Quotation Saturday

REFLECTION
 

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
-- T.S. Eliot
 

We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
-- Marcus Annaeus Seneca
 

Look at your past. Your past has determined where you are at this moment. What you do today will determine where you are tomorrow. Are you moving forward or standing still?
-- Tom Hopkins
 

We should learn, by reflection on the misfortunes of others, that there is nothing singular in those which befall ourselves.
-- Thomas Fitzosborne

YOUR WORDS

Be careful; think about the effect of what you say. Your words should be constructive, bring people together, not pull them apart.
--Miriam Makeba
 

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
--Robert Southey

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.
--Michel de Montaigne, translated
 

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered. 
--Graham Greene

TEACHER
 

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called "truth."
--Dan Rather

Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.
--John F. Kennedy

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
--Horace Mann
 

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
--Henry Brooks Adams

WRITER/WRITING
 

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
~Goethe

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.
~William Makepeace Thackeray

Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
~Samuel Butler
 

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
~G.K. Chesterton