QUOTABLE QUOTES

READER’S DIGEST

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

          To show a child what once delighted you,

          to find the child’s delight added to your own—this is happiness. 

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.—Marcu Aurelius

It’s better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong than to agonize at

length and be right too late.                  Marilyn Kennedy In Across the Board

          Today’s greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.

Dollars have never been known to produce character,

and character will never be produced by money.

                                                   W.K. Kellogg. I’ll Invest My Money in People)

          Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything.

In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone’s letter. Chinese proverb

          Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.

                    You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.

While intelligent people can often simplify the complex,

a fool is more likely to complicate the simple. 

                    God gives every bird his worm,

                    but he does not throw it into the nest.   Swedish proverb,

          The best things in life aren’t things.    Art Buchwald

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit.

We become just by doing just acts,

temperate by doing temperate acts,

brave by doing brave acts.         -----Aristole

                    Truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

The young do not know enough to be prudent,

and therefore they attempt the impossible—

and achieve it, generation after generation.     ----Pearl S. Buck

                    A hero is someone we can admire without apology.

                                                   ---Kitty Kcllcy in New York Times

                              The difference between reality and fiction?

                              Fiction has to make sense.

Perseverance is the hard work you do

after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. -----Newt Gingrich

It is easy to sit up and take notice.

                    What is difficult is getting up and taking action. 

          When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy,

          the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.

                                                                        ----Alston Chase, in A Dark Wood

God has been so lavish in his gifts that you can lose some priceless ones,

the equivalent of whole kingdoms, and still be indecently rich.

Wilfrid Sheed , ”Jn Love With Daylight.”

                              Success is more a function of consistent common sense

                              than it is of genius.

                                                   ---An Wang, Lcssons: An Autobiography

          When you teach your son,

          you teach your son’s son.          The Talmud.

                                         Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone

                                         and more fragile than a rose.  Tnrkish proverb

          Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.   —George Eliot, Silas Marner

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do,

and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

                                                    Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

          Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—

the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

John Ruskin

                              Governing a large country is like frying a small fish

                              You spoil it with too much poking.                —Lao-tze

In the coldest February,

as in every other month in every other year,

the best thing to hold on to in this world is each other.

                              —Linda Ellerbcc, Move On: Adventures in the Real World

Not all of us have to possess earthshaking talent.

                              Just common sense and love will do.

When you are a mother,

you are never really alone in your thoughts.

A mother always has to think twice,

once for herself and once for her child.          —Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty

One never realizes how much and how little he knows until he starts talking. —Louis L’Amour, Bendigo Shafter

Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got

                              when you ought to have it.         —Langston Hughes

The pioneers cleared the forests from Jamestown to the Mississippi

with fewer tools than are stored in the typical modern garage.

                                                             —Dwayne Laws in Good Reading

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line

                              doesn’t always have to be their top priority.            —William Arthur Ward

One of the advantages of pure congregational singing is that you can join in whether you have a voice or not. The disadvantage is that your neighbor can

do the same.          —Charles Dudley Warner

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.—African proverb

None are so empty as those who are full of themselves. —Benjamin Whichcote

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.                                                                                            —Abraham Lincoln

                    The brain is a wonderful organ

                    It starts working the moment you get up

                    and does not stop until you get into the office.          Robert Frost

          You cannot hold back a good laugh

          any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature. —William Rotsler

                                         Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.

                                                             --David Letterman, Late Show

It’s hard to believe that there was a time

when clothing and music were handed down to the next generation.

                                         —Doug l.arsots, United Feature Syndicate

          Nothing is so embarrassing

          as watching someone do something that you said couldn’t be done.

                                                             —Sam Ewing in Mature Living

                              Television can give us so much, except the time to think.

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems,

but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.        -Herm Allsrigltt

                              The day a person becomes a cynic is the day he loses his youth.

          Leadership isa potent combination of strategy and character.

          But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.

                                                   Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.George E Will

          It’s okay to be a prima donna if you can sing.

          It’s okay to be an iron hand if you can hit.     Arnold R. Weber

Memory is a complicated thing,

a relative to truth, but not its twin.

——Barbara Kingsolver, .4nimalljheams lH~trperCrllins)

          Stigmas are the corollaries of values. If work, independence, respon-

          sibility, respectability are valued, then their converse must be devalued,

          seen as disreputable.                  —Gertrude Himmelfarb. Animal Dreams

If a June night could talk,

it would probably boast that it invented romance.           Bern Williiams

          When I enrolled in a creative-writing course,

          one of my first poems was returned with the following comment:

          “Put more fire in the poems, or vice versa.”

When a man assumes a public trust,

 he should consider himself as public property.         —Thsonsas Jefferson

                                         We do not remember days; we remember moments.

                                         —Cesare Pavese, The Burning Brand

Perfectionism is the enemy of creation,

as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being. —John Updike, Odd Jobs

          If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one. —Mother Teresa

                              I sometimes give myself admirable advice,

                              but I am incapable of taking it.  ----Mary Wortley Montagu

          A great book should leave you with many experiences

          and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives

          while reading it.

                                         —Williasi Styron, quoted in Writers at Work

To err is human; to admit it, superhuman.

                              —[)oug Larson, United Feature Syndicate

                    You may be disappointed if you fail,

                    but you are doomed if you don’t even try.     —Beverly Sills

                              There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

          A modest man is usually admired—if people ever hear of him     —Ed Howe

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will. —James Stephens

                    I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.

Parents can plant magic in a child’s mind through certain words

spoken with some thrilling quality of voice, some uplift of the heart and spirit. —Robert MacNeil, Wordstruck

                    Education is not the filling of a pail,

                    but the lighting of a fire.           —William Butler Yeats

          Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods. —Japanese proverb

We are all born into the world with nothing.

Everything we acquire after that is profit. Sam Ewing

                                         Fame is a flippant lover. 

                    Let him that would move the world, first move himself.  Socrates

Characters live to be noticed. People with character notice how they live.

          Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish.

                                                             ----Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Righteousness is easy in retrospect.     Arthur Schlrsinger, Jr., in Newsweek

          He that would be a leader must be a bridge. - Welsh proverb

          Let us read and let us dance—

          two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.          —Voltaire

                              The best inheritance a parent can give his children

                              Is a few minutes of his time each day.           --- 0. A. Battista

                    Hot words make a real cool friendship.

It is far more impressive

when others discover your good qualities

without your help. Judith S. Martin

          Journalism is merely history’s first draft. ----in American Heritage

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.

In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.                   ----Larry Wilde.

                                                                                   The Merry Book of Christmas

                    The Bible tells us to love our neighbors,

                    and also to love our enemies; probably because

                    they are generally the same people.    —G. K. Chesterton

          Liberty is the only thing you cannot have

          unless you are willing to give it to others.      —William Allen White

It is a damned poor mind indeed that can’t think

of at least two ways of spelling any word.

                    —Andrew Jackson, quoted by William Sabre in Quoth the Maven

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.                            —Agnes DeMiIle in New York Titnes Magazine

          Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes.

It’s unbridled, it’s unplanned, it’s full of surprises.

                    —Erma Bombeck, quoted by Maria Braden in She Said What?

          We have war

          when at least one of the parties to a conflict

          wants something more than it wants peace.

                    —Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, quoted in US. News & World Report

The dog has got more fun out of Man

     than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly

demonstrable reason that Man is the more laugh able of the two animals.—James Thurber, Thurber’s Dogs

                    The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.

          How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. —Benjamin Disraeli

The greatest gifts you can give your children

are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.     —Denis Waitley

                              A different language is a different vision of life.

                    These days, the wages of sin depend on

                    what kind of deal you make with the publisher.

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. ---Sicilian proverb

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation,

the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.          —P. 1. O’Rourke

          Love does not consist in gazing at each other,

          but in looking outward together in the same direction. 

                                                   —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.   —Goethe

There are two types of people—those who come into a room and say,

“Well, here I am!” and those who come in and say, “Ah, there you are.

                                                                                  —Frederick L. Collins

          The real measure of a day’s heat is the length of a sleeping cat.

                                                             —Charles J. Brady in Home Life

Many are the varnish. Few are the wood.

Being right half the time beats being half-right all the time. —Malcolm S. Forbes

                    Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. —Carl Sandburg

Television remote controls encourage couch potatoes

to exercise their options while broadening their base.        —William Arthur Ward

          Of course, it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

                                                                                  —Margaret Thatcher

                    Organizing is what you do before you do something,

                    so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.           —A. A. Milne

If it is bright and sunny after two cold and rainy days, it is probably Monday. —Hugh B. Brous, Jr

          We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm. —Winston Churchill

SOURCE:

READER’S DIGEST

An interesting monthly feature of the famous magazine.

Published monthly by:

The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

Pleasantville, N.Y. 10507

Numerous issues appearing above are from many monthly issues:

          Commencing with Vol. 144, No. 863, March 1994, and ending with

          Vol. 144, No. 867, July, 1995. They are a good example of why this

magazine is the World’s Most Widely Read Magazine.

Continued Good Luck.

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