taoism quotes

Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future. ~T.A. Sachs



The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. ~Oscar Wilde



It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe. Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in retreat. ~Loren Eiseley, "The Innocent Fox," The Star Thrower, 1978



They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation. ~Henry Ward Beecher



Beauty draws us with a single hair. ~Alexander Pope



The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth. ~Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958



Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women. ~Elsa Schiaparelli



Count the garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall. Count your life with smiles and not the tears that roll. ~Author Unknown



Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality. ~Erich Fromm



When you feel dog tired at night, it may be because you've growled all day long. ~Author Unknown



Man - a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal. ~Alexander Hamilton



Concerning football playing, I protest to you it may rather be called a friendly kind of fighting, rather than recreation. ~Author Unknown



Psychology doesn't address the soul; that's something else. ~David Chase, The Sopranos, "Pilot," original airdate 10 January 1999, spoken by the character Carmela Soprano



It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy brows and comprehended men without fully communing with them, as if in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on. ~Woodrow Wilson



Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more. ~James Thurber



It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously. ~Jean Cocteau



Angels shine from without because their spirits are lit from within by the light of God. ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994



It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown. ~Author Unknown



Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. ~Henry David Thoreau



Far more seemly were it for thee to have thy study full of books, than thy purse full of money. ~John Lyly