philosophy quotes

By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows ascend with us. ~Edwin Markham



Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile. ~Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, 1893



I feel something like a powerful oppression, like an immense fatigue after marching and marching across fever-laden jungles, or by the shores of deadly lakes... and I am flooded by discouragement, so that it seems I shall never be able to escape from myself again. ~"The Garden," Chapter 9



A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. ~Miguel de Cervantes



Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own arm. ~Sidney J. Phillips



We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist. ~Joseph Heller



The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. ~Robert M. Hutchins, Great Books, 1954



Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. ~Mark Twain



A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, first inaugural address, 20 January 1953



The sky, a perfect empty canvas, offers clouds nonetheless. They shift and drift and beg interpretation... such is the nature of art. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com



On the sixth day God created man. On the seventh day, man returned the favor. ~Author Unknown



A margin of life is developed by Nature for all living things - including man. All life forms obey Nature's demands - except man, who has found ways of ignoring them. ~Eugene M. Poirot, Our Margin of Life, 1978



Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.



To some, the cigarette is a portable therapist. ~Terri Guillemets



In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death. ~Sam Llewelyn



They who meet on an April night are forever lost in love, if there's moonlight all about and there's no moon above. ~E.Y. "Yip" Harburg and Fred Saidy, dialogue just before the song "Old Devil Moon" in the musical Finian's Rainbow (Thanks, Katherine!)



As network administrator I can take down the network with one keystroke. It's just like being a doctor but without getting gooky stuff on my paws. ~Scott Adams ("Dogbert")



One wanders through life as if wandering through a field in the dark of night, wearing a blindfold and very heavy shoes, with a poisonous toad waiting patiently beneath a clump of weeds, knowing full well that eventually you will step on him. ~Lemony Snicket



I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. ~John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938



For friends... do but look upon good Books: they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble. ~Francis Bacon