Quotations and Poems » Poems

Advice

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:27:25 +0000

“Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.”
– Aesop
“Be smart, be intelligent and be informed.”
– Tony Alesandra
“We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.”
– William R. Alger
“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”
– Nelson Algren
“To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.”
– Ghose Aurobindo
“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.”
– Francis Bacon
“There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a mans self.”
– Francis Bacon
“The worst men often give the best advice.”
– Philip James Bailey
“Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one.”
– Ivern Ball
“Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.”
– Walter Benjamin
“Where no counsel is, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.”
– Bible
“A fool think he needs no advice, but a wise man listens to others.”
– Bible
“Consult. To seek anothers approval of a course already decided on.”
– Ambrose Bierce
“Advice is like castor oil, easy to give, but dreadful to take.”
– Josh Billings
“Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.”
– Josh Billings
“The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is.”
– Phillips Brooks
“Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.”
– Thomas Carlyle
“Let no man under value the price of a virtuous womans counsel.”
– George Chapman
“In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybodys torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.”
– Lord Chesterfield
“Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.”
– Lord Chesterfield
“I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
“In those days he was wiser than he is now — he used frequently to take my advice.”
– Winston Churchill
“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it.”
– John Churton Collins
“Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor.”
– John Churton Collins
“We ask advice but we mean approbation.”
– Charles Caleb Colton
“A word to the wise isnt necessary, it is the stupid ones who need all the advice.”
– Bill Cosby
“There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.”
– Edward Dahlberg
“I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”
– Gene Fowler
“They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“When in doubt, dont.”
– Saul W. Gellerman
“When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.”
– Marquis de la Grange
“Generally speaking, when a woman offers unsolicited advice or tries to help a man, she has no idea of how critical and unloving he may sound to him.”
– John Gray
“To offer a man unsolicited advice is to presume that he doesnt know what to do or that he cant do it on his own.”
– John Gray
“Always be nice to bankers. Always be nice to pension fund managers. Always be nice to the media. In that order.”
– Lord Hanson
“The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.”
– Sir Arthur Helps
“We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice.”
– Jack Herbert
“The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
“A good scare is worth more than good advice.”
– Horace
“Whatever advice you give, be short.”
– Horace
“Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor. One must exercise proper deliberation, plan carefully before making a move, and be alert in guarding against relapse following a renaissance.”
– I Ching
“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”
– Ben Johnson
“The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.”
– Samuel Johnson
“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didnt.”
– Erica Jong
“He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.”
– Karl Von Knebel
“Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.”
– Knegge
“We may give advice, but not the sense to use it.”
– Francois De La Rochefoucauld
“The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.”
– Francois De La Rochefoucauld
“We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.”
– Francois De La Rochefoucauld
“Men give away nothing so liberally as their advice.”
– Francois De La Rochefoucauld
“Number one: Dont frisk me. Dont hurt me physically. Dont get anywhere near my neck. And dont call me Regis. [Advice to his guests]“
– David Letterman
“Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.”
– Lope de Vega
“It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.”
– J. C. Macaulay
“Be yourself is about the worst advice you can give to some people.”
– Thomas L. Masson
“Your friends praise your abilities to the skies, submit to you in argument, and seem to have the greatest deference for you; but, though they may ask it, you never find them following your advice upon their own affairs; nor allowing you to manage your own, without thinking that you should follow theirs. Thus, in fact, they all think themselves wiser than you, whatever they may say.”
– Lord Melbourne
“I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.”
– Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
“It is only too easy to make suggestions and later try to escape the consequences of what we say.”
– Jawaharlal Nehru
“Good advice is beyond all price.”
– Proverb
“Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.”
– Proverb
“If your strength is small, dont carry heavy burdens. If your words are worthless, dont give advice.”
– Chinese Proverb
“To advise is not to compel.”
– German Proverb
“Never give advice unless asked.”
– German Proverb
“To advise is easier than to help.”
– German Proverb
“Never advise anyone to go to war or to get married. Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present. He that has no children brings them up well.”
– Spanish Proverb
“One can advise comfortably from a safe port.”
– Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
“It is easy to give advice from a port of safety.”
– Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
“Dont follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.”
– David Seabury
“Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.”
– Seneca
“I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.”
– William Shakespeare
“Im not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead — ahead of myself as well as you.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“We hate those who will not take our advice, and despise them who do.”
– Henry Wheeler Shaw
“The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.”
– Hannah Whitall Smith
“No one wants advice, only corroboration.”
– John Steinbeck
“These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.”
– Publilius Syrus
“It is bad advice that cannot be changed.”
– Publilius Syrus
“If one man says to thee, Thou art a donkey, pay no heed. If two speak thus, purchase a saddle.”
– The Talmud
“I wouldnt recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but theyve always worked for me.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
“I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“A pint of example is worth a gallon of advice”
– Source Unknown
“A word to the wise is infuriating.”
– Source Unknown
“Anybody who ask for advice nowadays just hasnt been listening.”
– Source Unknown
“Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.”
– Source Unknown
“Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.”
– Source Unknown
“Successful men follow the same advice they prescribe for others.”
– Source Unknown
“Advice is the only commodity on the market where the supply always exceeds the demand.”
– Source Unknown
“Give help rather than advice.”
– Marquis De Vauvenargues
“The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.”
– Oscar Wilde

Affectation

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:27:25 +0000

“Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?”
– Fanny Brice
“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
– Eric Hoffer
“Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.”
– Georg C. Lichtenberg

Affection

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:27:25 +0000

“Most people would rather give than get affection.”
– Aristotle
“The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection [Are] that a thing is your own and that it is your only one.”
– Aristotle
“In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.”
– Jane Austen
“Its not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) –to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) its the affection I find richer. Its that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors.”
– Enid Bagnold
“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. [Colossians 3:2]“
– Bible
“Yes, I do touch. I believe that everyone needs that”
– Princess of Wales Diana
“I love to hold peoples hands when I visit hospitals, even though they are shocked because they havent experienced anything like it before, but to me it is a normal thing to do.”
– Princess of Wales Diana
“The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed, there is no winter and no night; all tragedies, all ennui s, vanish, all duties even.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles; but the magnifying of the one is like looking through a telescope at heavenly objects; that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a microscope.”
– Leigh Hunt
“A womans life is a history of the affections.”
– Washington Irving
“The affections are like lightning: you cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen.”
– Jean Baptiste Lacordaire
“Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Dont be afraid of showing affection. Be warm and tender, thoughtful and affectionate. Men are more helped by sympathy than by service. Love is more than money, and a kind word will give more pleasure than a present.”
– Sir John Lubbock
“A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.”
– Andre Maurois
“I never met a man I didnt like.”
– Will Rogers
“If you value a mans regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper — and despise it.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.”
– Logan Pearsall Smith
“One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.”
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Affirmation

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:27:25 +0000

“I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.”
– Muhammad Ali
“These repetitive words and phrases are merely methods of convincing the suonscious mind.”
– Claude M. Bristol
“Its the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”
– Claude M. Bristol
“You must intensify and render continuous by repeatedly presenting with suggestive ideas and mental pictures of the feast of good things, and the flowing fountain, which awaits the successful achievement or attainment of the desires.”
– Robert Collier
“Constant repetition carries conviction.”
– Robert Collier
“One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true of false. It comes to be dominating thought in ones mind.”
– Robert Collier
“Any thought that is passed on to the suonscious often enough and convincingly enough is finally accepted.”
– Robert Collier
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
– Epictetus
“As long as you know what it is you desire, then by simply affirming that it is yours — firmly and positively, with no ifs, buts, or maybes — over and over again, from the minute you arise in the morning until the time you go to sleep at night, and as many times during the day as your work or activities permit, you will be drawn to those people, places, and events that will bring your desires to you.”
– Scott Reed
“When you affirm your own rightness in the universe, then you co-operate with others easily and automatically as part of your own nature. You, being yourself, helps others be themselves. Because you recognize your own uniqueness you will not need to dominate others, nor cringe before them”
– Jane Roberts
“We cannot always control our thoughts, but we can control our words, and repetition impresses the suonscious, and we are then master of the situation.”
– Florence Scovel Shinn
“You will be a failure, until you impress the suonscious with the conviction you are a success. This is done by making an affirmation which clicks.”
– Florence Scovel Shinn
“Only one thing registers on the suonscious mind: repetitive application — practice. What you practice is what you manifest.”
– Grace Speare
“You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be.”
– David Viscott

Affliction

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:27:25 +0000

“Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.”
– Christian Nevell Bovee
“As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.”
– Sir Richard Burton
“To bear other peoples afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy.”
– Felicia D. Hemans
“No one could be more happy than a man who has never known affliction”
– Demetrius Phalerens
“Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.”
– John Tillotson

Age_and_Aging

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:27:25 +0000

Your Laugh Is like a Silver Bell

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:12:11 +0000

Your laugh is like a silver bell:

Clean and light and free;

Just like the hours of happiness

Your friendship brings to me.

You’re like a room of sweet wind chimes

Enlightened by a breeze,

Or like an open, grassy field

Dotted with old trees.

I’m grateful for the things you do,

But more for what you are:

A breath of clear, bright open sea,

Of life beyond the bar.

By: Nicholas Gordon

Your Friendship Is the Sky Above My Home

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:11:10 +0000

Your friendship is the sky above my home,

The crystal air I breathe, through which I see.

I can’t believe how much you mean to me.

Without you with me, time would turn to stone.

I don’t know why I need you so, or how

I know so absolutely I’ll be there

In times your wounded heart can hardly bear.

I only know this truth is with me now.

Why is it in our lives that we need friends

To be awake and fully what we are?

Alone we dream but never cross the bar;

With you I share a grace that never ends.

By: Nicholas Gordon

You Have a Smile that Lights the World

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:09:12 +0000

You have a smile that lights the world,

Shining from within,

Breaking out between the clouds

That form the skin of self.

Lucky we, to live nearby

That unpretentious sun,

To share its fire, to feel its love,

To know its warmth so well.

Just as the sun’s sweet liquid joy

Is captured in the wine,

So with us your happiness

Is captured in our lives.

By: Nicholas Gordon

You Are to Me a Very Special Sun

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:07:33 +0000

You are to me a very special sun

That shines upon a world few ever see,

A world I’m shy to show to everyone,

That hides its urgent truth from even me.

Without your light it is a world of darkness;

Its heaven and its hell lie fast asleep.

With you as sole and sympathetic witness,

The words come forth from out my vasty deep.

And so I cannot be myself without you;

No one is whole without some loving friend.

There is a quiet joy in me about you

That lets me say what I need not defend.

Long may we serve each other to give light

To all the loveliness that haunts the night.

By: Nicholas Gordon