Deadly poisons are concealed under sweet honey.
Fortune and love favor the brave.
I attempt an arduous task; but there is no worth in that which is not a difficult achievement.
The bold adventurer succeeds the best.”
The burden which is well borne becomes light.
The result proves the wisdom of the act.
Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.
~ Presidential message, December 25, 1927
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
The strength of a country is the strength of its religious convictions.
The right of the police of Boston to affiliate, which has been questioned, never granted, is now prohibited. There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.
~ in a telegram to AFL President Gompers, September 14, 1919
__________
1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
6. We never repent for having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
9. Take things always by their smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak. If very angry count one hundred.
__________
Thomas Jefferson – Select Quotes
__________
There is a place in Eden and in Gehenna for every soul. The Zaddik receives his place and the place of a wicked man as well. By the same token, the wicked man receives his own place and the place of a Zaddik.
~ Hagigah, 15
No on partakes of the enjoyments of the World-to-Come because of his father’s merits.
~ Midrash Tehillim, 146, 2
Time makes more Converts than Reason.
~ in Common Sense
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of men and women.
~ in The American Crisis
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect the conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.
~ in Common Sense
God is almost forgotten in the Christian religion. Everything, even the creation, is ascribed to the son of Mary.
What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
~ in The Age of Reason
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself that this thing called Christianity.
~ in The Age of Reason
Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
~ in the Rights of Man
Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
That government is best which governs least.
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.
Click on image
The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!
The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all countries in the world.
No more cunning plot was ever devised against the intelligence, the freedom, the happiness, and the virtue of mankind, than Catholicism.
Dostoevsky said, “If there is no God, then anything is possible.” I would say that if there is no love, nothing is possible. Man absolutely cannot live by himself.
.
Honore de Balzac is my new favorite author. Truth be told, I don’t think I have every read any of Balzac’s books. However, according to Leonard Sweet, Balzac drank more than 50 cups of coffee a day, which goes a long way to explaining Baudelaire’s description of him as “the novelist of energy and will.” Anyone who can drink almost as much coffee as me deserves my admiration.
.
The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is: What does a woman want?
