Best Of The Best Quotes (page 102)
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
Theodore Roosevelt
O, Times! O, Manners! It is my opinion
That you are changing sadly your dominion
I mean the reign of manners hath long ceased,
For men have none at all, or bad at least;
And as for times, altho' 'tis said by many
The "good old times" were far the worst of any,
Of which sound Doctrine I believe each tittle
Yet still I think these worst a little.
I've been a thinking -isn't that the phrase?-
I like your Yankee words and Yankee ways -
I've been a thinking, whether it were best
To Take things...
Edgar Allan Poe
I suffered no pain, my hunger had taken the edge off; instead I felt pleasantly empty, untouched by everything around me and happy to be unseen by all. I put my legs up on the bench and leaned back, the best way to feel the true well-being of seclusion. There wasn't a cloud in my mind, nor did I feel any discomfort, and I hadn't a single unfulfilled desire or craving as far as my thought could reach. I lay with open eyes in a state of utter absence from myself and felt deliciously out of it.
Knut Hamsun
Ah, the Saved...what happens to them is best described as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt deserts, memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water.
C. S. Lewis
Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain... The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself--ultimate cost for perfect value
Robert A. Heinlein
He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is."Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?
P. D. James
There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected. She had retired to this room as a good place in which to be miserable; for it was dark and still, full of ancient furniture, somber curtains, and hung all around with portraits of solemn old gentlemen in wigs, severe-nosed ladies in top-heavy caps, and staring children in little bobtailed coats or short-waisted frocks. It...
Louisa May Alcott
Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.'That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed.'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed. Yossarian saw it clearly in all its spinning reasonableness. There was an elliptical precision about its perfect pairs of parts that was graceful and shocking, like good modern art, and at times Yossarian wasn't quite sure he saw it at all, just the way he was never quite sure about...
Joseph Heller
A guy out there was meant to be the love of your life, your best friend, your soul mate, the one you can tell your dreams to. He'll brush the hair out of your eyes. Send you flowers when you least expect it. He'll stare at you during the movies, even though he paid $8 to see it. He'll call to say goodnight or just cause he's missing you. He'll look in your eyes and tell you, you're the most beautiful girl in the world, and for the first times in your life, you'll believe it.
Nicholas Sparks