PEARLS BEFORE PIGS
W o r d s O f W i s d o m A n d P l e a s a n t r y
PART 2
Chapter 6 - 10
Chapter 6 On self-confidence
Chapter 7 On bad fortune and misunderstandings
Chapter 8 On wisdom
Chapter 9 On character
Chapter 10 On optimists and pessimists
Chapter 6 On self-confidence(upd. 180504)
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
-George Eliot
Great men never regard themselves as great - insignificant men never feel insignificant.
-Chinese proverb
In order to get to the source, you have to swim against the current.
-Stanislav Jerzy Lec
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one
has ever been.
-Alan Ashley-Pitt
A ship at harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
-Proverb
That man is strongest who stands alone.
-Henrik Ibsen
The rational person adjusts to the world. The irrational person tries to get the world to adjust to him. All progress is, therefire, dependent upon
the irrational.
-George Bernard Shaw
Laugh and the world laughs with you - snore and you will sleep alone.
-Anthony Burgess
If they believe they are laughing at me, then they are making an outrageous mistake.
-Harald Heide Steen jr., Norwegian comedian
No thief would believe me to be so old-fashioned that I would hide my money in my mattress. Just therefore I am hiding my money in the
mattress. Just to be safe, I keep the mattress locked in a bankbox.
-From a text used by Arve Opsahl, Norwegian actor
In the very beginning of my career as a radio amateur my fear for the microphone was so strong that I could barely utter a single word. Then
early one day when I checked into the Morning Club with participants from all over south Norway, I suddenly bursted out: Can anybody here
change a fiver? From that day the ice was broken.
-LA5LM/Per Suleng
When I was give my maiden speech on Ham radio, I already knew the microphone could not bite. But deep inside I still was a bit frightened -
for safety's sake.
-LA4VQ/Kristian Rakvåg
One day when I woke up completely exhausted, I had to look in he mirror three times to assure myself that it was I who was lying there.
-Kristian Rakvåg
I am so shy that I even blush when I see my torso in the mirror.
-Kristian Rakvåg
Let no one allow you to believe that you are a perfect idiot, nobody is perfect.
-Kristian Rakvåg
When people experience such a tragi-comical situation, they usually don't know whether to laugh or to cry. I knew, because I laughed.
-Karl Otto Bakken, Norway
My ignorance has little by little taken on such enormous dimentiones, that there soon will be no subject I can't comment on.
-Henrik Groth, Norwegian publisher
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligenct are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russel
Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
-Henry Ford
When you are as great as I am, it is hard to be humble.
-Muhammed Ali
It is a lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believe in myself.
-Muhammed Ali
I don't want to join the kind of a club that accepts people like me as members.
-Groucho Marx
Adversity which does not break us, strengthens us.
-Unknown
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
-Ashleigh Brillant
The best prove of independent judgment is being able to dislike somebody who admires us, and admire somebody who dislikes us.
-Unknown
The more comfortable we feel being ourselves, the rarer we suppress others to feel good ourselves.
-Odetta Holmes
It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.
-Abraham Lincoln
You need courage to be talented.
-Georg Brandes, Denmark
I never make mistakes. Once I thought I had made one, but that was wrong. so there I was mistaken.
-Ivar Eskeland, Norway
She was embarrassed, shy, she looked down on herself, the nightgown, the slippers, she even blushed, as if she had been caught red-handed, in
the
act of being human.
-From
The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen
A sensation of strength wells up in me, so overpowering and intense that it is much like that of the sea serpent when it raises its head above the
ocean,
and then dives back into the deep because there is no opposition.
-Carl Joachim Hambro
I had believed that it was a man, but it was nothing more than an abnormal child with a prodigious gift of the gab, a living inferiority complex.
-Carl Joachim Hambro meeting Josef Goebbels in 1933
Don`t
shoot so high that the arrow hits your nose when it falls.
-Olav Duun
Personality
is the acceptance of oneself.
-Aasmund Brynildsen
It
needs more courage to change one`s opinion than to keep to it.
-Willy Brandt
Only
those who also feel fear are truly courageous. The others are merely foolhardy.
-Willy Brandt
He who is ashamed of asking is ashamed of learning.
-Danish proverb
Have a vision not clouded by fear.
-Cherokee proverb
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
-Søren Kierkegaard
The best way of duping yourself is to believe that you are more cunning than others.
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?
-Benjamin Franklin
Chapter 7 On bad fortune and misunderstandings(upd. 240904)
To err is human, but to forgive is divine.
-Hieronimus/Cicero
To err is human, but it feels divine.
-Mae West
To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
-Orben's Current Comedy
To err is human, once I even did it myself.
-Rolv Wesenlund, Norwegian comedian
You should learn from other people's mistakes, you have not got enough time to make them all yourself.
-Proverb
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-Franklin P. James
To be defeated is not the same as being wrong.
-Lord Hailsham
The general assembly of the Norwegian hypochondriac association is postponed because of illness.
-Rolv Wesenlund
A hypochondriac may suffer in many ways, but never in silence.
-Unknown
It is my deepest conviction that every human being is good at bottom.
-Fridtjof Nansen in a speech held in London
A group of white South-Africans killed a lawyer because he was black. That was wrong. They should have killed him because he was a lawyer.
-A. Whitney Brown
Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us.
-Jean Rostand
Today, if you are not confused, you are just not thinking clearly.
-U. Peter
I love to fly. I have been almost as many places as my luggage.
-Bob Hope
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
-Will Rogers
Nothing makes people more furious than their own reflection.
-Kaj Skagen, Norwegian writer
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
-Edward Abbey
Calamities are of two kinds. Misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
-Ambrose Bierce
The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small...
-Lao Tzu
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
-Oscar Wilde
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
-Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959 )
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
-Karl Marx
I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.
-Chinese proverb
I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said: Got any shoes you're not using?
-Steven Wright
My watch is three hours fast and I can't fix it, so I'm going to move to New York.
-Steven Wright
My old cheap watch was ready for condemnation, so I invested in a first rate specimen worth 1200 kroner. But even that one didn't go any
faster.
-Ove Orvik, Norway
There's a bicycle on the hayloft, and it has no working light; but that doesn't matter, because it's dark up there.
-Salhusvinskvetten, Norwegian music group
If I worry about all my problems in advance, have I then sort of solved them before they pop up?
-Erlend Loe, Norwegian writer
During a stay in Copenhagen around 1870, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wanted to send an important message rapidly to his Karoline back home in
Norway. He was walking around in all the streets of the neighbourhood for two hours, desperately hunting for a phone box. At last he realized
the bitter truth: the telephone had not yet been invented.
-Kristian Rakvåg
If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense in making them.
-Unknown
The one who feels his education is finished, is not educated - but finished.
-Unknown
It is incredible what one finds when looking for something else.
-Unknown
I bought a self learning record to learn Spanish. I turned it on and went to sleep; the record got stuck. The next day I could only stutter in
Spanish.
-Steven Wright
People always ask me, Where were you when Kennedy was shot?
Well, I don't have an alibi.
-Emo Phillips
Learning to speak Japanese by the learn-when-you-sleep method was easy. The problem is that I am able to speak only when I talk in my
sleep.
-Victor Borge
Two old fellows from Saltdal in Northern Norway stood talking by the road when an Italian stopped in order to ask for the right direction.
He tried to talk English, French and German without being understood.
I wish I could manage a foreign language or two, said one of the locale guys when the tourist was gone.
Why so? The man who was here recently could speak four, but it didn't help him at all, his friend replied.
-Terje Nilsen, Bodø
The experts say that ten cigarettes a day damage your health. So therefore: start smoking at night!
-Unknown
You say you love birds - but still you put them in a cage.
You say you love flowers - still you pick them.
You say you love the wind - still you close the door.
No wonder it scares me when you say you love me.
-Unknown
Thanks be to unpolite pupils like you I will never achieve the age I already seem to have reached.
-Frustrated teacher
It's not the big stump that you stumble upon, it's the small one.
-Proverb from Burma/Myanmar
I have always been astonished by all the absurde windings chosen by rivers in order to pass under all the bridges.
-Beppe Grillo
It went like a dream - more specifically, like a nightmare.
-Unknown
Because of a missing decimal point, a Volvo owner picking up his car got a repair bill for 25 hours work instead of 2.5 hrs.
I knew that my car was not in a weak condition, but I refuse to believe she was in so bad shape that you had to stand watch over her all night
long.
-Story from a weekly paper
It didn't go as badly as we had feared. It went much worse.
-Unknown
Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the problem is that I don't know which half.
-John Wanamaker
A potato farmer in Volda complained more than usual about the growth of his crops. -In my wildest dreams I'd never foreseen
such poor results from the fine tubers I put down this spring, he said.
His son mused: -Are you sure you didn't put them some place else then, daddy?
-Ann Magritt Mork, Norway
Nurses should not take driving lisences. Because when the patients ring and the red lamps light up, the nurse will be patiently standing
in front of the door waiting for the green light.
-Kristian Rakvåg
As if by a miracle, I escaped from this incident with my fear intact.
-Kristian Rakvåg
In a period of only a few minutes, a computer can make errors so large that it would take many humans several months to do
the same thing.
-Merle L. Meacham
A prejudice is an opinion without basis in fact.
-Voltaire
Since the house is on fire, let's warm ourselves.
-Italian proverb
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I have never tried before.
-Mae West
When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
-Max Lerner
If labour is healthy, than give it to the ill ones.
-Jacob Haugaard, Denmark
Neccesity teaches naked woman how to weave.
-Norwegian proverb
The bigger a man's head, the worse his headache.
-Persian proverb
No brain - no headache.
-Unknown
In English Amateur radio is also known as Ham radio. That explains why the Amateur radio group in Florø - the westernmost town in Norway -
is best known as West Ham United abroad.
-LA4VQ/Kristian Rakvåg
Midsund is to be written with a capital K - for reasons unknown.
-LA4VQ/Kristian Rakvåg
From that day of there has been nothing but peace to get.
-Annbjørn Rakvåg
The USA ambassador Mark Austad has never truly shown real diplomacy during his stay in Norway. This is in sharp contrast to his Soviet
colleague, who has recently seen nearly all of diplomats shown the way out of Norway.
-Dagbladet after spy scandale
It is always possible to make one more mistake.
-Gro Harlem Brundtland
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth.
-Irish proverb
The too hasty and the too slow always arrive too late.
-William Shakespeare
Two blokes were on their way home after a party. They took a short-cut across the churchyard, were a grave had just been digged out for the
day after. One of them accidentaly happened to stumble in the pile of soil next to the grave and fell in.
Help me up, I'm freezing to death, he screamed with an unrecognisable voice from the pit of water six feeth below.
The mate, who was following a few meters behind, lit his torch to get an overwiev of the situation. No wonder you're freezing, he said, you've
kicked away all the soil, man.
-From a Norwegian humour magazine
I must have ended up on the wrong planet. Everything here is so strange.
-Sigbjørn Obstfelder, Norwegian poet
The last day of February there's always a long line of people at the Scotch post offices. They want to hoard stamps before the postage rises
the first of March.
-Unknown
He who wastes time boasting of yesterday's victories will have nothing to boast about tomorrow.
-Chinese proverb
If you don't want anybody to know about it; don't do it.
-Chinese proverb
He who rests on his laurel's, has put them in the wrong place.
-Mao Zedong
The man in the street gets easily over-run.
-Nils-Fredrik Nielsen
When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
-Unknown
A tree never hits an automobile except in self-defense.
-Unknown
A very agiteded man who did not catch the local bus from town, had to humiliate himself by travelling with a competing bus company leaving
five minutes later. The following exchange ensued:
How much does it cost to go with this garbage cart to the ferry?
Usually we charge six kroner pro dirt bag, answered the driver patiently.
-Story from my home area
The allegation that I was driving too fast at the moment of the collision falls on its own lack of logic; the car was being manually pushed by my
72-year-old sister.
-From accident reports
I concentraded on negotiating the curve, when the road suddenly changed its mind; it continued straight ahead.
-From accident report
Neither driver A nor driver B agree on the description in the accident report, because it was written by a stubborn witness who tried to dictate
the entire thing.
-On accident report
This car has been in 14 collisions and won all of them.
-Text on the front of Karsten Isachsens old Volga
He once teased me in a friendly way about a photography where I was wearing a reflector ribbon hanging around my neck.: That must be your
halo
that fell down during the party.
-Lars
Roar Langslet on Arnulf Øverland
Jørgina spent much of her time in the loo - or the English quarter, as she would call it - on the pretext of being troubled by persistent
constipations, listening to the edifying BBC broadcasts from London. «I have learnt resistance fighting from WC», she would say to people, and
they wouldn't understand what she was talking about. It became a code name. «I listen to WC all the time», she said to Jonas' mother. People,
including
her husband, thought she was going mad.
-From
Oppdageren /The Detector by Jan Kjærstad, WC may also be Winston
Churchill
Who tore down the walls of Jericho?, the teacher asked.
It
wasn't me!, little Per answered nervously.
The teacher found this answer reprehensible, and went to see Per's father, who enraged answered that if his boy had said that he hadn't done it,
then
he hadn't.
Resigned, the teacher went to see the mayor and told him the story. He replied that it didn't really matter who had torn down the walls of Jericho,
for
in the end the local council would probably have to pay for it anyway.
-Joke
Out first-born is lying in the cradle, rocked by an xavante girl. She is one of the few loyal ones steadily wandering the road of the lord. But we
cannot trust her completely, so we have felt compelled to chain her to the cradle. We have gilded the chain so that this situation should not affect
her
too strongly.
-From
Jon Michelet's Jerv (jervere, jervest)
Experience is a wonderful thing - it
helps you to recognise a mistake when you make it again.
-Unknown
I hear so slowly in the dark.
-Knut O. Rakvåg, Norway
I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest.
-A. Whitney Brown
Anastas Mikojan was giving a lecture on the subject 'Total disarmament' in the Students' Association in Oslo around 1960. The ensuing debate
was introduced by a representative of Moral Rearmament. A tired interpreter translated the name of the organisation into Russian as 'Moral
Disarmament'. A new interpreter is brought in, and a disorientated AM says:
I don't understand this Moral disarmament, that must mean that one wishes to abolish all morals!'
The replacement interpreter, believing this to be a slip of the tongue on AM's part, corrects: Moral rearmament wants to abolish all morals!
AM
continues, in his best lay preacher style What we really need today, is moral
rearmament!
Chapter 8 On wisdom(upd. 230505)
The hard times have more wisdom to give us than the easy going and pleasant ones.
-Kaj Munk, Denmark
Hodja, how can we achieve wisdom?
Listen attemptly to wise and learnd men's speak. And when you talk to others, listen carefully to what you say yourself.
-Nasreddin Hodja
Where is the wisdom we lost to knowledge? Where is the knowledge we lost to information?
-T.S.Eliot
Experience - the comb given to you by life after you have lost all your hair.
-Judith Stern
It's one thing to be learned, another to be wise and clever.
-From Peder Paars by Ludvig Holberg
Life and wisdom seldom share the same table.
-Unknown
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.
-Greek proverb
Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.
-Theodore I. Rubin
Even if your on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-Will Rogers
We don't knows the age of the human race but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better.
-Unknown
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
-Rabindranath Tagore
May the evening forgive the day its wrong going, and therebye itself gain peace.
-Tagore
Man is cruel, but the Man is good.
-Tagore
Facts are many, but the truth is one.
-Rabindranath Tagore
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
-Tagore
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.
-Walter Lippmann
Do not envy a man his appearant happiness, because you do not know his hidden sorrows.
-Chinese proverb
The art of being happy is to settle for simpler pleasures.
-Chinese proverb
Don't waste your time, that's what life is made of.
-Chinese proverb
To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
-Chinese proverb
The wise man is slow to speak but quick to act.
-Confucius
He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
-Confucius
To speak is to sow, to listen is to harvest.
-Proverb fromTurkey
By nature man is given one tongue, but two ears, so that we shall hear twice as must as we say.
-Latin proverb
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the
grass and loses itself in the sunset.
-Crowfoot, a Blackfoot warior and orator's last words
Wise men talk because they have something to say, fools because they have to say something.
-Plato
The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Yesterday is a cancelled check; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have,so spend it wisely.
-Kay Lyons
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
-Fracis Bacon
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
-Will Durant
Man is a reed, the weakest in nature, but a thinking reed.
-Blaise Pascal
What we are, is a result of what we think.
-The Buddha
I think, therefore I am.
-Rene Descartes
I think, therefore I am single.
-Liz Winston
A fool will learn nothing from a wise man, but a wise man will learn much from the fool.
-Confucius
Life is like a book. The fool looks through it hastily, wher as the wise reads slowly with afterthought, because he knows he can read it only once.
-Jean Paul
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
-Will Rogers
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
-Galileo Galilei
If a man knows he is ignorant, he is not ignorant.
-Proverb from Kashmir
The meeting is the beginning of farewell.
-Japanese proverb
After getting a thorn in your foot, you will wear sandals.
-Nigerian proverb
Do not, as the fool, feel sorry that life is short. Remember that along with your days your sorrows are also decreast.
-Indian proverb
He who plans revenge, keeps his wounds open.
-Francis Bacon
The world is the best master, but the prize for the learning is high.
-Finnish proverb
We can bear with a black day now and then, it's worse if all days are gray.
-Kristian Rakvåg
That there are things in life that exeed our comprehension, is something we have problems comprehending.
-Heljar Mjøen, Norway
Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord made so many of them.
-Abraham Lincoln
Don't pass judgement upon others when you are angry. Anger will pass, where as the judgement will remain.
-Abraham Lincoln
Killing the dog does not cure the bite.
-Abraham Lincoln
Life is a zoo in a jungle.
-Peter de Vries
Use what talent you posess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
-Henry Van Dyke
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
-Unknown
Happiness is found along the way, not at the end of the road.
-Unknown
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
-Isaac Newton
Never tear shadows. They simply mean that there's alight somewhere nearby.
-Ruth E. Renkei
Don't look your stable door after the horse is stolen.
-Proverb
When you get to the end of the rope, tie a knot and hang on.
-Thomas Jefferson
The boat comes into existence as one rows.
-Unknown
Good ideas is like mushrooms, where you find one you often find more.
-Hans Carossa
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea
and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
-George Bernard Shaw
Don't be afraid of pressure. Remember that pressure is what turns a lump of coal into a diamond.
-God's Little Instruction Book
The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
-Jean Paul
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
-Mahfouz Naguib
Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.
-Slovenian proverb
Never say all you know, but know all you say.
-Matthias Claudius
Money couldn't buy friends, but you get a better class of enemy.
-Spike Mulligan
It is painful not to be in the center of one's own life. It is not self obsessed to stand in the center of one's own life. From there you can see
anything except the center itself.
-David Kvebæk, Norway
Life is like a golfball. We get one hard stroke after the other and finally ending up in a hole in the ground.
-Unknown
The intellectuales discuss ideas, the average man discuss events and the fools discuss celebrities and neighbors.
-Unknown
One thing is to make a man convinced that he is wrong, another to guide him to the truth.
-John Locke
The question is not who is right, but what is right.
-Thomas Huxley
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
-Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
-Oscar Wilde
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
-Oscar Wilde
In the throes of pleasure, one must never promise, in the heat of rage, one must not answer letters.
-Chinese proverb
If there is light in the soul,/There will be beauty in the person./If there is beauty in the person,/There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,/There will be order in the nation./If there is order in the nation,/There will be peace in the world.
-Chinese proverb
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
-Chinese proverb
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them you are a mile away.. and you have their
shoes.
-Unknown
A wise man can gather greater treasures than a powerfull man.
-Proverb from Tibet
70 years of ignorance cost more than 10 years in school.
-Unknown
Where
is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in
information?
-T.S.Eliot
My
cat stroking against my cheek soothes the aching heart/Into the eyes of my dog I
sink my sorrows like into a deep well.
-Henrik
Wergeland, Norway
Only cultured people like learning, ignoramuses prefer to teach.
-Edouard Le Berquier
Chapter 9 On character(upd. 050504)
Our character is what we do when we think no one are looking.
-Jackson Browne
The true test of character is how we behave when we don't know what to do.
-John Holt
A person without character is like a blossom without scent.
-Imayat Khan Gayan
Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they find laughable.
-Anon
When no wind is blowing, even the weathercock has character.
-Stanislav Jerzy Lec
Courage is the fear of being thought a coward.
-Horace Smith
Many would be cowards if they had courage enough.
-Thomas Fuller
Don't ask for a light load, but rather ask for a strong back.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Prosperity reveals our vices - adversity our virtues.
-Francis Bacon
Nobody has been destroyed by adversity, who never was fooled by prosperity.
-Seneca
He who has hurt you was either stronger or weaker than you. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare yourself
-Seneca
When you se a good man try to be like him, when you see an evil man try to find his errors within yourself.
-Confucius
Promises are the flower - action the fruit.
-Unknown
I never cross the line, I just push it in front of me.
-Unknown
Morals are at a low, but pleasing level.
-Morten P.Porsild, Danish scientist commenting Greenland approx. 1900
Every human being is from God's hand an original version.
-Søren Kierkegaard, Denmark
No two people are alike - and that's making them both feel satisfied.
-Olin Miller
There can be a good head under a shabby hat.
-Proverb
Lazy people always want to do something.
-Vauvenargues
Indiffenence is a paralyzing of the soul, and brings one death quicker.
-Anton Chekhov
Some people think it's a sign of strength to resist. On the other hand it some times can be a sign of strength to give in.
-Christian Science Monitor
The most genuin sign of being born with great characteristics, is to be without envy.
-François de La Rochefoucauld
Pride carves its wrath in stone, love covers it with flowers.
-Tagore
I was acting humble for 14 days, but nobody noticed it.
-Katharine Whitehorn
Some people grow with responsibility, others just act like a stussed shirt.
-Unknown
Through mildness shows the strong one his power.
-Indian proverb
All my life I've been in doubt, now I am not so sure anymore.
-Unknown
If there are any vices I have not practised, it's because of too little time.
-Ole Paus, Norway
Human ability to exempt oneself - just for this once - is infinite.
-Unknown
The one who reluctantly give a promise, is more lightly to keep it.
-Rousseau
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your
habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
-Patrick Overton
What will people say? Such thoughts make a homeless soul. Do what right is, and don't look back.
-Unknown
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
-Malcolm S. Forbes
Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.
-James Dewar
I can resist anything except temptation.
-Oscar Wilde
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-Mark Twain
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
-Alexander Hamilton
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last.
-Sir Winston Churchill
A master of his own passions is a slave of his own reason.
-Cyril Conolly
Infinite patience brings immediate results.
-Wayne Dyer
Me and my dreaded conscience. But fortunately it doesn't bother me until I am finished having fun.
-Andy Capp
Many people sin just to enjoy the regret.
-Sacha Guitry
I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing!
-Emo Phillips
Unfortunately, some of us would rather be destroyed by flattery than saved by critics.
-Unknown
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
-Lucille S. Harper
An egoist is a person of low taste - more interested in himself than in me
-Ambrose Bierce
Thoughtless people are seldom without words.
-Howard H. Newton
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
-H.L. Mencken
In normal times, we treat the psychopaths. In troubled time, they run the government.
-A. Portman
Hans liked to see people cry, and I have never seen him laugh so much as he did at his aunt's funeral.
-Gunther Grass
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
-Abbie Hoffman
Neurotics build castles of air, psychopaths live in them, and psychiatrists demand rent.
-Jerome Lawrence
Even though I am a principled and professional psychopath, I'll make an exception just for you.
-Kristian Rakvåg
I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
-W.C. Fields
All charming people have something to hide - usually their complete independence on other people's admiration.
-Cyril Connolly
Envy is the best form of flattery.
-J.C.Collins
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
-August Strindberg
Beware the fury of a patient man.
-John Dryden
An American Indian elder described his own inner struggles this way: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The
other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.
When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied: The one I feed the most.
The poor misses a lot, the greedy misses everything.
-Publilus Syrus
My riches do not consist of what I own, but in the modesty of my demands.
-John Brotherton
One never needs to search for words that always express the truth.
-Danish proverb
Happy is he who laughs at himself; he will not go short of entertainment.
-Habib Bourguiba
Honest people often fool themselves.
-Arne Garborg, Norwegian writer
The man who never feels weakness will never know strength.
-Kristoffer Uppdal, Norwegian writer
Ripe for sorrow are all men. Ripe for happiness are only the strong.
-Agnar Mykle, Norwegian writer
And sailors have one honourable law, it is that given them by the sea:
They know that the waters will take some men, but they know not who they be.
But the one who is too afraid to assist when ships are in hardest danger,
he is, may be, a gentle guy, but for sailors he'll always be a stranger.
-Free translation from a poem on sailor heroism, Norwegian original by Arnulf Øverland
A person who walks in another's track leaves no footprints.
-Unknown
A man who cannot smile should not open a shop.
-Chinese proverb
Most of us would rather be ruined by flattery than to be benefited by criticism.
-Unknown
We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.
-John F. Kennedy
Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out alive.
-Bugs Benny
Crises bring out the best in the best of us, and the worst in the worst of us.
-Unknown
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
-Josh Billings
I have never thought much of the courage of a lion-tamer, inside the cage he is, at least, safe from other men.
-George Bernard Shaw
The one who everything knows, has much to learn.
-Unknown
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
-Muhammed Ali
A personality is one who makes us listen when he/she is present, and who makes us think when he/she has left.
-Unknown
(He) reminds one of the not too successful actors who are never given the major parts, and compensate in all parties by elevating it to a stage
where they can speak in loud, bragging monologues through an entire evening, interrupted only by their own laughter.
-Jan Kjærstad, Norway
I am annoyed - and maybe you are too - at the conceitedness, vanity, tactlessness and scribbling of CJH. I shall never write anything again -
except
for bills. I despise all poetic weakness of stomach. I no longer dream in the
moonlight - I snore. If I see a view, I think: If only I were a cow!
-Carl Joachim Hambro, when his girlfriend found him too romantic+++
My concie
nce is clean, because I have never used it.-Swedish proverb
Chapter 10 On optimists and pessimists(upd.180504)
I am not an optimist, because I don`t believe that everything will go well. But I am not a pessimist either, because I don`t believe that everything
will go wrong. No, I am hopeful. Hope is almost as
important as life. Without hope we will never reach our goals.
-Vaclav Havel
He who expects nothing shall never be disappointed.
-Unknown
If you want your dream to come truth, so wake up.
-American proverb
To believe in one's dreams is to spend all of one's life asleep.
-Chinese proverb
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these
dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who hope
that their dreams will come true.
-Woodrow Wilson
Hope is a waking dream.
-Aristotle
If you can dream it, you can do it.
-Walt Disney
A dream is a lie, if you let it die.
-Unknown
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
-Orison Swett Marden
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
People who believes their wishes have come true, are comitting a fatal error.
-Leo Tolstoy
The fool dreams of riches, the wise of happiness.
-Turkish proverb
A person who never has a dream will never experience the joy of having it come true.
-Oscar Hammerstein
Your life. Your dream: The warmth under a bird's foot/ napping in the dawn of winter.
-Hans Børli, Norwegian poet
He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
-Benjamin Franklin
A future goal is a dream with a deadline.
-Unknown
Life is a nightmare out which we are awoken by death.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
I survived my nightmares thanks to my dreams.
-Unknown
The optimist can only see the dough nut - the pessimist can just see the hole.
-Wilson McLandburgh
A pessimist? That's a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.
-Elbert Hubbard
An optimist says this is the best of all wolds. The pessimist fears that is true.
-Unknown
The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people meaner.
-Karl Kraus
The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the realist adjusts the sails.
-William Arthur Ward
Always borrow money from pessimists; they don't expect to be paid back.
-Unknown
Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
-Arnold Bennett
For myself, I am an optimist, it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
-Sir Winston Churchill
A pessimist see the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist see the opportunity in every difficulty.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
-Oscar Wilde
An optimist is a person who, without a cent in his pocket, orders oysters, hoping to be able to pay the bill with the pearls he finds.
-Ugo Tognazzi
A pessimist is a man who believes women are easy. An optimist is a man who hopes they are.
-Unknown
The eternal optimist sustains life, but it is the pessimist who sees the great depressions of life.
-Unknown+
You are an optimist if while watching a horrible TV show, you hope the re-run will be better.
-Sven Sabroe
A pessimist is a person who spends his entire life in a darkroom, doing nothing but developing negatives.
-Unknown
The honest pessimist has always done more for humanity than any prophet of glad tidings.
-Inger Hagerup, Norwegian poet
I have had many worries, but most of them turned out to be nothing.
-Unknown
Castles in the air are expensive to maintain.
-English proverb
Never say to a youngster that something is impossible. The good Lord may have been waiting for centuries for someone to come along who did not know that
something actually was impossible, and did it.
-Unknown
Whenever you fall, pick something up.
-Oswald Avery
Do not become too optimistic when you see the light at the end of the tunnel; it may be an oncoming train on the same track.
-Peter Lowell
Some men sees things as they are and ask why. Others dreams things that never were and ask why not.
-George Bernard Shaw
If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come.
-Chinese proverb
Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream.
-Honore De Balzac
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things
will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly.
-Peter Outlaw
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has
opened for us.
-Alexander Graham Bell
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a
vegetarian.
-Dennis Wholey
Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.
-Unknown
The darkness is never complitely dark if you dare to look it in the eye.
-Erik Bye, Norwegian journalist and poet
It is better to lite one candle than to curse the darkness.
-Confusius
We are born crying, complain about living, and die disappointed.
-Thomas Fuller
Do not lose faith in humanity. Think of all those who have not annoyed you.
-Elbert Hubbard
It is always too early to give up.
-Unknown
I would rather be an optimist and wrong, than a pessimist and right.
-Kurt Gødel
If it was not for the uphill slopes, the ascent of man would never take place.
-Arne Garborg
Every day when the soup dinner was eaten and the bowls licked clean, Trygve Bratteli sat up in bed, starved and skinny. Today I want to talk
about..., he started. Then he spoke: Of the tasks awaiting the people of Europe and of a liberated Norway. In a hoarse and slightly rusty voice he
sketched an almost complete program of rebuilding in brief and concise terms. His interests were wide-ranging: Economy, transport and
communication, education.
Every now and then, a louse would come crawling across the blanket he was wrapped in. He flicked it off or cracked it - all according. And he
continued talking.
The room was quiet. A new dimension had entered their everyday lives. For a while the prisoners had something to think about except for how to
satisfy their hunger.
-From the Nazi-consentration camp Vaihingen during winter 1945, from one of Kristian Ottosen's books