Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls’ delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne (1572-1631)

In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty; but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean.

If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don’t want hits the paper.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenius.

The other line moves faster.

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Where beams of imagination play, The memory’s soft figures melt away. — Alexander Pope

Believe that you have it, and you have it. — Latin Proverb

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization.— Henry Ward Beecher

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“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.” — H. G. Wells

“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

“Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.” — Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower

“Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.” — Golda Meir to a visiting diplomat

“His ignorance is encyclopedic” — Abba Eban

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When an old man dies, it is a whole library which burns.
African proverb

Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first, the lesson afterward.
Anonymous

Some people weave burlap into the fabric of our lives, and some weave gold thread. Both contribute to make the whole picture beautiful and unique.
Anonymous

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
Aristotle

Remember the high board at the swimming pool? After days of looking up at it you finally climbed the wet steps to the platform. From there, it was higher than ever. There were only two ways down: the steps to defeat of the dive to victory. You stood on the edge, shivering in the hot sun, deathly afraid. At last you leaned too far forward, it was too late for retreat, and you dived. The high board was conquered, and you spent the rest of the day diving. Climbing a thousand high boards, we demolish fear, and turn into human beings.
Richard Bach A Gift of Wings

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“To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.” — Emily Dickinson

“People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think” — George Carlin

“Desperate maladies require desperate remedies.” — French Proverb

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O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

— William Blake

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

“There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say” — Cyril Connolly

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbour.” — Horace

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbours.” — Edgar Watson Howe

Do not mend your neighbor’s fence before seeing to your own. ” — Tanzanian Proverb

A nation is a society united by a delusion about it’s ancestry and by common hatred of it’s neighbours. ” — Dean William R. Inge

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“The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything” — Albert Einstein

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first” — Mark Twain

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”— Albert Einstein

“The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”— Albert Einstein

“In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” — Oscar Wilde

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