Fishpond

This is a collection of my favorite quips and quotes that I have collected for years in a notebook. I hope that by sharing them, you will find out a little more about me while taking time for your own reflections.

Note: newer items are added to the beginning of the list so repeating visitors don't have to scroll all the way through.

---

It is not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do that makes us useful. And, it is not a few fain wishes, but a life long struggle that makes us valiant.
-Henry Ward Beecher

Always demanding the best of oneself, living with honor, devoting one's talents and gifts to the benefits of others - these are the measures of success that endure when material things have passed away.
-Gerald Ford, 38th President of the USA

The cure for everything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.
-Isak Dinesen

True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess.
-Louis Nizer

To me the sea is a continual miracle;
The fishes that swim - the rocks - the motion of the waves - the ships,
The men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?
-Walt Whitman

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

Life can only be understood backwards,
But it must be lived forward.
-Soren Kierkegaard

Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift,
That the power to work is a blessing,
That the love of work is success.
-David O. McKay

If you want to know your past - look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future - look into your present actions.
-Chinese Proverb

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution.
-Khahlil Gibran

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.
-Budda

Love is life and if you miss love, you miss life.
-Leo Buscaglia

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
-Mother Teresa

We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
-Mother Teresa

Can miles truly separate you from friends...If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?
-Richard Bach

In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged.
-Hans Nouwens

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
-Khahlil Gibran

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
-Robert Frost

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.'
Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'
-Erich Fromm

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.
-Zelda Fitzgerald

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.
-John Donne

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.
-Willa Cather

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
-Jonathan Carroll

Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain.
-Leo Buscaglia

It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.
-John Bulwer

The best proof of love is trust.
-Dr. Joyce Brothers

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It's quantity of time at home and quality of time at work that counts; don't mix them up.
-Brian Tracy

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
-Henry David Thoreau

If we want a love message to be heard, it has to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
-Mother Teresa

A job is what we do for money; work is what we do for love.
-Marysarah Quinn

A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway of life.
-Celia Luce

Giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they'll love you back! Don't expect love in return, just wait for it to grow in their hearts. But if it doesn't, be content it grew in yours.
-Unknown

Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.
-David Starr Jordan

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
-Aristotle

All the coast passed this day is very bold; there is a great swell and the land is very high. There are mountains which seem to reach the heavens, and the sea beats on them; sailing along close to land, it appears as though they would fall on the ships.
- Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, Portuguese sailor for King of Spain, describing the Santa Lucia Mtns along the Big Sur (CA) coast as seen from the sea in November 1542

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-Mark Twain

We want to explore the themes of the ocean's existence - how it moves and breathes, how it experiences dramas and seasons, how it nourishes its hosts of living things, how it harmonizes the physical and biological rhythms of the whole earth, what hurts it and what feeds it - not least of all, what are its stories.
-Jacques Yves Cousteau

The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever.
-Louis L'Amour

I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a badge of honor...it is a symbol of despair. Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods make for cheap men; and cheap men make for a cheap country!
-President William McKinley

Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.
-Lady Bird Johnson

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.
-Robert Half

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
-William Shakespeare "The Tempest"

To see the world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower; Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.
-William Blake

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap into this source, you will truly have defeated age.
-Sophia Loren

When you feel that you have reached the end and that you cannot go one step further, when life seems to be drained of all purpose: What a wonderful opportunity to start all over again, to turn over a new page.
-Eileen Caddy

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
-Maureen Dowd

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
-Winston Churchill

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent.
-Barbara Bush

Each of us comes into life with fists closed, set for aggressiveness and acquisition. But when we abandon life our hands are open; there is nothing on earth that we need, nothing the soul can take with it.
-Fulton J. Sheen

Education, in the broadest of truest sense, will make an individual seek to help all people, regardless of race, regardless of color, regardless of condition.
-George Washington Carver

When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
-William Shakespeare

We should have no regrets. The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know.
-Rebecca Beard

Reflect upon your blessings, of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
-Charles Dickens

No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.
-Hermann Broch

Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.
-Aristophanes

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
-Charles Darwin

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.
-Robert Frost

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like Arabs, And silently steal away.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If I could take your troubles I would toss them into the sea, But all these things I'm finding Are impossible for me. I cannot build a mountain Or catch a rainbow fair, But let me be what I know best, A friend that is always there.
-Khahlil Gibran "A True Friend"

It is not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do that makes us useful. And, it is not a few faint wishes, but a lifelong struggle that makes us valiant.
-Henry Ward Beecher

Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.
-Winnie the Pooh

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.
-Bertolt Brecht

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world in us is born.
-Anais Nin

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
-Sydney J. Harris

There is nothing on earth more to be prized than true friendship.
-Sir Thomas Aquinas

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children.
-Martin Luther King

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
-Thomas B. Macaulay

There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
-George M. Adams

If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
-Carl Jung

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
-John Wooden

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
-Joseph Addison

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
-Humphrey Bogart

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.
-Muhammad Ali

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
-Aldous Huxley

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.
-Henry Ward Beecher

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
-John Enoch Powell

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
-Washington Irving

They that go down to the Sea in Ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.
-Psalm 107

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
-Wayne Dyer

We measure our lives by the depth, not the length.
-Mary Fisher

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
-Albert Einstein

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach -- waiting for a gift from the sea.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Excellent performance is standard; Standard performance is sub-standard; and Sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist.
-Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, written by Herman Wouk

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-Will Rogers

Why must all of the operations in life be performed without an anesthetic?
-Ernest Hemingway - To Have and Have Not

If you want to give up the admiration of many men, for the criticism of just one...Go ahead and get married!
-Katherine Hepburn's mother

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient evidence.
-Samuel Butler

If God had wanted me to vote, he would have sent me a candidate.
-Unknown

The sea folds away from you like a mystery. You can look and look at it and mystery never leaves it.
-Carl Sandburg

Learned a lesson in anatomy today. Of the bodies' six hundred muscles, the hardest to keep in shape is the heart.
-Doogie Houser, M.D., a tv character

A camel is a horse that has been put together by a committee.
-Unknown

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
-Albert Einstein

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.
-Matthew 6:34

Only the dead are free from war.
-Plato

Let love clasp grief lest both be drowned.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson - In Memorium, Section 1

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.
-Herman Melville

Each time, the ceremony is the same. You enter this domain as a stranger and meet Neptune on his terms. To visit for a short while and cleanse the spirit. So raise the flag, lower the mask and prepare yourself to be enlightened once again.
-Scubapro ad

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
-Mark Twain

Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.
-Unknown

Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw.
-Unknown

Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
-Emo Phillips

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?". Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night".
-Charlie Brown, Peanuts, as written by Charles Schultz

Difficulties are just things to overcome.
-Sir Ernest Shakleton

What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?
-William Shakespeare

Geologists inhabit scenes that no one ever saw, scenes of global sweep, gone and gone again, including sea, mountains, rivers, forests, and archipelagoes of aching beauty rising in volcanic violence to settle down quietly and then forever disappear.
-John McPhee

The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea, there has been this place of the meeting of land and water.
-Rachel Carson

My soul is full of longing for the secrets of the sea, And the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Now rolls the deep where grew the tree.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Into a melody of deep blue; shells drifting downward to sink and settle on the seafloor. An earth song of creation kneads them into stone, draws aside the waves and lifts them into mountains.
-Nancy Penrose

Due to unforeseen cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel has been cut off.
-Unknown

Its not the pace of life that concerns me, its the sudden stop at the end.
-Unknown

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.
-Albert Einstein

The Ocean weeds out, from all the races of mankind that come upon it to make a living, a certain type of person. This type of person stays with the ocean, and the rest are cast back ashore to deal with the land people.
-Dr. Wilbert Chapman

...the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tidepools and force him to try to report what he finds there.
-John Steinbeck

And let us remember too that life, in its exuberance, always succeeds in overflowing the narrow limits within which man thinks he can confine it.
-Jacques Yves Cousteau
June 11, 1910 - June 25, 1997
farewell mon capitane

I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don't work out, that's when I've really learned.
-Carol Burnett

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
-Thomas A. Edison

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
-Vincent VanGogh

The three elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of the outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of the ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied...
-Henry Beston

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure, and made the jellyfish full of light and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.
-Pablo Neruda

It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life.
-Cesar Chavez

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.
-Colin Powell

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
-William James

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
-Martin Luther King Jr.