Cool Quotes - T

Men of few words are the best men.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.

Who knows most speaks least.

Speak little, do much.

In case of doubt, it is better to say too little than too much.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

Hide not your Talents, they for Use were made. What's a Sun-Dial in the Shade!

I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Had I followed my pleasure and followed what I plainly have a decided talent for: police spy, I should have been much happier than I afterwards became.

Talents are best nurtured in solitude; but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

'Tis remarkable, that they
Talk most, who have the least to say.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

Great talkers, little doers.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

Talking too much, too soon, and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster.

Talk uses up ideas … Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow.

The evil tongue slays three, the slanderer, the slandered, and the listener.

But far more numerous was the herd of such
Who think too little and who talk too much.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all. (On aime mieux dire du mal de soi-même que de n'en point parler.)

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

They never taste who always drink;
They always talk, who never think.

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.

He who talks too much commits a sin.

When talking, be as brief as if you were making your will; the fewer the words the less litigation.

People who have little to do are great talkers. The less we think the more we talk; thus women talk more than men; from laziness they are not inclined to think. A nation where women set the fashion is a nation of talkers.

Women cure all their sorrows by talking.

Both Americans and English are subject to loquacious imbecility. Their subjects only differ. The American talks of his government, the Englishman of himself.

Say little and do much. Receive all men with a cheerful countenance.

Talkers are no good doers.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

He's a wonderful talker, who has the art
Of telling you nothing in a great harangue.

(C'est un parleur étrange, et qui trouve toujours
L'art de ne vous rien dire avec de grands discours.)

Long be thy legs, and short be thy life.

Every day brings its task, and often without bringing abilities to perform it: difficulties embarrass, uncertainty perplexes, opposition retards, censure exasperates, or neglect depresses.

When we have diligently laboured for any purpose, we are willing to believe that we have attained it, and, because we have already done much, too suddenly conclude that no more is to be done.

Thinking nothing done while anything remained to be done. (Nil actum credens, dum quid superesset agendum.)

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.

There is no accounting for tastes.

At table, I prefer the witty before the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness; and in common discourse, eloquence, whether or no there be sincerity.

Those who seem to lead the public taste are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing.

Every man to his own poison.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

Prosperity of the middling and lower orders depends upon the fortunes and light taxes of the rich.

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.

If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation.

Count the day won when, turning on its axis,
The earth imposes no additional taxes.

Taxes are going up so fast that the government is likely to price itself right out of the market.

I love to go to Washington—if only to be near my money.

It seems a little silly now, but [the United States of America] was founded as a protest against taxation.

The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches.

The tax code is 10 times longer than the Bible, without the good news.

When you're taxing bovine flatulence emissions, there's nothing left to tax.

Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?

Logic and taxation are not always the best of friends.

Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo.

It should be known that at the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of a dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.

The doctrines that by keeping out foreign goods more wealth, and consequently more employment, will be created at home, are either true or they are not true. We contend that they are not true. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Taxes are an evil—a necessary evil, but still an evil, and the fewer of them we have the better.

We have pushed taxation of wealth to a point in Great Britain where in many cases the yield would be greater if the rate were less. The idea that prosperity can be wooed by chasing millionaires is one of the most common and most foolish of modern popular delusions.

Only the little people pay taxes.

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. … because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending.

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

Excise, n. A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is intrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as fairly as he can.

No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

What reason is there that he which laboreth much, and, sparing the fruits of his labor, consumeth little, should be more charged than he that, living idly, getteth little and spendeth all he gets, seeing the one hath no more protection from the commonwealth than the other?

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

The subjects of every state ought to contribute, towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor.

Taxation under every form presents but a choice of evils; if it does not act on profit, or other sources of income, it must act on expenditures.

The state and municipality go to great expense to support policemen and sheriffs and judicial officers, to protect people against themselves, that is, against the results of their own folly, vice, and recklessness. Who pays for it? Undoubtedly the people who have not been guilty of folly, vice, or recklessness.

The immense and ever increasing sums which the state wrings from the people are never enough for it; it mortgages the income of future generations, and steers resolutely toward bankruptcy.

Work and earn; pay taxes and die.

Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.

[I am] a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool, who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnights, and with tea welcomes the morning.

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?—how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

Look here, Steward, if this is coffee, I want tea; but if this is tea, then I wish for coffee.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

With respect to teachers' salaries … Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.

He who can does. He who cannot, teaches.

Those who tell or receive these stories should consider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man, that has ever undertaken to instruct others, can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.

The necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.

When I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools—I prefer to address myself to the man.

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty who don't want to learn—much.

Teaching of others teacheth the teacher.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

Let not women’s weapons, waterdrops,
Stain my man’s cheeks!

Women have learned to shed tears in order that they may lie the better.

Trust not a woman when she cries,
For she'll pump water from her eyes
With a wet finger, and in faster showers
Than April when he rains down flowers.

I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled.

Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand.

Technology … the knack of so arranging the world that we need not experience it.

Technology magnifies the ability of one person to have a big impact on other people. If that doesn't scare you, then the next time you see professional wrestling on television, look at the crowd shots and ask yourself if you'd like those people to have a bigger impact on your life.

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

Beware of the man who does not drink.

Lastly (and this is, perhaps, the golden rule), no woman should marry a teetotaller, or a man who does not smoke.

A growing number of workers—those who are more clever than industrious—have already discovered the unbridled joy of sitting at home and getting paid for sleeping, eating, masturbating, and watching television. This technique—sometimes called telecommuting—has all the financial advantages of being employed with none of the stigma of being a filthy, perverted hobo.

Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

My philosophy is that every phone conversation has a loser.

I hate television. I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

Television is bear-led by its visuals, not to speak of the neuroses of the people who work for this irrational and self-corrupting medium. … in wartime, truth is hard to come by but you are more likely to find it in newspapers than in the flickering images and babble of the box.

If everyone agrees that television has unrivaled efficiency at selling goods, services, culture, music, God, politics and fashion, why does the industry continue to claim that the one thing it cannot sell is violence?

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Television is for appearing on, not looking at.

Television thrives on unreason, and unreason thrives on television … [Television] strikes at the emotions rather than the intellect.

Let's face it, there are no plain women on television.

Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

Television has brought back murder into the home—where it belongs.

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not the battlefields of Vietnam.

One of television’s greatest contributions is that it brought murder back into the home where it belongs.

Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life.

Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it.

Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

Temperance is the moderating of one's desires in obedience to reason.

Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man. Labor sharpens his appetite and temperance prevents him abusing it.

Damn temperance and he that first invented it!

"There is," said Michael, "if thou well observe
The rule of not too much, by temperance taught
In what thou eat'st and drink'st, seeking from thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight."

Don't worry about avoiding temptation—as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. … You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. … We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

God delights in our temptations, and yet hates them; he delights in them when they drive us to prayer; he hates them when they drive us to despair.

I am not over-fond of resisting temptation.

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

"Temptations can be got rid of."
"How?"
"By yielding to them."

This extraordinary pride in being exempt from temptation that you have not yet risen to the level of! Eunuchs boasting of their chastity!

Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

Take, O take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.

An open door may tempt a saint.

Satan now is wiser than of yore,
And tempts by making rich, not making poor.

He that shows his purse tempts the thief.

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

Terror has its inspiration, as well as competition.

There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists' morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.

But, as frightening as terrorism is, it's the weapon of losers. … Winners don't need to hijack airplanes. Winners have an Air Force.

Murder will never be in my eyes an object of admiration and an argument for freedom; I know nothing more servile, more despicable, more cowardly, more narrow-minded than a terrorist.

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.

My favorite holiday of the year is Thanksgiving … the holiday that is solely based on stuffing your face until you have to be rolled away from the table so you start the exhausting task of sitting in front of the TV watching football all day.

Spending time in the theatres produces fornication, intemperance, and every kind of impurity.

In the theatre the demon of impurity displays his pomp with so many charms and seductive graces that the most solid virtue can hardly withstand it.

One should never take one's daughter to a theatre. Not only are plays immoral; the house itself is immoral.

It is rascally to steal a purse, daring to steal a million, and a proof of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.

He who steals a handful of gold is put in jail; he who steals a whole country is made king.

Theocracy, government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for. All prophets, zealots, priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished a theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called priests, prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish?

Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridg'd: It is so; It is not so, It is so; It is not so.

Divinity is essentially the first of the professions, because it is necessary for all at all times; law and physic are only necessary for some at some times.

I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.

Hang a thief when he's young, and he'll no' steal when he's old.

Little thieves are hanged, but great ones escape.

Save a thief from the gallows and he will be the first shall do thee a mischief.

He that will steal an egg will steal an ox.

The thief is sorry he is to be hanged, but not that he is a thief.

The thief who understands his business never steals in his own neighborhood.

The thief thinks everybody steals.

The thief who has no chance to steal considers himself an honest man.

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.

Sloppy writing reflects sloppy thinking.

People calculate too much and think too little.

We [Munger and Warren Buffet] both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.

But far more numerous was the herd of such
Who think too little and who talk too much.

Yet, how great is the number of those in whose minds no source of thought has ever been opened, in whose life no consequence of thought is ever discovered; who have learned nothing upon which they can reflect; who have neither seen nor felt anything which could leave its traces on the memory; who neither foresee nor desire any change of their condition, and have therefore neither fear, hope, nor design, and yet are supposed to be thinking beings.

I don't mind your thinking slowly: I mind your publishing faster than you think.

What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can't take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.

To think for oneself is not only, as Gide said, counterrevolutionary but also apostasy and, at certain times, treason.

A waking man, being under the necessity of having some ideas constantly in his mind, is not at liberty to think or not to think.

If the power of reflecting on the past, and darting the keen eye of contemplation into futurity, be the grand privilege of man, it must be granted that some people enjoy this prerogative in a very limited degree.

I never could find any man who could think for two minutes together.

Though the proportion of those who think be extremely small, yet every individual flatters himself that he is one of the number.

Thought, true labor of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of pain? Born as out of the black whirlwind;—true effort, in fact, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is thought.

Thinking is very far from knowing.

A thought comes when it wishes, not when I wish.

It takes longer to think clearly than it takes to learn rifle-shooting, round-arm bowling, or piano-playing. The great mass of the people (of all classes) cannot think at all. That is why the majority never rule. They are led like sheep by the few who know that they cannot think.

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.

Thinking is to me the greatest fatigue in the world.

Cuba illustrated the gap between words and reality which was to become the most striking characteristic of the Third World. Everyone in politics talked revolution and practiced graft.

[The term "Third World"] satisfied the human longing for simple moral distinctions. There were "good" nations (the poor ones) and "bad" nations (the rich ones). Nations were rich precisely because they were bad, and poor because they were innocent.

Only in undeveloped countries can man be regarded as a beast of burden.

Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more performed before thirty than after; and ofttimes in the lives of the same men.

Every one is a fool or a physician to himself after thirty.

I lead a most dyspeptic, solitary, self-shrouded life: consuming, if possible in silence, my considerable daily allotment of pain; glad when any strength is left in me for working, which is the only use I can see in myself.

Carlyle is a poet to whom nature has denied the faculty of verse.

Carlyle’s eye was a terrible organ: he saw everything.

It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.

[Thomas Jefferson is] a man of profound ambition and violent passions.

If not an absolute atheist, he [Thomas Jefferson] had no belief in a future existence. All his ideas of obligation or retribution were bounded by the present life. His duties to his neighbor were under no stronger guarantee than the laws of the land and the opinions of the world. The tendency of this condition upon a mind of great compass and powerful resources is to produce insincerity and duplicity, which were his besetting sins through life.

The moral character of Jefferson was repulsive. Continually puling about liberty, equality, and the degrading curse of slavery, he brought his own children to the hammer, and made money of his debaucheries.

I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.

This writer has a better hand in pulling down than in building.

Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better than he does.

As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.

The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes. This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness.

But evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart!

I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one’s own meaning.

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist by what I think and I can't prevent myself from thinking. (Despair11 Ma pensée, c'est moi: voilà pourquoi je ne peux pas m'arrêter. J'existe par ce que je pense. … et je ne peux pas m'empêcher de penser.)

Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed, so is the body.

The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are the most valuable of any we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return again.

There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

No one suffers punishment for his thoughts. (Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur.)

Thought can with difficulty visit the intricate and winding chambers which it inhabits. It is like a river whose rapid and perpetual stream flows outwards—like one in dread who speeds through the recesses of some haunted pile and dares not look behind.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

But thoughts are given for action's government,
Where action ceases, thought's impertinent.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

It is prudent for a man to abstain from threats or contemptuous expressions, for neither weaken the enemy: threats make him more cautious, and contemptuous remarks excite his hatred and a desire to revenge himself.

Three are too many to keep a secret, and too few to be merry.

The most substantial people are the most frugal, and make the least show, and live at the least expense.

A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.

Spare when you are young, and spend when you are old.

Though you live near a forest, do not waste fire-wood.

It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do.

Thunder is the voice of God, and, therefore, to be dreaded.

There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

November, n. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.

Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think.

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

Methinks I see the wanton hours flee,
And as they pass, turn back and laugh at me.

Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it!

Once, adv. Enough.

Twice, adv. Once too often.

Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

Time, the devourer of all things. (Tempus edax rerum.)

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

Ah simple man!
When a boy two precious jewels were given thee,
Time and good advice;
One thou hast lost, and the other thrown away.

Dost thou love life?
then do not squander time;
For that's the stuff
life is made of.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

I do love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go past.

The trouble with being punctual is that there is no-one there to appreciate it.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Those who have most to do, and are willing to work, will find the most time.

What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.

The time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely were too long.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

Time obliterates the fictions of opinion, and confirms the decisions of nature. (Opinionum commenta delet dies, natura judicia Confirmat.)

He told me … that it was the stated and established method of computing time. It was not, indeed, likely that I should understand him; for I never yet knew time computed in my life, nor can imagine why we should be at so much trouble to count what we cannot keep.

We never consider ourselves as possessed at once of time sufficient for any great design, and therefore indulge ourselves, in fortuitous amusements.

He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.

What's not destroyed by Time's devouring hand?
Where's Troy, and where's the Maypole in the Strand?

I recommend to you to take care of minutes: for hours will take care of themselves.

Time will rust the sharpest sword,
Time will consume the strongest cord;
That which molders hemp and steel,
Mortal arm and nerve must feel.

Time has too much credit … It is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.

Time … puts an end to all human pleasures and sorrows.

Time is the great physician.

Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.

It is well known, that time once passed never returns; and that the moment which is lost, is lost for ever. Time therefore ought, above all other kinds of property, to be free from invasion; and yet there is no man who does not claim the power of wasting that time which is the right of others.

Whoever pays a visit that is not desired, or talks longer than the hearer is willing to attend, is guilty of an injury which he cannot repair, and takes away that which he cannot give.

Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly to him whose whole employment is to watch its flight.

So little do we accustom ourselves to consider the effects of time, that things necessary and certain often surprise us like unexpected contingencies. We leave the beauty in her bloom, and, after an absence of twenty years, wonder, at our return, to find her faded.

There's an experienced rebel, Time,
And in his squadrons Poverty;
There's Age that brings along with him
A terrible artillery:
And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown,
Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down.

Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time, and its progress towards happiness, though naturally slow, is yet retarded by unnecessary labour.

He hath shook hands with time.

The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.

My time has not yet come either; some are born posthumously.

O Time! arrest your flight, and you, propitious hours, stay your course. (Ô temps! suspend ton vol, et vous, heures propices! Suspendez votre cours.)

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure, all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot, be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker's mind. He that runs against Time, has an antagonist not subject to casualties.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.

Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly but without pity that which yesterday was young. Alone our memories resist this disintegration and grow more lovely with the passing years.

We are condemned to kill time:
Thus we die bit by bit.

Time and tide wait for no man.

Even such is Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
And from which earth, and grave, and dust,
The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Time's thievish progress to eternity.

Time will reveal everything. It is a babbler, and speaks even when not asked.

Do you not see even stones yield to the power of time, lofty towers fall to decay, and rocks molder away? Temples and statues of the gods go to ruin, nor can the gods themselves prolong their date or get reprieve from fate.

Time heals what reason cannot.

Trust to time: it is the wisest of all counsellors.

The happier the time, the faster it goes. My time is not yet come.

Time wasteth years, and months, and hours,
Time doth consume fame, honor, wit and strength,
Time kills the greenest herbs and sweetest flowers,
Time wears out youth and beauty's looks at length,
Time doth convey to ground both foe and friend,
And each thing else but love, which hath no end.

The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Time's the king of men,
He's both their parent, and he is their grave,
And gives them what he will, not what they crave.

All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.

Time cures sorrows and squabbles because we all change, and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended is the same.

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

Those that make the best use of their time have none to spare.

Take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.

Time shall every grief remove,
With life, with memory, and with love.

You may ask me for anything you like except time.

Time! what an empty vapor 'tis!
And days, how swift they are:
Swift as an Indian arrow
Fly on like a shooting star;
The present moment just is here,
Then slides away in haste,
That we can never say they're ours,
But only say they're past.

The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean tide, on which we and all the universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb.

The years teach much which the days never know.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in.

Old time, in whose banks we deposit our notes,
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.

Time is the best medicine for anger.

It is time, not medicine, that cures the sick.

In reality, killing time
Is only the name for another of the multifarious ways
By which Time kills us.

Ah! Posthumus, the years, the years
Glide swiftly on, nor can our tears
Or piety the wrinkled age forefend,
Or for one hour retard th' inevitable end.

Time is
Too slow for those who wait,
Too swift for those who fear,
Too long for those who grieve,
Too short for those who rejoice;
But for those who love,
Time is eternity.

Time has shaken me by the hand and death is not far behind.

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.

Accusing the times is but excusing ourselves.

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.

I have no time to be tired. (Ich habe keine Zeit, müde zu sein.)

I weigh the man, not his title: 'tis not the king's inscription can make the metal better or heavier.

Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them.

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases … but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.

Pernicious weed [tobacco]! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society's chief joys.

For thy sake, Tobacco, I
Would do any thing but die.

This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized.

A lone man's companion, a bachelor's friend, a hungry man's food, a sad man's cordial, a wakeful man's sleep, and a chilly man's fire.

Tobacco is an evil weed,
It was the Devil sowed the seed;
It stains your fingers, burns your clothes
And makes a chimney of your nose.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv’d today.

It's not perfect, but to me on balance Right Now is a lot better than the Good Old Days.

Believe me, wise men don't say 'I shall live to do that', tomorrow's life's too late; live today. (Non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere 'Vivam': Sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.)

Give me today, and take tomorrow.

Tomorrow's life is too late; live today.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.

(Zwei Seelen und ein Gedanke,
Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag!)

The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden.

I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance.

It is forbidden to decry other sects; the true believer gives honor to whatever in them is worthy of honor.

Never force your subjects to change their religion. Violence can never persuade men; it serves only to make hypocrites. Grant civil liberty to all, not in approving everything as indifferent, but in tolerating with patience whatever Almighty God tolerates, and endeavoring to convert men by mild persuasion.

I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality. I know too well the weakness and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different results.

We are none of us tolerant in what concerns us deeply and entirely.

In a republic we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted.

I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.

Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.

When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat,
Yet fool'd with hope, men favor the deceit;
Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay;
Tomorrow's falser than the former day.

Last night is certainly gone, and tomorrow may never arrive.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

An unbridled tongue is the worst of diseases.

Birds are entangled by their feet and men by their tongues.

Thistles and thorns prick sore,
But evil tongues prick more.

Man is a tool-using animal … . Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

An ill workman quarrels with his tools. (Popular variation: A bad workman blames his tools.)

The tongue is ever turning to the aching tooth.

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.

There is always room at the top.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

I tried so hard, I never knew still waters.

Toronto is a kind of New York operated by the Swiss.

Damn the torpedoes! Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!

Tory, n. A cant term, derived, I suppose, from an Irish word, signifying a savage.

Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are "vowed" to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor. The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor.

What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn't have lost if you hadn't left home in the first place.

God made the country and man made the town.

The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

It is no sin to sell dear, but a sin to give ill measure.

Jack of all trades and master of none.

He who does not teach his son a trade teaches him to be a robber.

The man who has a trade may go anywhere.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

Tradition is the fence of the law.

There is no theatre in the world has anything so absurd as the English tragi-comedy. Here, a course of mirth; there, another of sadness and passion; a third of honor; and the fourth a duel. Thus, in two hours and a half we run through all the fits of Bedlam.

The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real they would please no more.

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy!

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Traitors are disliked even by those they favor.

Tranquility is the old man's milk. I go to enjoy it in a few days, and to exchange the roar and tumult of bulls and bears for the prattle of my grandchildren and senile rest.

Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.

However excellent the verses, it is impossible to translate them from one language into another without losing much of their beauty and dignity.

It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?

Translation is at best an echo.

I do not hesitate to read good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable—any real insight or broad human sentiment.

An idea does not pass from one language to another without change.

It would be undoubtedly best, if we could see and hear every thing as it is, that nothing might be too anxiously dreaded, or too ardently pursued

Those who go overseas find a change of climate, not a change of soul.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Doc Daneeka hated to fly. He felt imprisoned in an airplane. In an airplane there was absolutely no place in the world to go except to another part of the airplane.

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Boswell: Is not the Giant's-Causeway worth seeing?
Johnson: Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.

The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.

Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.

Why do people so love to wander? I think the civilized parts of the world will suffice for me in the future.

A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by a blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.

There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.

A class of men who are exceedingly tiresome are those who, having traveled, talk of nothing but their adventures, the countries which they have seen or traversed, the dangers, whether real or fictitious, which they have encountered, repeating the same things an hundred times over.

If an ass goes traveling he'll not come home a horse.

Travel makes a wise man better, but a fool worse.

Led by my hand, he saunter'd Europe round,
And gather'd ev'ry vice on Christian ground.

A wise traveler never despises his own country.

That man travels to no purpose who sits down alone to his meals.

The more I see of other countries the more I love my own.

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of traveling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

Age is a bad traveling companion.

Show me a man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will show you in that same person one who loves nothing but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by choice.

The treacherous are ever distrustful.

[Treason], Sire, is a question of date.

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Princes in this case
Do hate the traitor, though they love the treason.

It is a vain attempt
To bind th' ambitious and unjust by treaties:
These they elude a thousand specious ways;
Or, if they cannot find a fair pretext,
They blush not in the face of Heaven to break them.

Treaties at best are but complied with so long as interest requires their fulfilment. Consequently, they are virtually binding on the weaker party only; or, in plain truth, they are not binding at all.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

He that plants trees loves others beside himself.

A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.

A fox should not be of the jury at a goose's trial.

Consider how you would like, though conscious of your innocence, to be tried before a jury for a capital crime once a week.

I against my brother; I and my brother against our cousin; my brother and our cousin against the neighbors; all of us against the strangers.

If there were no tribulation, there would be no rest; if there were no Winter, there would be no Summer.

Trifles make the sum of life.

Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles life.

Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life. The majority of men slip into their graves without having encountered on their way thither any signal catastrophe or exaltation of fortune or feeling.

The three persons in the Godhead are three in one sense and one in another. We cannot tell how and that is the mystery.

He sickened at all triumphs but his own.

Not in the clamour of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds, than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies.

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.

Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.

This too shall pass.

He that seekes trouble never misses.

As someone pointed out recently, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation.

One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it better.

A trouble shared is a trouble halved.

He that seeks trouble always finds it.

He who would have no trouble in this world must not be born in it.

In this world you will have trouble.

When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his arms for a new encounter.

For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.

Make all our trumpets speak; give them all breath,
Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.

If we are bound to forgive an enemy, we are not bound to trust him.

He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.

The way to learn whether a person is trustworthy is to trust him.

To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.

Trust, like the soul, never returns, once it is gone.

Trust none;
For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes.

We generally most covet that particular trust which we are least likely to keep. He that thoroughly knows his friends, might perhaps, with safety, confide his wife to the care of one, his purse to another, and his secrets to a third; when to permit them to make their own choice would be his ruin.

The man who trusts other men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

What I tell you three times is true.

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple

It is one of the most fundamental fallacies of the post-Sixties Left that there is no such thing as objective truth.

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy, have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.

The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

Truth … never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.

It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth.

Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie:
A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it; for no species of falsehood is more frequent than flattery, to which the coward is betrayed by fear, the dependant by interest, and the friend by tenderness.

Great is truth, and it prevails. (Magna est veritas, et praevalet.)

One of the favourite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.

Soothsayers make a better living in the world than truthsayers.

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

Truth will ultimately prevail where pains [are] taken to bring it to light.

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

But the basis of all excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power.

He that changes his party by his humour, is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; he loves himself rather than truth.

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

If God were to hold out enclosed in His right hand all Truth, and in His left hand just the active search for Truth, though with the condition that I should always err therein, and He should say to me: Choose! I should humbly take His left hand and say: Father! Give me this one; absolute Truth belongs to Thee alone.

(Wenn Gott in seiner Rechten alle Wahrheit und in seiner Linken den einzigen, immer regen Trieb nach Wahrheit, obgleich mit dem Zusatz, mich immer und ewig zu irren, verschlossen hielte and spräche zu mir: Wähle! ich fiele ihm mit Demut in seine Linke und sagte: Vater, gieb! Die reine Wahrheit ist ja doch nur für Dich allein.)

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. (Croyez ceux qui cherchent la vérité, doutez de ceux qui la trouvent.)

Popular variation: Trust people who seek the truth. Don't trust people who say they found it.

To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats—we know it not.

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is “merely relative,” is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Children and fools tell the truth.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth. (Comme tous les songe-creux, je confondis le désenchantement avec la vérité.)

Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

But, my dearest Agathon, it is truth which you cannot contradict; you can without any difficulty contradict Socrates.

The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.

Truth is often eclipsed, but never extinguished.

Truth is open to all men.

If it is not true, it is well invented. (Se non è vero, è ben trovato.)

Children and fools speak true.

Although it may not be always advisable to say all that is true, yet it is never allowable to speak against the truth.

Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity. A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazard her on a battle.

Truth always lags behind, limping along on the arm of time.

All truths are not to be told.

Truth is precious and divine;
Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

The truth does not act impetuously.

There are times when truth hardly seems probable.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

Beware of telling an improbable truth.

Remember, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded.

I know mankind too well to think they are capable of receiving the truth, much less of applauding it.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all occasions.

Truth ever lovely-since the world began,
The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man.

Truth is always strange—stranger than fiction.

I tell the honest truth in my paper, and I leave the consequence to God.

A new truth is looked upon with as much jealousy as a "new man" in an aristocracy, and has often to pass through two or three generations ere its nobility is entirely accredited.

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please—you can never have both.

Truth, like all other good things, may be loved unwisely—may be pursued too keenly—may cost too much.

Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be suppressed.

He who has the truth is in the majority, even though he be one.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but not so popular.

Truth conquers all things. (Vincit omnia veritas.)

If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, 'a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on

People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell the truth.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Hope deceives more men than cunning can.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.

Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough and … it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

And after all what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.

A lie is halfway around the world before truth has got its boots on. (Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius alium)

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed but that he cannot believe anyone else.

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one.

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.

[Stanley Baldwin] occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

I was brought up in a clergyman's household so I am a first-class liar.

No totalitarian censor can approach the implacability of the censor who controls the line of communication between the outer world and our consciousness. Nothing is allowed to reach us which might weaken our confidence and lower our morale. To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth.

Truthful, adj. Dumb and illiterate.

A woman may tell ninety-nine lies, but the hundredth will betray her.

One lie draws ten after it.

Tell a lie and you will hear the truth.

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

Truth, n. Something somehow discreditable to someone.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

Truth does not blush. (Veritas non erubescit).

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

Is honesty always the best policy? Not when it does unnecessary harm or gets in the way of doing good.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves. (Il ne faut pas s’offenser que les autres nous cachent la vérité puisque nous nous la cachons si souvent à nous-mêmes.)

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.

Half the truth is often a whole lie.

Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight: and men may be as positive in error as in truth.

I tell the truth, not as much as I would but as much as I dare—and I dare more and more as I grow older.

I never speak falsehood, but I do not tell the truth to everyone.

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man, for fear of alarming him. You have no business with consequences; you are to tell the truth.

The Turks are the people of the wrath of God.

Ah, what shall I be at fifty
Should nature keep me alive,
If I find the world so bitter
When I am but twenty-five?

Anything worth doing is worth doing twice, the first time quick and dirty, and the second time the best way you can.

They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

The power of the Executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist.

The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit tyranny.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Sic semper tyrannis [Thus always to tyrants].

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

Nature has left this tincture in the blood,
That all men would be tyrants if they could.

Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be gods;
Thus they become our scourges, we their rods.