English LanguageStart - Smart Words

These pages present a collection of the best quotes & sayings as well as the wisdom of well-known persons.

Youth would be an ideal state it if came a little later in life. (Herbert Asouth)

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

Beauty will save the world (Fjodor Michailowitsch Dostojewsk)

Injustice anywhere is a threat for the justice everywhere.

Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything.

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. (Garrison Keillor)

Pride goes before a fall.

Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly.

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

Golf is a good walk spoiled. (Mark Twain)

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying. (Oscar Wilde)

Use it or lose it!

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

If we do not honour our past, we will loose our future.

A friend in the need is a friend indeed.

Time makes more converts than reason.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. (Samuel Johnson)

Without customers, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby. (Don Peppers & Martha Rogers)

Women are made to be loved, not to be understood.

Advertising is totally unnecessary. Unless you hope to make money. (Jeff I. Richards)

Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.

Never change a winning team.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well. (Margaret Thatcher)

Dance

Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don'ts,
Not the God who ever does anything weird,
But the God who knows only 4 words.
And keeps repeating them, saying "Come dance with Me, come dance." (Hafiz)

The name of the game is the claim. (unknown patent lawyer)

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. (Steven Wright)

A conference is a gathering of important people, who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done. (Fred Allen)

Bad weeds grow tall.

You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.

Happiness is the philosopher’s stone turning everything into gold. (Benjamin Franklin)

Honesty is the best policy, when there is money in it.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

When you reach the end of the rope, tie a knot in it and hang on. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. (Al Capone)

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul, since wisdom is better than silver and gold. (Bob Marley)

Marriage is like any other job. It's much easier if you like the boss.

Creative without strategy is called art. Creative with strategy is called advertising. (Jeff I. Richards)

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship. (John D. Rockefeller)

I'd rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate. (George Burns)

The secret of success is to understand the point of view of the others.

My home is my castle. (Sir Edward Coke)

Living is the creation of mew steps. (Eugene Gendlin)

Variety is the very spice of life that gives it all its flavour. (William Cowper)

Be happy and do the best.

Love it, change it or leave it.

Repetition is the mother of wisdom.

Men love to wonder and that is the seed of your science. (Emerson)

For the world you are somebody, but for somebody you are the world.

No show, no snow.

All we need is love, but all we get is work.

It is better to burn out than to fade away.

No pain, no gain.

The easiest way for you children to learn about money is for you not to have any.

History never repeats itself but it rhymes. (Mark Twain)

Neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge. (Immanuel Kant)

The energy of the mind is the essence of life. (Aristoteles)

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

If we destroy our roots, we cannot grow.

What is a meeting? Where minutes are taken, and hours are lost.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mohanda Karamchand Gandhi)

Take everything in moderation, including moderation. (Diana Ross)

No guts, no glory – no materials, no story.

Wisdom Phrases

Staggering intellect, boundless brilliance.

I bow to the Olympian reaches of your wisdom.

I'll try to contain my amazement.

Brilliant speech. Chock full of pithy insight.


Atheism is a non-prophet organisation.

Doing your best is more important than being the best. (Zig Ziglar)

The universe is simply one of those things, which happen from time to time.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

Math is like love; a simple idea, but it can get complicated. (R. Drabek)

What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational. (Friedrich Hegel)

The real challenge in innovation is not invention, i.e. coming up with good ideas, but in making them work technically and commercially. (Thomas Alva Edison)

The child is father to the man.

The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. (Robert Bloch)

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Forget the troubles that passed away, but remember the blessings that come each day.

Blood is thicker than water.

Black is beautiful.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

So we've created a more surreptitious strategy.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. (Voltaire)

Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know.

Review

This book is filled with great quips, outrageously defamatory, scandalously exaggerated, disturbingly sensationalised, yet also hideously, addictively entertaining. Like a modern Jane Austen meets Bridget Jones, fun, fabulous, and often hilarious. I don’t know whether to consult my lawyer, or my shrink.

Always remember its source when drinking from the stream. (from China)

There is only one rule of living – live alone!

The only thing I know is that I know nothing. (Socrates)

I’ll be back. (Arnold Schwarzenegger als Terminator)

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Dream as if you live forever, live as if you die tomorrow!

Marriage is not a word, it's a sentence.

A bank is a place, where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. (Robert Lee Frost)

Money can’t buy friends, but you can afford a better class of enemies.

No risk, no fun.

No risk, no fun.

Zero

Zero
Is where the Real Fun starts.
There's too much counting
everywhere else!

All that glitter is not gold.

Do not imitate – innovate!

No news is good news.

Love is to look at the same direction (Saint-Exupery)

Inflation is the one form of taxation, which can be imposed without legislation.

Hungry man is an angry man.

Experience tells you what to do, confidence allows you to do it. (Stanley Roger Smith)

The only solution to pollution is dilution. (Dr. Sherry Rogers)

If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

All art is quite useless. (Oscar Wilde)

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Woman and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. (Robert Heinlein)

Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy. (Benjamin Franklin)

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Only love can conquer hate. (Marvin Gaye)

Do not forget until too late, that the business of live is not business, but living.

Think slow, act fast! (Buster Keaton)

You cannot teach an old dog new tricks. (John Fitzherbert)

The man in the moon isn’t as exciting as the girl in the sun.

If I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant a tree today. (Martin Luther King)

A bend in the road is not the end of the road. Unless you fail to make the turn. (Helen Keller)

Don't ask if your dreams are crazy. Ask if they're crazy enough.

The details are not the details. They make the design. (Charles Eames)

Hell is truth seen too late. (Thomas Hobbes)

To be or not to be. (William Shakespeare)

The better part of valour is discretion - Der bessere Teil der Tapferkeit ist Vorsicht.

Beware of small expenses, since a small leak will sink a great ship.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self. (Benjamin Franklin)

Never catch a falling knife.

Cloudy mornings turn to clear evenings.

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

Adaptive optics means to tackle the twinkle of the stars.

If in doubt, leave it out.

Love makes the world go round.

I don’t like green, because if its green the sky is grey. (unknown English teacher at Malta)

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves. (William Shakespeare)

You can run the office without a boss, but you can’t run an office without the secretaries.

Love is like the measles, we all have to go through it.

There is plenty of room at the bottom. (Richard Feynman)

In biblical times, a man could have as many wives as he could afford. Just like today.

Do not mess with science - we have lasers! (The Optical Society)

To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. (Thomas Hardy)

I don't know which will go first - rock'n roll or Christianity (John Lennon)

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives you the test first, the lesson afterwards. (Vernon Sanders Law)

Faith makes all things possible, hope makes all things work, and love makes all things beautiful.

I think it is safe to say, that no one understands quantum mechanics. (Richard Feynman)

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. (William Morris)

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. (Hannah Arendt)

One of the most important virtues required for the smooth working of democracy, as far as the mass is concerned, is said to be electoral apathy, e.g. lack of public spirit. (Leo Strauss)

The unique qualities of American global dominance: Power - far greater than any single nation had ever possessed, at least since the Roman Empire. (Robert Kagan)

We are not just any hegemon. We run a uniquely benign imperium. This is not mere self-congratulation; it is a fact. (Charles Krauthammer)

People who own the country ought to govern it. (John Jay)

The primary responsibility of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. (James Madison)

Love is a never ending construction site.

There are no facts, but only interpretations. (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)

You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. (Francis Bacon)

To live without loving is not really to live.

Live, as if you to die tomorrow, learn, as if you to live forever.

You cannot receive everything, but you can give everything.

A liberal democrat is just a conservative that hasn't been mugged yet. (Tim Young)

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. (J.W. Gardner)

We feel and know that we are eternal. (Baruch de Spinoza)

It is not a shame for a man to learn that which he knows not, whatever his age. (Socrates)

Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is. (Vince Lombardi jr.)

Weak today, strong tomorrow.

An expert is somebody who knows more and more about less and less.

Sayings

Perfect

Today
is
a perfect day
to be
a perfect day.

Grace

British By Birth ... English by the Grace of God!

Delphi Oracle

The Oracle of Delphi (also known as The Pythia), was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus (also Parnassos, a mountain in central Greece, about 180 km Northwest of Athens). These three greek sayings are engraved into the temple:

Know thyself.

Nothing in excess.

Make a pledge and mischief is nigh.

Irish Poems

Irish Toast

May the road rise up to meet you,
May the wind be ever at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And the rain fall softly on your fields,
And until we meet again, May God hold,
you in the hollow of his hand.

Irish Blessing

A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering angel, so nothing can harm you.

Irish Honor

Wherever you go and whatever you do,
may the luck of the Irish be there with you.

Irish Compliment

May you always walk in sunshine.
May you never want for more.
May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.

Irish Pledge

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,
The foresight to know where you are going,
And the insight to know when you have gone too far.