Great Big Page of Quotes

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat. --- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) 26th US President

No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives.
---Dan Simmons "Rise of Endymion"

[It] is always under and above the surface of our thoughts and senses. Invisible but as present as the breathing of our beloved next to us in the night. Its actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit. The Bible lies, the Koran lies, (...) by their very nature being reduced to words. ---Dan Simmons "Rise of Endymion"

Almost everything interesting in the human experience is the result of an individual experiencing, experimenting, explaining, and sharing. A hive mind would be the ancient television broadcasts, or life at the height of the datasphere...consensual idiocy.
---Dan Simmons "Rise of Endymion"

Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move. A musician can tell another musician apart form the millions who play notes as soon as the music begins. Poets glean poets in a few syllables, especially where the ordinary meaning and forms of poetry are discarded. ---Dan Simmons "Rise of Endymion"

Only humankind struggles and fails in becoming what it is. The reasons are many and complex, but all stem from the fact that we have evolved as one of the self-seeing organs of the evolving universe. ---Dan Simmons "Rise of Endymion"

But, confronted with perceptions and impressions far beyond their power to absorb or to set in context--all but driven mad by the unceasing voices of the dead and their own reactions to the language of the living--these disciples turned to dogma reducing the inexpressible into rough words and turgid sermons, tight rules and fiery rhetoric. And the vision paled, then failed. The portal closed. ---Dan Simmons "Rise of Endymion"

There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it, it isn't right. If it's right and you don't want to do it, you don't know what right is and you're not a man. ---(Andre Taganov) Ayn Rand "We the Living"

Can you sacrifice the few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top--and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shrivelled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can't treat them as if they were. ---(Kira Argounova) Ayn Rand "We the Living"

...God--whatever anyone chooses to call God--is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for you won life and to grant the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it. ---(Kira Argounova) Ayn Rand "We the Living"

"The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them. ---Ayn Rand --Anthem"

"So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone! ---Ayn Rand --Anthem"

"Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: I will it! ---Ayn Rand --Anthem"

"The word WE is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, bu which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. ---Ayn Rand --Anthem",
"At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of the freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. ---Ayn Rand --Anthem"

Now I am far, far away from where I began, and trying to remember the reason I ran. ---Jason Q Baxter

99% of the people in this world are fools. And the rest of us are in great danger of contagion. ---Small town Sheriff on an X-Files episode.

I came to work, and I got worked. ---Anon.

This will be a night you won't remember, so write it down. ---Stephen Allen

Babe Ruth was the home run king, and yet he was also the strikeout king. The only way you will reach the top is to get out there and bust! You will fall on your face a lot, pick up and move on. ---Jeremy Hilton

Make friends with mortality, be cheerful if it kills you. ---Missionary Training Center Mission Presidents Wife 2003

If all else fails, please follow directions. ---D. Rex Gerratt

It is all over but the work. ---LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley

The bitterest tears are for things unsaid, and things undone. ---Thomas S Monson

Did I remember to tell you? ---Susan W. Tanner

There are no excusing footnotes to the Commandments. ---Neil A Maxwell

Knowledge without labor is profitless, knowledge with labor is genius. ---Gordon B Hinckley

Are you more worthy now than last week? ---Jason Q Baxter

The best feeling in the world is to know what God wants you to do, and to know that you are doing it. The worst feeling is to know what God wants you to do, and know that you are not doing it. ---James M. Dunn

If we felt the Spirit all the time, would we learn by it? ---Craig C. Christensen

I know that you are a true servant of the Lord by the way you act. ---Sister Christensen

We should spend enough time on our knees to say the things in your heart. ---Elder Maclure, MTC 4/2003

Someone else said them first, but these words are MINE. ---?

The purpose of work is not to secure for ourselves idleness, but to increase our capacity. ---?

It is finished, but it is only just beginning. ---Sister Watts, MTC 6/2003

How did I get here? Where is she now? How do I find her? Only He knows how... ---Jason Q. Baxter

"Is there anything we can do for you?" "No, unless you can kill off my mom. She's driving me F****** crazy! It's whores like her that give the Church a bad name!" ---Bizarre conversation with someone who shall remain nameless in Charlotte, NC

You ain't never felt pain till you had a kidney stone come out of you! ---Larry Adams

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burdens behind us. ---Samuel Smiles

Do you have the TOYAZDA feeling? ---Sister Perkins discussing "sticking with your gut feeling"

The war is won in the tents of generals, not in the fields of battle. If you fail to plain, you plan to fail. ---?

I am here to afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted. ---President Perkins

I'm in love with a girl that I used to know. But some time has passed by, where does it go? ---Jason Q. Baxter

Did you hear it? Did you? PIKACHU!!!!!!!!! ---Charles Taft

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. ---Marcel Proust