Publilius Syrus

"Tis foolish to fear what you cannot avoid."

- Publilius Syrus, ancient Roman writer

Arlo Guthrie

"You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in."

- Arlo Guthrie, musician

Wilco

"How to fight loneliness: smile all the time"

- Wilco, 'How To Fight Loneliness'

Confucius

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do."

- Confucius, philosopher and social activist

Bill Cosby

"A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need the advice."

- Bill Cosby, comedian, actor, author, musician

Lewis Carroll

"I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then."

- Lewis Carroll, author

Paracelsus

"Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal. Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him. For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth."

- Paracelsus, physician, botanist, alchemist, astronomer

George Bernard Shaw

"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."

- George Bernard Shaw, critic and playwright

Tom Krause

“If you only do what you know you can do, you'll never do very much.”

- Tom Krause, motivational speaker, teacher and coach.

Jem

"Who made up all the rules?
We follow them like fools,
Believe them to be true
Don't care to think them through."

- Jem, 'They'

Buddha

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

- Buddha

Voltaire

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong”

- Voltaire, writer and philosopher

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer, philosopher and intellectual

Mahatma Gandhi

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

- Mahatma Gandhi, activist, political and spiritual leader

Sara Teasdale

“Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break.”

- Sara Teasdale, poet

Amy Tan

"If you can't change your fate, change your attitude."

- Amy Tan, author

Patrick Park

"There's no telling where we'll be in a day or in a week,
And there's no promises of peace, or of happiness."

- Patrick Park, 'Life Is A Song'

James Thurber

"Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation."

- James Thurber, cartoonist, humourist, author

Henry David Thoreau

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

- Henry David Thoreau, author, poet, developmental critic

Aaron Rose

"In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary."

- Aaron Rose, filmmaker

John Cleese

"I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me."

- John Cleese, actor, comedian, writer

René Descartes

"Cogito ergo sum"

i.e. "I think, therefore I am."

- René Descartes, philosopher, mathematician, writer

Descartes was a French philosopher who coined this well-known phrase. Descartes originally wrote it in French ("Je pense donc je suis") and it has since become a fundamental concept in philosophy. Simply put, Descartes reasoned that a person who wonders whether or not he exists must in fact exist by virtue of the fact that he wonders whether or not he exists.

Iris Murdoch

"Love is the difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real."

- Iris Murdoch, author and philosopher

Oscar Wilde

“True friends stab you in the front.”

 - Oscar Wilde, poet, novelist, dramatist and critic

Ingrid Michaelson

"Happy is the heart that still feels pain
Darkness drains and light will come in again
Swing open your chest and let it in."

- Ingrid Michaelson, 'Everybody'

Graham Greene

"I can believe only in love that strikes suddenly out of a clear sky:
I do not believe in the slow germination of friendship
Or one that asks 'why?'
Because our love came savagely, suddenly, like an actor of war,
I cannot conceive a love that rises gently and subsides without a scar."

- Graham Greene, author, playwright, literary critic

Charlotte Bronte

"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."

- Charlotte Bronte, "Jane Eyre"

Ambrose Bierce

"Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic."

- "The Devil's Dictionary" by Ambrose Bierce, journalist, author and satirist

Mark Twain

“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

- Mark Twain, author

Bill Vaughan

"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."

- Bill Vaughan, columnist and author

William Allen White

“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”

- William Allen White, author and newspaper editor

South

"You've got a right to stand or die."

- South, 'Paint The Silence'