Robert Creo Arbitrator & Mediator

Daily Quotations

QUOTES & NOTES

I hate quotations–just tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thoughts of Robert A. Creo
This seems like a fitting quote to start a daily series of quotations. Sometimes, what you do know, or wish you knew, can be concisely conveyed accurately by the words of another person, usually, but not always, long dead. My quotation concept is to view famous quotes or other noteworthy words in the mediation context. Please feel free to email me your own comments, or potential quotations, in response to the quote or comments.

25 MARCH 2007 Non-conformism is the major, perhaps the only, sin of our time. Robert lindner, "Homosexuality and the Contemporary Scene," Must You Conform? (1956)

24 MARCH 2007 It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (1919), 14

23 MARCH 2007 Do as adversaries do in law--strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (1593-94), 1.2.278

22 MARCH 2007 We learn not for life but for the debating-room. Seneca, Letters to Lucilius (1st c.), 106.12, tr. E. Phillips Barker

21 MARCH 2007 Competitions are for horses not artists. Bela Bartok, Saturday Review, August 25, 1962

20 MARCH 2007 People who know how to act are never preachers. Emerson, Journals (1844)

19 MARCH 2007 Action should culminate in wisdom. Bhagavadgita, 4, tr. P. Lal

18 MARCH 2007 He that is everywhere is nowhere. Thomas Fuller, M.D., Gnomologia (1732), 2176

17 MARCH 2007 It's alright to hesitate if you tehn go ahead. Bertolt Bercht, prologue, The Good Woman of Setzuan (1938-40), tr. Bentley and Apelman

16 MARCH 2007 The great end of life is not knowledge but action. Thomas Henry Huxley, "Technical Education" (1877)

15 MARCH 2007 Men need some kind of external activity because they are inactive within. Schopenhauer, "Further Psychological Observations," Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), tr. Bailey Saunders

14 MARCH 2007 "I am ashamed of my emptiness," said the Word to the Work. "I know how poor I am when I see you," said the Work to the Word. Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916), 138

13 MARCH 2007 Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death. Pascal, Pensees (1670)m 129, tr. W.F. Trotter

12 MARCH 2007 Renunciation and activity bother liberate, but to work is better than to renounce. Bhagavadgita, 5, tr. P. Lal

11 MARCH 2007 Who never climbed high and never fell low. Thomas Fuller, M.D., Gnomologia (1732), 5713

10 MARCH 2007 If you take big paces you leave big spaces. Burmese Proverbs (1962), 100, ed. Hla Pe

9 MARCH 2007 Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions. Longfellow, "Table Talk," Driftwood (1857)

8 MARCH 2007 Most do violence to their natural aptitude and thus attain superiority in nothing. Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Wordly Wisdom (1647), 24, tr. Joseph Jacobs

7 MARCH 2007 All professions are conspiracy against the laity. George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor's Dilemma (1913), 1

6 MARCH 2007 Man cannot make the principles; he can only discover them. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794, 1796), 1

5 MARCH 2007 Who begins too much accomplishes little. German Proverb

4 MARCH 2007 Work spares us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. Voltaire, Candide (1759), 30

3 MARCH 2007 Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's response. long-Fellow, "The Village Blacksmith" (1839), 7

2 MARCH 2007 He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing anything; but, while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another. William Hazlitt, "On Application to Study," The Plain Speaker (1826)

1 MARCH 2007 No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. Max Beerbohm, "Books within Books," and Even Now(1920)

28 FEBRUARY 2007 If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away. Thoreau, "Conclusion," Walden (1854)

27 FEBRUARY 2007 We are half ruined by conformity, but we should be wholly ruined without it. Charles Dudley Warner, "Eighteenth Week," My Summer in a Garden (1871)

26 FEBRUARY 2007 Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. John F. Kennedy, address to United Nations Assembly, September 25, 1961

25 FEBRUARY 2007 There are no conditions to which a man cannot become accustomed, especially if he sees that all those around him llive in the same way. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873-76), 7.13

24 FEBRUARY 2007 Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative. H.G. Wells, Mind at the End of Its Tether (1946), 19

23 FEBRUARY 2007 Since the hose is on fire let us warm ourselves. Italian Proverb

22 FEBRUARY 2007 Not failure, but low aim, is crime. James Russell Lowell, Fore an Autograph," Under the Willows and Other Poems (1868)

21 FEBRUARY 2007 It takes a certain level of aspiration before one can take advantage of opportunities that are clearly offered. Michael Harrington, The Other America (1962), 8.2

20 FEBRUARY 2007 First, say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do. Epictetus, Discourses (2nd c.), 3.23, tr. Thomas W. Higginson

19 FEBRUARY 2007 If you aspire to the highestplace, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third place, place. Cicero, On Oratory (55 B.C.)

18 FEBRUARY 2007 He who does not hope to win has already lost. Jose Joaquin Olmedo, quoted in Reader's Digest (June 1968)

17 FEBRUARY 2007 A man who denies to other men equality of rights is hardly worthy of freedom, but I would give to him even all the rights which I claim for myself. Abraham Lincoln, Speech to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859 [HSW]
Remark to his secretary John Hay, April 1865 [RW]

16 FEBRUARY 2007 To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization. Abraham Lincoln, Speech to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859 [HSW]

15 FEBRUARY 2007 Resolve to be honest at all events; and if, in your own judgment, you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation. Abraham Lincoln, Notes for a lecture on law, July 1, 1850 [DHD]

14 FEBRUARY 2007 When I read aloud two senses catch the idea: first, I see what I read; second, I hear it, and therefore I can remember it better. Abraham Lincoln, Remark to William Herndon, who asked him, with annoyance, why he read aloud (no date) [LAIKH]

13 FEBRUARY 2007 As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy. Abraham Lincoln, Note, c. August 1858 [HSW]

12 FEBRUARY 2007 Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? Abraham Lincoln, First Innaugural Address, March 4, 1861.

9 FEBRUARY 2007 Common looking people are the best in the world; that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them. Abraham Lincoln, Recounting to his secretary John Hay, a remark made in his dream, December 23, 1863 [ALL]

8 FEBRUARY 2007 Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. Abraham Lincoln, Letter to the people of Sangamo County, March 9, 1832 [HSW]

7 FEBRUARY 2007 A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so, it gives a relish and facility for successfully pursuing the yet unsolved ones. Abraham Lincoln, Speech to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859 [HSW]

6 FEBRUARY 2007 Every man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. Emerson, Spiritual Laws," Essays: The First Series (1841)

5 FEBRUARY 2007 Talent, I say, is what an actor needs. And talent is faith in oneself, one's own powers. Maxim Gorky, The Lower Depths (1903), 1, tr. Alexander Bakshy

4 FEBRUARY 2007 There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing. Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son (January 2, 1748)

3 FEBRUARY 2007 What is well done is done soon enough. Seigneur Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes (1758), 1.1

2 FEBRUARY 2007 'Tis skill, not strengthm that governs a ship. Thomas Fuller, M.D., Gnomologia (1732), 5116.

1 FEBRUARY 2007 As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many tiems is he a man. Emerson, "Culture", The Conduct of Life (1860)

31 JANUARY 2007 Books, the children of the brain. Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704)

30 JANUARY 2007 The true university of these days is a collection of books. Thomas Carlyle, "The Hero as Man of Letters" on Heroes and Hero Worship

29 JANUARY 2007 Books think of me. Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia (1823)

28 JANUARY 2007 Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed. Sir William Temple (1628-1699)

27 JANUARY 2007 Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some are to be chewed or digested. Francis Bacon, Essays (1615)

26 JANUARY 2007 Books are the true levelers. William Ellery Channing, "Self Culture" (1838)

24 JANUARY 2007 It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part. Voltair (1664-1778)

23 JANUARY 2007 Books must be the axe to break the frozen sea inside me. Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

22 JANUARY 2007 An author who speaks about his own books is almsot as bad as a mother who talks about her own children. Nenjamin Disraeli, A Speech in Glasgow (November 19, 1873)

21 JANUARY 2007 I like a thin book because it will steady a table, a leather volume because it will stop a razirm and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat. Mark Twain (1835-1910)

20 JANUARY 2007 Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself. What better can there be than the book of humanity? Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

19 JANUARY 2007 Books are necessary to correct the vices of the polite. Oliver Goldsmith (c. 1730-1774)

18 JANUARY 2007 I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. E.M. Foster, "Two Cheers for Democracy" (1951)

17 JANUARY 2007 That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. Francis Hutcheson, Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil (1720), 3

16 JANUARY 2007 Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963), 2

15 JANUARY 2007 Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice hich make philanthropy necessary. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963), 3.2

14 JANUARY 2007 One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession. Sophocles, Philoctetes (409 B.C.), tr. David Grene.

13 JANUARY 2007 You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot do by force. Publilius Syrus, Moral Sayings (1st c. B.C.), 971, tr. Darius Lyman

12 JANUARY 2007 How far that little candle Throws his beams! So Shines a good deed in a naughty world. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1596-97) 5.1.90

11 JANUARY 2007 I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, "I will tell you a story," and then he passes the hat. Robertson Davies, The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1979)

10 JANUARY 2007 Books choose their authores; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. Salman Rushdie (1947- ) in The Independent (February 4, 1990)

9 JANUARY 2007 Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. Norman Mailer (1923- ), "Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself, New York Times Book Review (September 17, 1965)

8 JANUARY 2007 Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Writers at Work - Sixth Series (1984)

7 JANUARY 2007 Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein. Attribured to Red (Walter Wellesley) Smith (1905-1982)

6 JANUARY 2007 Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use. Mark Twain (1835-1910)

5 JANUARY 2007 A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it, or offer your own versin in return. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands, (1992)

4 JANUARY 2007 I grew up kissing books and bdrea. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (1992)

3 JANUARY 2007 Good books are the warehouses of ideas. H.G. Wells (1866-1946)

Robert A. Creo Arbitrator & Mediator