my heart, and stirring up within my soul a yearning to give my all. Macrina Wiederkehr, in A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary (1988)

(see also ALTRUISM and COMPASSION and GIVING and HELPING & HELPERS and SELFISHNESS and VIRTUE and VOLUNTEERS & VOLUNTEERISM)

• Service is the rent we pay for a room on earth. Author Unknown

QUOTE NOTE: According to quotation researcher Barry Popik, this saying was first seen in 1917, inscribed over the doorway in a hospital in India. As the years passed, it went on to be used as a slogan for many nonprofit service organizations (often with volunteerism replacing the word service). Versions of the saying have been offered by a number of famous people. In 1976, after donating $150,000 to a New York old age center to keep it from closing, Muhammad Ali said: “Service to others is the rent I pay for my room here on earth.” Others, including Shirley Chisholm and Wilfred Grenfell, have also offered versions of the saying.

• Service is nothing but love in work clothes. Author Unknown

• The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. Author Unknown

ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites mistakenly attribute this saying to Mohandas Gandhi, but there is no evidence he ever said anything like it. According to quotation sleuth Barry Popik, the saying “Lose yourself in the service of others” first appeared in print in 1908, and “Find yourself by losing yourself in the service of others” in 1932. In a 1971 syndicated column, Ann Landers offered this variation on the thought: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in something bigger than yourself.”

• Service is indeed the gift that keeps on giving. Joan Borysenko, in A Woman’s Book of Life (1994)

Borysenko preceded the thought by writing: “Every act of kindness and compassion toward others gets multiplied when they, in turn, pass it on. One by one the world becomes a better place.”

• To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind. Pearl S. Buck, “Men and Women,” in To My Daughters, With Love (1967)

• And so you have found out that secret—one of the deep secrets of Life—that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others. Lewis Carroll, in letter to Ellen Terry (Nov. 13, 1890)

QUOTE NOTE: A few months earlier, Carroll had asked Terry—one of the era’s most prominent actresses—if she would be willing to recommend some teachers of elocution for the child of one of his friends (she had recently expressed interest in acting as a career). Terry not only met with the girl, but took the time to provide her with some private lessons). Carroll was so touched by Terry’s kindness and generosity that he wrote at the beginning of the letter: “What is one to do with a friend who does about 100 times more than you ask them to do?”

ERROR ALERT: Almost all Internet sites present an abridged and paraphrased version of the thought: “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.”

• Service is love made visible. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself. Stephen Colbert, in 2011 Commencement Address at Northwestern University (his alma mater)

• No one is useless in this world, retorted the Secretary, who lightens the burden of it for any one else. Charles Dickens, the protagonist John Harmon speaking (in the assumed role of a secretary named John Rokesmith), in Our Mutual Friend (serialized 1864-65; book form 1865)

ERROR ALERT: Almost all Internet sites mistakenly present the quotation this way: “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”

• Human service is the highest form of self-interest. Elbert Hubbard, in The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)

• There is nothing to make you like other human beings so much as doing things for them. Zora Neale Hurston, in Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (1942)

• We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving. P. D. James, protagonist Adam Dalgliesh speaking, in Cover Her Face (1962)

• I don’t know what your destiny will be. Some of you will perhaps occupy remarkable positions. Perhaps some of you will become famous by your pens, or as artists. But I know one thing: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. Albert Schweitzer, in “The Meaning of Ideals in Life,” an address to students at Silcoates School, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England (Dec. 3, 1935); full text of speech in The Silcoatian (Dec. 1935)

This is one of Dr. Schweitzer’s most famous quotations. He preceded the observation by saying: “Learn to serve; and then only will you begin to find true happiness.”

• Love in action is service. Mother Teresa, in No Greater Love (1997)

QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the quotation is typically presented, but it was originally part of this larger thought: “In order for us to be able to love, we need to have faith because faith is love in action; and love in action is service.

(includes [Public] SERVANTS; see also BUREAUCRATS and CIVIL SERVICE and GOVERNMENT and POLITICIANS)

• What we need most to know about public servants is the identity of their masters. John Ciardi, in his regular “Manner of Speaking” column, Saturday Review (Sep. 24, 1966)

(see also CAPTIVITY and FREEDOM and LIBERTY and SLAVERY and TYRANTS & TYRANNY)

• Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Author Unknown

QUOTE NOTE: This observation is often attributed to the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919), but never with any supporting evidence. According to the Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred Shapiro, the first published appearance of the quotation was June 4, 1925, when a Wisconsin newspaper (The Appleton Post Crescent) offered it as a saying of Mexican origin. Most quotation anthologies attribute it to Dolores Ibárruri, the Republican heroine of the Spanish Civil War. In a July 18, 1936 radio broadcast, she said, “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” The saying has been advanced many times by revolutionary figures and those fighting against oppression. A few years before his 2015 death at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists in the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, the satirical caricaturist know as Charb (pen name of Stéphane Charbonnier) was quoted as saying: “I am not afraid of reprisals, I have no children, no wife, no car, no debt. It might sound a bit pompous, but I’d prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees.”

• Servitude debases men to the point where they end up liking it. Luc de Clapiers (Marquis de Vauvenargues), in Reflections and Maxims (1746)

• The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. John Philpott Curran, “Lord Mayor Speech to Privy Council of Ireland” (July 10, 1790); reprinted in Speeches of John Philpott Curran (1811)

QUOTE NOTE: This speech from the newly elected Lord Mayor of Dublin is the origin of “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” a proverbial saying that first emerged in the early 1800s and was already well known when President Andrew Jackson said in his March 4, 1837 farewell address: “you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.”

• The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the constitution. John M. Harlan (1833–1911), in a dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

QUOTE NOTE: In his blistering dissent to one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most wrong-headed decisions (allowing “separate but equal” accommodations), Judge Harlan went on to write: “We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law.” The Plessy decision, which permitted state-sponsored segregation, was ultimately overturned in the Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

• The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to living in the woods, had been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again. Niccolò Machiavelli, in Discourses on Livy (1513–1517)

• This is servitude,/To serve the unwise. John Milton, in Paradise Lost (1667)

(see also AIMS & AIMING and ASPIRATION and DREAMS—ASPIRATIONAL and GOALS & GOAL-SETTING)

• The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. Maureen Dowd, “Pucci, Yes! Prawns, No!” The New York Times (Dec. 26, 1999)

• The biggest human temptation is…to settle for too little. Thomas Merton, quoted in Forbes magazine (Aug. 4, 1980)

QUOTATION CAUTION: An original source for this observation has not been found.

(see also EROS & EROTICISM and INTERCOURSE and KISSES & KISSING and LOVE and LUST and MALE-FEMALE DYMANICS and NUDITY and ORGASM and PASSION and PORNOGRAPHY and PROSTITUTION & PROSTITUTES and ROMANCE and SENSUALITY and SEXISM & SEXIST STATEMENTS)

• Sex is like having dinner: sometimes you joke about the dishes, sometimes you take the meal seriously. Woody Allen, quoted in Evening Standard (London, 1965)

• Love is music, and sex is only the instrument. Isabel Allende, the protagonist and narrator Gregory Reeves recalling a comment from another character, in The Infinite Plan (1991)

• With women the best aphrodisiac is words. Isabel Allende, in Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1998)

QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is commonly presented, but it was originally the concluding line of a larger observation:

“We women have a better developed sense of the ridiculous, and besides, our sensuality is tied to our imagination and our auditory nerves. It may be that the only way we will listen is if someone whispers in our ear. The G spot is in the ears, and anyone who goofs around looking for it farther down is wasting his time and ours. Professional lovers, and I am referring not just to lotharios like Casanova, Valentino, and Julio Iglesias, but to the quantities of men who collect amorous conquests to prove their virility with quantity—since quality is a question of luck—know that with women the best aphrodisiac is words.”

ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites mistakenly presented the Allende quotation this way: “For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.”

• The price of shallow sex may be a corresponding loss of capacity for deep love. Shana Alexander, in Talking Woman (1982)

• It’s pitch, sex is. Once you touch it, it clings to you. Margery Allingham, in The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)

QUOTE NOTE: Except for its appearance in the expression “pitch-black,” pitch is a word that is now rarely used, replaced by terms like tar or asphalt or black-top. To learn more, go to: Pitch.

• Sex is a sideshow in the world of the animal, for the dominant color of that world is fear. Robert Ardrey, in African Genesis (1961)

• Sex as something beautiful may soon disappear. Once it was a knife so finely honed the edge was invisible until it touched and then it cut deep. Now it is so blunt that it merely bruises and leaves ugly marks. Mary Astor, in her autobiography A Life on Film (1967)

• Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from. Margaret Atwood, Offred (the narrator and protagonist) speaking, in The Handmaid’s Tale (1986)

• As I vaguely recalled from my own experience, adolescence was a time when you firmly believed that sex hadn’t been invented until the year you started high school, when the very idea that anything interesting might have happened during your parents’ lifetime was unthinkable. Russell Baker, “Life with Mother,” in William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth (1987)

• Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses. Charles Baudelaire, in Intimate Journals (1887)

• Sex pleasure in woman…is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex (1953)

• The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less. Brendan Behan, quoted in Jon Winokur, The Return of the Portable Curmudgeon (1992)

• Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship. Malcolm Bradbury, in Cuts (1987)

• Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing. Charles Bukowski, in Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1969)

• Sex after ninety is like trying to shoot pool with a rope. George Burns, a signature line

QUOTE NOTE: Burns offered numerous versions of this line in his later years, but it looks like he may have borrowed the quip from Jack Benny. In B. S. I Love You: Sixty Funny Years with the Famous and the Infamous (1989), Milton Berle wrote: “Jack Benny’s line about Burns and sex was a big winner too—‘George Burns having sex is like shooting pool with a rope.’”

• My mom always said men are like linoleum floors: Lay ‘em right and you can walk all over them for 30 years. Brett Butler, quoted in Entertainment Weekly (March 31, 1995)

• Male sexual response is far brisker and more automatic: it is triggered easily by things, like putting a quarter in a vending machine. Alex Comfort, comparing male and female sexual response, in The Joy of Sex (1972)

• Sex is only the liquid centre of the great Newberry Fruit of friendship. Jilly Cooper, in Super-Jilly (1977)

• Sex is the great amateur art. David Cort, in Social Astonishments (1963)

Cort added: “The professional, male or female, is frowned upon. He or she misses the whole point and spoils the show.”

• Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you’re not good at them. Kevin Costner, as golf pro Roy McAvoy, in the 1996 film Tin Cup (screenplay by John Norville and Ron Shelton)

• Sex is the last refuge of the miserable. Quentin Crisp, in The Naked Civil Servant (1968)

QUOTE NOTE: For more refuge observations on a host of topics (and the original observation that stimulated them all) go to REFUGE METAPHORS.

• For flavor, Instant Sex will never supersede the stuff you had to peel and cook. Quentin Crisp, quoted in Sunday Telegraph (London, Sep.28, 1999)

• Sex is a short cut to everything. Anne Cumming, the opening line of her autobiography, The Love Quest (1991)

• The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God’s joke on humanity. Bette Davis, in her autobiography, The Lonely Life (1962)

• Sex finds us out. Sex sees through us. That’s why it’s so shattering. It strips us of appearances. Don DeLillo, the character Eric Packer speaking, in Cosmopolis: A Novel (2003)

ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites begin the quotation with Sex finds us, omitting the key final word of the thought.

• Sex in marriage is like medicine. Three times a day for the first week. Then once a day for another week. Then once every three or four days until the condition clears up. Peter De Vries, quoted in Ned Sherrin, Cutting Edge (1984)

• Sex is identical to comedy in that it involves timing. Phyllis Diller, in Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy (2005; written with Richard Buskin)

• Warren could handle women as smoothly as operating an elevator. He knew exactly where to locate the top button. One flick and we were on the way. Britt Eklund, on Warren Beatty, quoted in Ellis Amburn, The Sexiest Man Alive: A Biography of Warren Beatty (2002)

QUOTE NOTE: In this classic double entendre observation, the “top button” is not only a building floor designation in an elevator, it is also sexual slang for the clitoris. In yet another tribute to Beatty’s magic touch with women, Woody Allen once quipped: “If I could come back in another life, I want to be Warren Beatty’s fingertips.”

• The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer. Havelock Ellis, in On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue (1937)

• Physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation. Richard Feynman, quoted in Lawrence M. Krauss, Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed (1993)

• Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch. Ian Fleming, a notebook entry, quoted in John Pearson, The Life of Ian Fleming (1966)

• The main problem in marriage is that, for a man, sex is a hunger—like eating. If a man is hungry and can’t get to a fancy French restaurant, he’ll go to a hot dog stand. For a woman, what’s important is love and romance. Joan Fontaine, in People magazine (Nov. 20, 1978)

QUOTE NOTE: This was Fontaine’s answer to interviewer Christopher P. Anderson’s question, “What is the toughest part of marriage?” Later in the interview, talking about men she had loved but never married, she said, “Aly Khan was a marvelous fairy-tale prince and he knew it.” And then, in a clear reference to his promiscuous ways, she added: “He was a butterfly covering as many flowers as he could.” For more, see the full 1978 Joan Fontaine interview.

• Sexuality is the great field of battle between biology and society. Nancy Friday, in My Mother/My Self (1977)

• Sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love. Gabriel García Márquez, the unnamed protagonist speaking, in Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004)

QUOTE NOTE: This is a reflection of the unnamed narrator and protagonist, a ninety-year-old Columbian journalist who has never married or even come close to experiencing love. After a lifetime of sex with prostitutes—over 500 such encounters when he stops counting in his fifties—his world is transformed when he decides at age ninety “to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.” Don’t be turned off by the premise. Of the book, John Updike wrote in a New Yorker review: “García Márquez has composed, with his usual sensual gravity and Olympian humor, a love letter to the dying light.”

• The cry of flesh calling to flesh must be the strongest thing in the world. William Gay, the voice of the narrator, in Provinces of Night: A Novel (2000)

• It is a crossing of a Rubicon in life history. Paul H. Gephard, on losing one’s virginity, quoted in Jane E. Brody, “More Coeds Find Less Guilt in Sex,” The New York Times (Dec.30, 1967)

QUOTE NOTE: There may be no more significant event in a person’s life than the first experience of sexual intercourse, and Gephard, the director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research at the time, chose an appropriate metaphor to describe it. The Rubicon is a river that, in ancient times, divided Italy and Gaul. In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar crossed the river in a military march against Pompey. Acting in complete defiance of the Roman Senate’s orders not to engage in any military action, Caesar famously said “the die is cast” as he ordered his troops across the river. The event gave birth to the saying Crossing the Rubicon, now a popular metaphor for taking a step in which there is no turning back.

• Food, sex, and liquor create their own appetite. Sheila Graham, in A State of Heat (1972)

• Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught a venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an arctic explorer who has never had frostbite. Germaine Greer, quoted in Observer (London, March 4, 1973)

• In a business society, the role of sex can be summed up in five pitiful little words. There is money in it. Margaret Halsey, in The Folks at Home (1952)

• Good lovers have known for centuries that the hand is probably the primary sex organ. Eleanor Hamilton, quoted in “Hue & Cry,” The San Francisco Chronicle (Oct. 29, 1978)

• Sex is the gateway to life. Frank Harris, quoted by Enid Bagnold in Enid Bagnold’s Autobiography (1969)

QUOTE NOTE: This quotation has become very popular, but few know the story behind it. Bagnold was an aspiring writer in her early twenties when she landed a job at the London magazine Modern Society. The magazine’s editor was Frank Harris, later to achieve notoriety for his sexually explicit autobiography My Life and Loves (four volumes, 1922–27). Harris was thirty-three years her senior, but Bagnold found him so fascinating that she surrendered her virginity to him. It happened one day after lunch at London’s Café Royal. Here’s her charming version of the event:

“The great and terrible step was taken. What else could you expect from a girl so expectant? ‘Sex,’ said Frank Harris, ‘is the gateway to life.’ So I went through the gateway in an upper room in the Café Royal. That afternoon at the end of the session I walked back to Uncle Lexy’s at Warrington Crescent, reflecting on my rise. Like a corporal made sergeant. As I sat at dinner with Aunt Clara and Uncle Lexy I couldn’t believe that my skull wasn’t chanting aloud: ‘I’m not a virgin! I’m not a virgin’.”

• The major civilizing force in the world is not religion, it’s sex. Hugh Hefner, quoted in John Heilpern, “To The Mansion Born,” Vanity Fair (Aug., 2010)

In the Vanity Fair interview, Hefner went on to say: “I believed that sex, when properly understood, could be the best of who we are. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be exploited or abused. It can be. But sex itself is the fire around which we warm ourselves. It is the heart of civilization and the family.”

• Sex is not some sort of pristine, reverent ritual. You want reverent and pristine, go to church. Cynthia Heimel, in Sex Tips for Girls (1983)

• Sex is the salt of life. James Huneker, the voice of the narrator, in Painted Veils (1920)

• Sex is a discovery. Fannie Hurst, in Anatomy of Me (1958)

• Sex is God’s joke on the human race. Erica Jong, the narrator describing what the protagonist Isadora Wing is thinking, in Parachutes & Kisses (1984)

• Sexual intercourse: always disappointing and often repulsive, like asking someone else to blow your own nose for you. Philip Larkin, a notebook entry, quoted in Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (1993)

ERROR ALERT: This quotation is often mistakenly presented as: “Sexual intercourse is like having someone else blow your nose.”

• Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And it’s touch we’re afraid of. D. H. Lawrence, the character Oliver Mellors speaking, in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

• Sex is just another form of talk, where you act the words instead of saying them. D. H. Lawrence, the character Tommy Dukes speaking, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

• Sex is the root of which intuition is the foliage and beauty is the flower. D. H. Lawrence, “Sex Appeal,” in Vanity Fair (July, 1929)

Lawrence added: “Why is a woman lovely, if ever, in her twenties? It is the time when sex rises softly to her face, as a rose to the top of a rose-bush.” Just below the title of the article, the magazine’s editors inserted this tease: “An Enlightening Essay Concerning a Phrase Which Everybody Knows and Nobody Understands.”

• What sex is, we don’t know, but it must be some sort of fire. For it always communicates a sense of warmth, of glow. And when this glow becomes a pure shine, then we feel the sense of beauty. D. H. Lawrence, “Sex Appeal,” in Vanity Fair (July, 1929)

Lawrence went on to write: “We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. Or, if it dies, we become one of those ghastly living corpses which are unfortunately becoming more numerous in the world.”

• The safest sex is on the shore of abstinence. The next is with one faithful partner. If you insist on wading out into the turbulent waters of multiple sex partners—wear a life jacket. Joseph Lowery, quoted in Jet magazine (March, 1989)

• I was wondering today what the religion of the country is—and all I could come up with was sex. Clare Booth Luce, in The Washington Post (April 9, 1982)

• There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be. Norman Mailer, quoted in The International Herald Tribune (Jan. 24, 1992)

• Hickeys are like PG-13 movies. You think they’re pretty hot stuff after being limited to G and PG, but you never bother with them once you’re seriously into R. Judy Markey, in You Only Get Married for the First Time Once (1988)

• The sexual act has no resemblance to any other act: its demands are frenzied and participate in infinity. It is a tidal wave able to cover everything and bear away everything. François Mauriac, in What I Believe (1963)

• You mustn’t force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex. Mary McCarthy, the character Dottie Renfrew speaking, in The Group (1954). Also an example of chiasmus.

• In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnaught, and man from an open raft. H. L. Mencken, in A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

QUOTE NOTE: A dreadnaught (also spelled dreadnought) is a class of battleship that was first introduced by the British Royal Navy in 1906. The ship was so technically advanced and, with its huge guns, so deadly that it immediately made all previous battleships obsolete. By comparison, a raft is a pretty flimsy craft, so it is clear in Mencken’s view who has the upper hand.

• It is the sex instinct that makes women seem beautiful, which they are only once in a blue moon, and men seem wise and brave, which they never are at all. Throttle it, denaturize it, take it away, and human existence would be reduced to the prosaic, laborious, boresome, imbecile level of life in an anthill. H. L. Mencken, in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy (pub. posthumously in 1994)

Mencken introduced the observation by writing: “Life without sex might be safer, but it would be unbearably dull. There would be very little hazard in it and even less joy.”

• To talk about adults without talking about their sex drives is like talking about a window without glass. Grace Metalious, defending the prominent role of sex in her bestselling novel Peyton Place (1956), in The New York Mirror (Feb. 6, 1958)

• It is true I swim in a perpetual sea of sex but the actual excursions are fairly limited. Henry Miller, in letter to Anaïs Nin (Feb. 1, 1932); reprinted in Letters to Anaïs Nin (1965)

• The sex organ has a poetic power, like a comet. Joan Miró, quoted in A. T. Baker, “Art: Voyager Into Indeterminate Space,” Time magazine (April 28,1980)

• That’s the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. Marilyn Monroe, in interview in Life magazine (July, 1962)

• Sex. If you want it badly that’s how you’re going to get it. Simon Munnery, in How to Live (2005)

• Sex—in actual life—touches the heavens only when it simultaneously touches the gutter and the mud. George Jean Nathan, in Monks are Monks: A Diagnostic Scherzo (1929)

• There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Porsche 911 Cabriolet. P. J. O’Rourke, in Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People (1983)

ERROR ALERT: On numerous internet sites and in many published quotation anthologies, this observation is mistakenly presented as if it ended with Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

• Sexual union is a holy moment in which a part of Heaven flows into the Earth. James Redfield, the character Wil speaking, in The Tenth Insight (1996)

Wil preceded this thought by saying: “Sexual culmination creates an opening into the Afterlife, and what we experience as orgasm is just a glimpse of the Afterlife level of love and vibration as the portal is opened and the energy rushes through, potentially bringing in a new soul.”

• Sex is like art. Most of it is pretty bad, and the good stuff is out of your price range. Scott Roeben, a “Thought of the Day” (circa 1999) for the website www.dribbleglass.com (specific date undetermined)

• That pathetic short-cut suggested by Nature the supreme joker as a remedy for our loneliness. Vita Sackville-West, on sex, in No Signposts in the Sea (1961)

Sackville continued by writing that sex was “that ephemeral communion which we persuade ourselves to be of the spirit when it is in fact only of the body—durable not even in memory!”

• Sex is every man’s loco spot. Dorothy L. Sayers, the character Lord Peter Wimsey speaking, in Whose Body? (1923)

Wimsey, describing the motivation of a man who had committed a brutal crime of revenge, went on to observe: “He’ll take a disappointment, but not a humiliation.”

• Sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. May Sarton, in Recovering (1980)

Sarton continued: “The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair.”

• Sex is the only form of entertainment where the performers are allowed to write their own reviews. Edgar R. Schneider, in Discovering My Autism (1999)

• Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry/Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. William Shakespeare, Venus speaking provocatively to Adonis, in Venus and Adonis (1593)

QUOTE NOTE: In this passage—and indeed in the entire poem—Shakespeare proves himself to be the master of sexual allusion, shrouding many erotically-charged lines in presentable language. In the poem, which is all about the lustful Venus attempting to seduce Adonis, she preceded the passage above by saying: “I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;/Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale.”

• Sexuality is something, like nuclear energy, which may prove amenable to domestication, through scruple, but then again it may not. Susan Sontag, in Styles of Radical Will (1969)

• Sex is like kissing with your entire body. Jason Sudeikis, as the character Jake, in the 2015 film Sleeping with Other People (screenplay by Leslye Headland)

• Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play. Thomas Szasz, in Sex by Prescription: The Startling Truth About Today’s Sex Therapy (1980)

Szasz continued: “Although sex is a risky game, one is supposed to pretend that it is not. Yet it is the dangerousness, rather than the mysteriousness, of the game that provides sex “experts” their many followers. Promising to teach people how to play the sex game well, sexologists seduce them into believing that they can teach them how to play it safely— which, of course, no one can do. Why? Because the dangerousness of human sexuality lies in the fact that sexual acts are so very personal. Behaving sexually toward another person is risky because doing so is profoundly self-revealing and because the needs of the participants are constantly changing and are rarely fully complementary.”

• Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse. He will go any length for it—risk fortune, character, reputation, life itself. Mark Twain, a 1906 notebook entry, in Mark Twain’s Notebook (1935; A. B. Paine, ed.)

Twain added: “And what do you think he has done? He has left it out of his heaven! Prayer takes its place.”

• Sex is like money; only too much is enough. John Updike, the character Piet speaking, in Couples (1968)

• Sex is a conversation carried out by other means. Peter Ustinov, quoted in Wendy Leigh, Speaking Frankly (1978)

Ustinov added: “If you get on well out of bed, half the problems of bed are solved.” The by other means portion of the remark is an allusion to a famous observation from the legendary Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz, which may be found in WAR.

• Sex and religion are bordering states. They use the same vocabulary, share like ecstasies, and often serve as a substitute for one another. Jessamyn West, in Hide and Seek (1973)

• Sex is an emotion in motion. Mae West, quoted in Diane Arbus, “Mae West: Emotion in Motion,” Show (1965)

• Sex with love is the greatest thing in life. But sex without love—that’s not so bad either. Mae West, in an interview with Charlotte Chandler, reported in Chandler’s book The Ultimate Seduction (1984)

• Sex gives us a glimpse or a concentration of the mind that would make us godlike if we could command it in other spheres. Colin Wilson, in The Hedonists (1970; pub. in England under the title The God of the Labyrinth)

The observation comes from the novel’s protagonist, who goes on to explain that human beings are like grandfather clocks that are driven by springs better suited to wrist-watches. He explains: “The body is too heavy for the tiny spring of will-power. Only in sex do we seem to develop a spring powerful enough for a grandfather clock.”

• Sex is the tabasco sauce which an adolescent national palate sprinkles on every course in the menu. Mary Day Winn, in Adam’s Rib (1931)

(see LOVE & SEX)

(see also DISCRIMINATION and PREJUDICE and STEREOTYPES & STEREOTYPING)

• Our nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination . . . rationalized by an attitude of “romantic paternalism” which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage. William J. Brennan, from plurality opinion in Frontiero v. Richardson (1973)

• You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing. Laurie R. King, the character Sherlock Holmes, speaking to protagonist Mary Russell, his newfound sleuth-in-training, in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (1994)

(see also HARASSMENT and MEN & WOMEN and SEXISM)

• The only women who don’t believe that sexual harassment is a real problem in this country are women who have never been in the workplace. Cynthia Heimel, in Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-Bye (1993)

(see also SHADE and LIGHT and SUN)

• Shadow owes its birth to Light. John Gay, in Fifty-one Fables in Verse (1727)

(see also CONSCIENCE and GUILT and HONOR and SIN and VICE & VIRTUE)

• Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. The only people who don’t experience shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection. Brené Brown, in The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are (2010)

• Shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection? Brené Brown, “The Power of Vulnerability,” a TED Talk (Jan. 3, 2011 )

On the topic of shame, Brown added: “It’s universal; we all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it the more you have it.”

• Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change. Brené Brown, in Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (2012)

• Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart. Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

• Shame can be self-indulgence too. Eleanor Clark, in Eyes, Etc.: A Memoir (1977)

• One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well. Louis Kronenberger, in Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry Into American Life (1954)

• Shame is the proper reaction when one has purposefully violated the accepted behavior of society. Inflicting it is etiquette’s response when its rules are disobeyed. Judith Martin, in Miss Manners Rescues Civilization (1996)

Martin continued: “The law has all kinds of nasty ways of retaliating when it is disregarded, but etiquette has only a sense of social shame to deter people from treating others in ways they know are wrong. So naturally Miss Manners wants to maintain the sense of shame. Some forms of discomfort are fully justified, and the person who feels shame ought to be dealing with removing its causes rather than seeking to relieve the symptoms.”

• Waves of shame ran through her, like savage internal blushes. Mary McCarthy, the narrator describing the emotional state of protagonist Margaret Sargent, in The Company She Keeps (1942)

• A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass. Colin Powell, in My American Journey (1995; with Joseph E. Persico)

Powell continued: “I remember how easy it was for my mother to snap me back into line with a simple rebuke: ‘I’m ashamed of you. You embarrassed the family.’ I would have preferred a beating to hearing those words. I wonder where our national sense of shame has gone.”

• Bravado is just shame in a big, loud hat. Karen Weese, in Real Simple (2016)

(see also ALTRUISM and CHARITY and GENEROSITY and GIVING and and PHILANTHROPY and RECEIVING and SELFISHNESS and TAKING and VIRTUE)

• Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving. Mary Catherine Bateson, in Composing a Life (1989)

• The miracle is this—the more we share, the more we have. Leonard Nimoy, quoted in a 1992 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific date undetermined)

• He shared their sorrow, and they became a part of his, and the sharing spread their grief a little, by thinning it. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the narrator describing Pa Forrester, in The Yearling (1938)

• There is an invariable law that the only way to keep the real things of life is by sharing them or giving them away. Alice Hegan Rice, in My Pillow Book (1937)

• Sharing is a habit; it improves with practice. Alexandra Stoddard, in Living a Beautiful Life (1986)