When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.
- Johoann W. von Goethe ( 1749-1832)

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
- Thomas Jefferson

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?
- Abraham Lincoln

The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.
- Omar Khayyam

We should have a great many 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

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.
- Horace Greeley (1811-1872)

With every civil right there has to be a corresponding civil obligation.
Edison Haines

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
Arthur Helps (1813-1875)

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
-Thomas Jefferson

(Regarding criticism of the practice of ending sentences with prepositions)
That is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
-Winston Churchill

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.
-Clay P. Bedford

One half the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
-Jane Austen (1775-1817) in Emma

Democracy is the worst system devised by the wit of man, except for all the others.
-Winston Churchill

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.
-Hippocrates (c. 460-377 b.c.)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
-Winston Churchill

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) in Sonnets from the Portuguese

Whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well.
- Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
- Confucius (c. 551-479 b.c.)

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them, the starry heaven above me, and the moral law within me.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
-Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) in The New Colossus

Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
-W.E. Henley (1849-1903) in Invictus

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
-The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1-4