Saturday, August 7, 2010

Email Signature Quotations

My sock drawer is organized and the bathroom clean so am revising the quotations that appear under my email signature.  These have been there for quite a while and it is time for new ones.  A friend gave me a wonderful book called A Calendar of Wisdom by Leo Tolstoy from which I will get any number of good new quotes. Also found a website with CS Lewis quotes.


"She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression." — C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)

`No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.' David Hume

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." HL Mencken

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject"--Winston Churchill

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” George Bernard Shaw

“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” George Bernard Shaw

“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.” George Bernard Shaw

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange 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

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing” George Bernard Shaw

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - George Bernard Shaw

“Few people think more than two or three times a year, I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” George Bernard Shaw

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’” George Bernard Shaw

We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. — John Locke
 
“To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up” Ogden Nash

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending." - Maria Robinson

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. – Upton Sinclair, 1935

"So much of what we are, consists of what our partner remembers" dana wyzard

“There are three kinds of people in this world: Innovators, Imitators and Idiots”, Christoph Weder

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him”. Tolstoy's "A Calendar of Wisdom"

“With humbleness, kindness and self-sacrifice, you will take the weapon from any enemy. Any fire dies if there is insufficient wood”.  Tolstoy's "A Calendar of Wisdom"

“If your eyes become blinded by the sun, you do not say the sun does not exist. In the same way, you should not say God does not exist if your intellect is lost in trying to understand him”. Tolstoy's "A Calendar of Wisdom"

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. — C.S. Lewis

“I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places." ~Mark Twain*

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."  Mark Twain

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and also to love our enemies, probably because they are generally the same people. – Mark Twain

*Note to self: never use this quote in an email of sympathy to someone who has lost a loved one.

5 comments:

  1. Quotations are wise tools. They can say things so succinctly, and devastatingly.

    Of course, you have to be brilliant to invent the quote in the first place. Or else very aware of yourself and your world.

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  2. One of my favorites was when W.C Fields was seen at near the end of his life laboriously reading the bible. When asked what he was doing he replied "Looking for loopholes".

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  3. Yes, WC Fields. Love him. I will look up some of his too. And Oscar Wilde.

    Remembering quotations saves a lot of original thinking.

    My kids have a series of my quotes which they say they will engrave on my tombstone.

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  4. W00T!! I am honored and aghast that one of my quotes was included amidst the royalty equally honored!!!

    As the man said as he scratched his flea bites: "I got a ton of them!"

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  5. Dana bring 'em on. You are as witty as WCF and GBS any day.

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