Having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night is a very old human need.  ~Margaret Mead

Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.  ~Swedish Proverb

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.  That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.  ~Emily Kimbrough

There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Don’t smother each other.  No one can grow in the shade.  ~Leo Buscaglia

For lack of an occasional expression of love, a relationship strong at the seams can wear thin in the middle.  ~Robert Brault,

Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person – having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.  ~Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?  And why are you waiting?  ~Stephen Levine

Sometimes it is the person closest to us who must travel the furthest distance to be our friend.  ~Robert Brault,

Sticks and stones are hard on bones
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything
But silence breaks the heart.
~Phyllis McGinley, “Ballade of Lost Objects,” 1954

Assumptions are the termites of relationships.  ~Henry Winkler

I like her because she smiles at me and means it.  ~Anonymous

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.  ~Miles Franklin

In the end, who among us does not choose to be a little less right to be a little less lonely.  ~Robert Brault,

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.  ~Frederick Buechner

Present your family and friends with their eulogies now – they won’t be able to hear how much you love them and appreciate them from inside the coffin.  ~Anonymous

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.  “Pooh!” he whispered.  “Yes, Piglet?”  “Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw.  “I just wanted to be sure of you.”  ~A.A. Milne

I felt it shelter to speak to you.  ~Emily Dickinson

Are we not like two volumes of one book?  ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Trouble is part of your life, and if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you enough chance to love you enough.  ~Dinah Shore

Lust is easy.  Love is hard.  Like is most important.  ~Carl Reiner

Basically, the only thing we need is a hand that rests on our own, that wishes it well, that sometimes guides us.  ~Hector Bianciotti, Sans La Misericorde du Christ

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.  ~Marcel Proust

When something is missing in your life, it usually turns out to be someone.  ~Robert Brault,

To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.  ~Doménico Cieri Estrada

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.  Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.  ~Flavia Weedn, Forever,.

No road is long with good company.  ~Turkish Proverb

Sometimes, we need a few people in our lives who will calmly call our bluff.  ~Dr. SunWolf

If fame were based on kindness instead of popularity, on understanding and not on worldwide attention, you would be the biggest celebrity on earth.  And to my heart, you already are.  ~Anonymous

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.  ~Oprah Winfrey

Good company upon the road is the shortest cut.  ~Author Unknown

There are times when two people need to step apart from one another, but there is no rule that says they have to turn and fire.  ~Robert Brault.

In the coldest February, as in every other month in every other year, the best thing to hold on to in this world is each other.  ~Linda Ellerbee, Move On: Adventures in the Real World

Soul-mates are people who bring out the best in you.  They are not perfect but are always perfect for you.  ~Author Unknown

There are couples a matchmaker would match every time – and couples who, for no rhyme or reason, rhyme.  ~Robert Brault.

People change and forget to tell each other.  ~Lillian Hellman

Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you’re really strangers.  ~Mary Tyler Moore

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.  ~Albert Einstein

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved.  It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.  ~Charles Morgan

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, “Outside the Dog Museum”

Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.  ~Ovid

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.  ~Eric Fromm

Love has no desire but to fulfill itself.  To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.  To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.  ~Kahlil Gibran

Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners.  Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford – but you’ll take him anyway.  ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.  ~W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook, 1949

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

When love is not madness, it is not love.  ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Let your love be like the misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river.  ~Malagasy Proverb

Do I love you because you’re beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
~Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella

For you see, each day I love you more
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
~Rosemonde Gerard

Forget love - I’d rather fall in chocolate!  ~Sandra J. Dykes

Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.  ~Mark Overby

Love is a symbol of eternity.  It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.  ~Author Unknown

Love – a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker.  ~Author Unknown

Love is a sweet tyranny, because the lover endureth his torments willingly.  ~Proverb

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods.  ~Theodor Reik, Of Love and Lust, 1957

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.  ~Peter Ustinov

Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, 1595

The art of love… is largely the art of persistence.  ~Albert Ellis

Love one another and you will be happy.  It’s as simple and as difficult as that.  ~Michael Leunig

Who would give a law to lovers?  Love is unto itself a higher law.  ~Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

Who, being loved, is poor?  ~Oscar Wilde

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.  ~Henry David Thoreau

To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.  ~Robert Brault.

Without love, what are we worth?  Eighty-nine cents!  Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely.  ~Laurence Marks, M*A*S*H, “Love Story,” original air date 7 January 1973, spoken by the character Hawkeye

A baby is born with a need to be loved – and never outgrows it.  ~Frank A. Clark

Shall we compare our hearts to a garden -
with beautiful blooms, straggling weeds,
swooping birds and sunshine, rain -
and most importantly, seeds.
~Grey Livingston

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.  ~Robert Heinlein

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it.  You and you alone make me feel that I am alive.  Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.  ~George Moore

We loved with a love that was more than love.  ~Edgar Allan Poe

If I love you, what business is it of yours?  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The hardest-learned lesson:  that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

My debt to you, Belovèd,
Is one I cannot pay
In any coin of any realm
On any reckoning day.
~Jessie B. Rittenhouse

We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.  ~Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.  ~Jean Anouilh

When a man is in love or in debt, someone else has the advantage.  ~Bill Balance

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.  ~Rose Franken

Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.  ~Ben Hecht

A bell is no bell ’til you ring it,
A song is no song ’til you sing it,
And love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay -
Love isn’t love
‘Til you give it away.
~Oscar Hammerstein, Sound of Music, “You Are Sixteen (Reprise)”
(Thanks, Krystel)

Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies.  ~Swedish Proverb

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.  ~Henry Van Dyke

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.  ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975

Passion makes the world go round.  Love just makes it a safer place.  ~Ice T, The Ice Opinion, quoted in Reader’s Digest, “Quotable Quotes,” February 2002

Love is no respecter of age or practicality
Neither morality: unabashed
She enters where she will
Unheeding that her immortal fires
Burn up human hearts…
~Phillip Pulfrey, from Beyond Me, www.originals.net

Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses.  ~Lord Dewar

When you’re in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.  ~Natalie Clifford Barney

Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

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

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.  ~H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques, 1916

The bonds of matrimony are like any other bonds – they mature slowly.  ~Peter De Vries

I love being married.  It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.  ~Rita Rudner

Marriage, n.  A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.  ~George Bernard Shaw

Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the reasons that families work.  ~Author Unknown

Chains do not hold a marriage together.  It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.  ~Simone Signoret

Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.  ~Barnett R. Brickner

A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time.  ~Anne Taylor Fleming

Woke up in bed with a gorgeous woman, who I’m going to have lunch and the rest of my life with.  ~Jason Barmer,

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.  ~Doug Larson

One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.  ~Judith Viorst

Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you’ll meet that night.  ~Paul Hornung

Divorce:  The past tense of marriage.  ~Author Unknown

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.  Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.  ~Katherine Hepburn

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce.  The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage.  ~Robert Anderson, Solitaire & Double Solitaire

There is no such cozy combination as man and wife.  ~Menander

It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.  ~Benjamin Disraeli

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation.  It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Never go to bed mad.  Stay up and fight.  ~Phyllis Diller, Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, 1966

In the opinion of the world, marriage ends all, as it does in a comedy.  The truth is precisely the opposite:  it begins all.  ~Anne Sophie Swetchine

In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare.  Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced.  ~Robert Sexton

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.  ~Pliny the Younger, Letters

If you made a list of the reasons why any couple got married, and another list of the reasons for their divorce, you’d have a hell of a lot of overlapping.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn’t want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.  ~W. Somerset Maugham

If two stand shoulder to shoulder against the gods,
Happy together, the gods themselves are helpless
Against them while they stand so.
~Maxwell Anderson

After the chills and fever of love, how nice is the 98.6º of marriage!  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for granted relationship.  ~Iris Murdoch

English Law prohibits a man from marrying his mother-in-law.  This is our idea of useless legislation.  ~Author Unknown

A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity.  The order varies for any given year.  ~Paul Sweeney

Matrimony is a process by which a grocer acquired an account the florist had.  ~Francis Rodman

Marriage is a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.  ~Beverley Nichols

Valentine’s Day is when a lot of married men are reminded what a poor shot Cupid really is.  ~Author Unknown

Love is a flower which turns into fruit at marriage.  ~Finnish Proverb

A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together.  ~James H. Boren

All marriages are happy.  It’s the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.  ~Raymond Hull

One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it.  ~George MacDonald

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.  ~Socrates

Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths.  No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.  ~Mark Twain

Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.  ~Jean Rostand, Le Mariage, 1927

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.  ~Isadora Duncan

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.  ~G.B. Shaw, Getting Married, 1908

A first-rate marriage is like a first-rate hotel:  expensive, but worth it.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Our wedding was many years ago.  The celebration continues to this day.  ~Gene Perret

Here’s to matrimony, the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented!  ~Heinrich Heine

The reason for much matrimony is patrimony.  ~Ogden Nash

I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan.  ~Claire Cloninger, “When the Glass Slipper Doesn’t Fit and the Silver Spoon is in Someone Else’s Mouth”

A man’s wife has more power over him than the state has.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals

Marriage: that I call the will of two to create the one who is more than those who created it.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Three rings of marriage are the engagement ring, the wedding ring, and the suffering.  ~Author Unknown

Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves ‘em still two fools.  ~William Congreve

Marriage ceremony:  an incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the law being dragged into the affairs of your family.  ~O.C. Ogilvie

You’ve got a lot of choices.  If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.  ~Steven D. Woodhull

What saves a man is to take a step.  Then another step.  It is always the same step, but you have to take it.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Don’t wait for the Last Judgment.  It happens every day.  ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956

Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Remember, if you’re headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns!  ~Allison Gappa Bottke

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall.  Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day.  Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down.  And this is all life really means.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

If you don’t like how things are, change it!  You’re not a tree.  ~Jim Rohn

In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.  ~Liz Armbruster.

See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little.  ~Pope John XXIII

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow.  ~Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Now that it’s all over, what did you really do yesterday that’s worth mentioning?  ~Coleman Cox

Laziness will cause you pain.  ~Slogan on T-shirt worn at the Vee Arnis Jitsu School of Self-Defense

If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.  ~Toni Morrison

Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics.  Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with the enemies of humanity.  ~Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949

Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it.  ~Author Unknown

Sometimes it’s more important to be human, than to have good taste.  ~Brecht

wning your burdens is half the battle.  ~From the television show Scrubs

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.  ~Victor Hugo

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.  ~William James

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.  ~Leo Aikman

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.  Seek discipline and find your liberty.  ~Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.  ~Plato

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.  ~Jonathan Kozel

Tough and funny and a little bit kind:  that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.  ~Frances Willard

Always when judging
Who people are,
Remember to footnote
The words “So far.”
~Robert Brault.

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.  ~Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from “The Serenity Prayer” by Reinhold Neibuhr

A day is Eternity’s seed, and we are its Gardeners.  ~Erika Harris

People cannot go wrong, if you don’t let them.  They cannot go right, unless you let them.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Excess on occasion is exhilirating.  It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.  ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.  ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Last Tournament,” Idylls of the King

I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.  ~Sara Teasdale, “The Philosopher”

Toss your dashed hopes not into a trash bin but into a drawer where you are likely to rummage some bright morning.  ~Robert Brault.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it…. People think pleasing God is all God care about.  But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.  ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.  ~Elbert Hubbard

On the bathing-tub of King T’ang the following words were engraved:  “If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day.  Yea, let there be daily renovation.”  ~Confucian Analects

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.  ~Jimmy Johnson
that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.  ~Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, c.1420

You’ve got a lot of choices.  If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.  ~Steven D. Woodhull

What saves a man is to take a step.  Then another step.  It is always the same step, but you have to take it.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Don’t wait for the Last Judgment.  It happens every day.  ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956

Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Remember, if you’re headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns!  ~Allison Gappa Bottke

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall.  Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day.  Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down.  And this is all life really means.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

If you don’t like how things are, change it!  You’re not a tree.  ~Jim Rohn

In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.  ~Liz Armbruster.

See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little.  ~Pope John XXIII

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow.  ~Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Now that it’s all over, what did you really do yesterday that’s worth mentioning?  ~Coleman Cox

Laziness will cause you pain.  ~Slogan on T-shirt worn at the Vee Arnis Jitsu School of Self-Defense

If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.  ~Toni Morrison

Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics.  Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with the enemies of humanity.  ~Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949

Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it.  ~Author Unknown

Sometimes it’s more important to be human, than to have good taste.  ~Brecht

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.  ~Victor Hugo

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.  ~William James

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.  ~Leo Aikman

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.  Seek discipline and find your liberty.  ~Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.  ~Plato

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.  ~Jonathan Kozel

Tough and funny and a little bit kind:  that is as near to perfection as a human being can be.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.  ~Frances Willard

Always when judging
Who people are,
Remember to footnote
The words “So far.”
~Robert Brault.

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.  ~Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from “The Serenity Prayer” by Reinhold Neibuhr

A day is Eternity’s seed, and we are its Gardeners.  ~Erika Harris.

People cannot go wrong, if you don’t let them.  They cannot go right, unless you let them.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Excess on occasion is exhilirating.  It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.  ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.  ~Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Last Tournament,” Idylls of the King

I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.  ~Sara Teasdale, “The Philosopher”

Toss your dashed hopes not into a trash bin but into a drawer where you are likely to rummage some bright morning.  ~Robert Brault.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it…. People think pleasing God is all God care about.  But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.  ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.  ~Elbert Hubbard

On the bathing-tub of King T’ang the following words were engraved:  “If you would one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day.  Yea, let there be daily renovation.”  ~Confucian Analects

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.  ~Jimmy Johnson

Age is an issue of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.  ~Mark Twain

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years.  We grow old by deserting our ideals.  Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  ~Samuel Ullman

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.  ~Douglas MacArthur

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.  ~Chili Davis

An archeologist is the best husband any woman can have:  the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.  ~Agatha Christie, news summaries, 9 March 1954

Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old; it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother.  ~G. Norman Collie

You can’t hide your true colours as you approach the autumn of your life.  ~Author Unknown

I don’t believe one grows older.  I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.  ~T.S. Eliot

Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.  ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It’s important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle.  ~Author Unknown

When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange – my youth.
~Sara Teasdale

Who does not wish to be beautiful, and clever, and rich, and to have back, in old age, the time spent trying to be any of them.  ~Robert Brault,

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.  ~Henry David Thoreau

I recently had my annual physical examination, which I get once every seven years, and when the nurse weighed me, I was shocked to discover how much stronger the Earth’s gravitational pull has become since 1990.  ~Dave Barry

Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.  ~Quoted by Francis Bacon, Apothegm

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.  ~Henri Amiel

We’ve put more effort into helping folks reach old age than into helping them enjoy it.  ~Frank A. Clark

First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.  ~Leo Rosenberg

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

It is possible at any age to discover a lifelong desire you never knew you had.  ~Robert Brault,

When it comes to staying young, a mind-lift beats a face-lift any day.  ~Marty Bucella

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.  ~Charles Dickens

From forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

You know you’ve reached middle age when a doctor, not a policeman, tells you to slow down, all you exercise are your prerogatives and it takes you longer to rest than to get tired.  ~Author Unknown

Don’t worry about avoiding temptation – as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.  ~Author Unknown

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.  ~Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein), Diary in Exile, 1935

At 20 years of age the will reigns; at 30 the wit; at 40 the judgment.  ~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac

The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained.  By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth.  ~Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.  ~John Fischer

Everything slows down with age, except the time it takes cake and ice cream to reach your hips.  ~Attributed to John Wagner

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.  ~Oliver W. Holmes, Sr.

Old Time, who changes all below,
To wean men gently for the grave.
~Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.  ~Graham Greene

When you’re a young man, Macbeth is a character part.  When you’re older, it’s a straight part.  ~Laurence Olivier

As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am.  ~Erma Bombeck

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.  ~Ogden Nash

They say that age is all in your mind.  The trick is keeping it from creeping down into your body.  ~Author Unknown

The other day a man asked me what I thought was the best time of life.  “Why,” I answered without a thought, “now.”  ~David Grayson

Like a lot of fellows around here, I have a furniture problem.  My chest has fallen into my drawers.  ~Billy Casper, about golf’s Senior Tour

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.  ~Truman Capote

Never use the passing years as an excuse for old age.  ~Robert Brault,

Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.  ~Author Unknown

A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.  ~Jean Rostand

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.  ~Madeleine L’Engle

Youth disserves; middle age conserves; old age preserves.  ~Martin H. Fischer

One of the best parts of growing older?  You can flirt all you like since you’ve become harmless.  ~Liz Smith

Spiritual sloth, or acedia, was known as The Sin of the Middle Ages.  It’s the sin of my middle age, too.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

We turn not older with years, but newer every day.  ~Emily Dickinson

There is still no cure for the common birthday.  ~John Glenn

A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun.  Enjoy the trip.  ~Author Unknown

Believing hear, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear…
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.
~Martial

Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year:  The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again.  ~Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.  ~Sam Ewing

Youth is a wonderful thing.  What a crime to waste it on children.  ~George Bernard Shaw

In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups.  In old age, we yearn to be kids.  It just seems that all would be wonderful if we didn’t have to celebrate our birthdays in chronological order.  ~Robert Brault

The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to the left.  ~Jerry M. Wright

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.  ~Mark Twain

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.  ~Ogden Nash

They say that age is all in your mind.  The trick is keeping it from creeping down into your body.  ~Author Unknown

We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson, “Virginibus Puerisque II,” Virginibus Puerisque, 1881

Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.  ~Don Marquis

Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.  ~Charles Schulz

Middle age is having a choice between two temptations and choosing the one that’ll get you home earlier.  ~Dan Bennett

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.  ~Truman Capote

Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.  ~Bob Hope

First you forget names; then you forget faces; then you forget to zip up your fly; and then you forget to unzip your fly.  ~Branch Rickey

Youth is a disease from which we all recover.  ~Dorothy Fulheim

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.  ~Herbert Asquith

I’m sixty years of age.  That’s 16 Celsius.  ~George Carlin, Brain Droppings, 1997

You’re not 40, you’re eighteen with 22 years experience.  ~Author Unknown

I still have a full deck; I just shuffle slower now.  ~Author Unknown

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.  ~Robert Frost
Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.  ~Jean Paul Richter

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.  ~Lucille Ball

May you live to be a hundred years
With one extra year to repent.
~Author Unknown

Birthdays are good for you.  Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.  ~Larry Lorenzoni

Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.  ~Author Unknown

Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.  ~Jennifer Yane

Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age.  Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.  ~Tom Wilson

Women like silent men.  They think they’re listening.  ~Marcel Achard, Quote, 4 November 1956

Sure God created man before woman.  But then you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece.  ~Author Unknown

Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman’s toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.  ~Marianne Williamson, “A Woman’s Worth”

Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them.  ~Bill Maher

A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never owned a car.  ~Carrie Snow

You start out happy that you have no hips or boobs.  All of a sudden you get them, and it feels sloppy.  Then just when you start liking them, they start drooping.  ~Cindy Crawford

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.  ~Laurence J. Peter

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.  ~Author Unknown

A woman can say more in a sigh than a man can say in a sermon.  ~Arnold Haultain

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.  Luckily, this is not difficult.  ~Charlotte Whitton

Women are always beautiful.  ~Ville Valo

The two women exchanged the kind of glance women use when no knife is handy.  ~Ellery Queen

Curve:  The loveliest distance between two points.  ~Mae West

Can you imagine a world without men?  No crime and lots of happy fat women.  ~Nicole Hollander

Women get the last word in every argument.  Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.  ~Author Unknown

Next to the wound, what women make best is the bandage.  ~Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad.  An optimist is a man who hopes they are.  ~Chauncey Mitchell Depew

The rarest thing in the world is a woman who is pleased with photographs of herself.  ~Elizabeth Metcalf

There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.  ~Madeleine K. Albright

A man’s face is his autobiography.  A woman’s face is her work of fiction.  ~Oscar Wilde

There’s something luxurious about having a girl light your cigarette.  In fact, I got married once on account of that.  ~Harold Robbins

When a man talks dirty to a woman, it’s sexual harassment.  When a woman talks dirty to a man, it’s $3.95 a minute.  ~Author Unknown

Men get laid, but women get screwed.  ~Quentin Crisp

The most popular image of the female despite the exigencies of the clothing trade is all boobs and buttocks, a hallucinating sequence of parabolae and bulges.  ~Germaine Greer

Whether they give or refuse, it delights women just the same to have been asked.  ~Ovid

Howiver, I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish:  God Almighty made ‘em to match the men.  ~George Eliot, “The Harvest Supper,” Adam Bede

Women are like elephants to me.  I like to look at them, but I wouldn’t want to own one.  ~W.C. Fields

Women really do rule the world.  They just haven’t figured it out yet.  When they do, and they will, we’re all in big big trouble.  ~”Doctor Leon,” drleons.com

Ah, women.  They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.  ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.  ~George Meredith

Men who don’t like girls with brains don’t like girls.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Women keep a special corner of their hearts for sins they have never committed.  ~Cornelia Otis Skinner

Lovely female shapes are terrible complicators of the difficulties and dangers of this earthly life, especially for their owners.  ~George du Maurier

Every woman is wrong until she cries, and then she is right – instantly.  ~Sam Slick (Thomas Chandler Haliburton)

The essence of life is the smile of round female bottoms, under the shadow of cosmic boredom.  ~Guy de Maupassant

I have an idea that the phrase “weaker sex” was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.  ~Ogden Nash

When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces.  Women go right on cooking.  ~Gail Sheehy

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.  ~Simone de Beauvoir

They call it PMS because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.  ~Author Unknown

Be to her virtues very kind,
Be to her faults a little blind.
~Matthew Prior

They may talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or some such bagatelle; but to me a modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.  ~Oliver Goldsmith

A highbrow is a man who has found something more interesting than women.  ~Edgar Wallace

It upsets women to be, or not to be, stared at hungrily.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

You see, dear, it is not true that woman was made from man’s rib; she was really made from his funny bone.  ~J.M. Barrie, What Every Woman Knows

If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.  ~Aristotle Onassis

Men will always delight in a woman whose voice is lined with velvet.  ~Brendan Francis

Men really prefer reasonably attractive women; they go after the sensational ones to impress other men.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

I married beneath me – all women do.  ~Nancy Astor, speech, Oldham, England, 1951

Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women.  ~Elsa Schiaparelli

Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.  ~Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, Letters to Voltaire

If President Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, had been Moses’ secretary, there would only be eight commandments.  ~Art Buchwald, 1974

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.  ~Oscar Wilde

She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.  ~Woody Allen, Getting Even, 1973

It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.  ~Alexandre Dumas, fils

I’d rather have two girls at seventeen than one at thirty-four.  ~Fred Allen

When a woman comes to her glass, she does not employ her time in making herself look more advantageously what she really is, but endeavours to be as much another creature as she possibly can.  Whether this happens because they stay so long and attend their work so diligently that they forget the faces and persons which they first sat down with, or whatever it is, they seldom rise from the toilet the same woman they appeared when they began to dress.  ~Joseph Addison

All women are basically in competition with each other for a handful of eligible men.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

A woman should soften but not weaken a man.  ~Sigmund Freud

Women are in league with each other, a secret conspiracy of hearts and pheromones.  ~Camille Paglia

No woman will ever be satisfied because no man will ever have a chocolate penis that shoots out money.  ~Author Unknown

When I glimpse the backs of women’s knees I seem to hear the first movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.  ~Author Unknown

A woman wears her tears like jewelry.  ~Author Unknown

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late?  Nobody.  ~J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

No woman wants to see herself too clearly.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

I prefer the word homemaker, because housewife always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.  ~Bella Abzug

The basic Female body comes with the following accessories:  garter belt, panti-girdle, crinoline, camisole, bustle, brassiere, stomacher, chemise, virgin zone, spike heels, nose ring, veil, kid gloves, fishnet stockings, fichu, bandeau, Merry Widow, weepers, chokers, barrettes, bangles, beads, lorgnette, feather boa, basic black, compact, Lycra stretch one-piece with modesty panel, designer peignoir, flannel nightie, lace teddy, bed, head.  ~Margaret Atwood

Women go to beauty parlors for the unmussed look men hate.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Women polish the silver and water the plants and wait to be really needed.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

You have to have the kind of body that doesn’t need a girdle in order to get to pose in one.  ~Carolyn Kenmore

A woman’s hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.  ~George Eliot

There are women who do not like to cause suffering to many men at a time, and who prefer to concentrate on one man:  These are the faithful women.  ~Alfred Capus

No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her crap.  ~Author Unknown

Physically, a man is a man for a much longer time than a woman is a woman.  ~Honoré de Balzac, The Physiology of Marriage

The girls that are always easy on the eyes are never easy on the heart.  ~Author Unknown

Men enjoy being thought of as hunters, but are generally too lazy to hunt.  Women, on the other hand, love to hunt, but would rather nobody knew it.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

I’ve reached the age where competence is a turn-on.  ~Billy Joel

A man gives many question marks, however, a woman is a whole mystery.  ~Diana Stürm

In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman.  ~Nancy Astor, My Two Countries

God did it on purpose so that we may love you men instead of laughing at you.  ~Mrs Patrick Campbell, in reply to a male acquaintance who asked why women seem to have no sense of humor

Men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, but women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell.  ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

A woman asks little of love:  only that she be able to feel like a heroine.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

The chief excitement in a woman’s life is spotting women who are fatter than she is.  ~Helen Rowland

I would rather trust a woman’s instinct than a man’s reason.  ~Stanley Baldwin

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.  ~George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Men look at themselves in mirrors.  Women look for themselves.  ~Elissa Melamed

If your husband expects you to laugh, do so; if he expects you to cry, don’t; if you don’t know what he expects, what are you doing married?  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen.  ~Compton Mackenzie, Literature in My Time, 1933

One is not born a woman, one becomes one.  ~Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949

Let us leave the beautiful women to men with no imagination.  ~Marcel Proust, Albertine disparue, 1925

Women deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of twenty-eight and forty.  ~James Thurber, Time, 15 August 1960

Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.  ~Bette Davis, about Jayne Mansfield

A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections.  ~Washington Irving

The man’s desire is for the woman; but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.  ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

After about 20 years of marriage, I’m finally starting to scratch the surface of that one.  And I think the answer lies somewhere between conversation and chocolate.  ~Mel Gibson, about what women want

Women who make men talk better than they are accustomed to are always popular.  ~E.V. Lucas

I’m not against half naked girls – not as often as I’d like to be.  ~Benny Hill

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman is as bad as she dares.  ~Elbert Hubbard

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.  ~Dave Barry, “Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn”

The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.  ~Robert Graves

What men desire is a virgin who is a whore.  ~Edward Dahlbert

Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

A woman should be an illusion.  ~Ian Fleming

There are three things men can do with women:  love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature.  ~Stephen Stills

It is because of men that women dislike one another.  ~Jean de La Bruyère, Characters, 1688

Look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man and work like a dog.  ~Caroline K. Simon

* My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
* Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.
* Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
* How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg
* And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
* The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
* If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
* My experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has damned few virtues.