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Mr. O’Kane’s Inspirational Quotes
 
"YOU ARE HERE FOR A REASON, NOT FOR THE SEASON!"  -C. Minga
 
Think!
 
“In creating, the only hard thing is to begin; a grass blade is no easier to make than an oak."”-Lowell
 
“If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.” –Shaw
 
“One must be something to be able to do something.” –Shaw
 
“We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school masters, and one from the world.  The third contradicts all that the other two teach us.” -Charles Louis de Secondadt
 
“Democracy simply means the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.” – O. Wilde
 
“Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.” –John Selden
 
“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.” –GB Shaw
 
“Immature poets imitate: mature poets steal.” –Eliot
 
“Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance…poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.” –Ezra Pound
 
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” –Thoreau
 
“Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons.” –Whitman
 
“I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.” –Whitman
 
“Time was as I was but neither that time nor that “I” are any more.” –Ellison
 
“There are events in the womb of time which shall be delivered.” –Shakespeare/Othello
 

“Ash on an old man’s sleeve Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.” –Eliot
 
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language/ And next year’s words await another voice.” –Eliot
 
“Footfalls echo in the memory/ Down the passage which we did not take/ Towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden.  My words echo/ Thus, in your mind.” –Eliot
 
“Power concedes nothing w/o a demand.  It never did and it never will…” –Frederick Douglas
 
“I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” -John Brown
 
“The world has achieved brilliance w/o wisdom, power w/o conscience.  Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical midgets.  We know more about war than we know of peace, more about killing than we know about living.” –General Omar Bradley (1948)
 
“To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.” –Milton
 
“Yes; quaint and curious war is!  You shoot a fellow down/ You’d treat if met where any bar is, or help to half a crown.” –Thomas Hardy
 
“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.  But in modern war there is nothing sweet or fitting in your dying.  You will die like a dog for no good reason.” –Hemingway
 
“Sir, I admit your general rule/ That every poet is a fool: But you yourself may serve to show it.  That every fool is not a poet.” –Alexander Pope
 
“Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” -O. Wilde
 
“Moderation is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” –O. Wilde
 
“One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.” –O. Wilde
 
“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.” –GB Shaw
 
“Experience is not what happens to a man.  It is what a man does with what happens to him.” –Huxley
 
“Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.” –O. Wilde
 
“A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk.” –Dr. Samuel Johnson
 
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” –Socrates
 
“In the pursuit of nonconformity, we become the ultimate conformist.  Van Gogh was a true nonconformist.” –John M. Shanahan
 
“Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? Diversity is the word.  Let man keep his many parts and you’ll no tyrant states.  Why, if they follow this conformity business they’ll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one.  Must I strive toward colorlessness?”  Ralph Ellison
 
“It’s “winner take nothing” that is the great truth of our country or of any country.  Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.  Our fate is to become one, and yet many-This is not prophecy, but description.” –Ralph Ellison
 
“Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” –Ralph Ellison
 
“and become like me, slave to a springtime passion for the earth.” –Frost
 
“It is impossible to say just what I mean.” –Eliot
 
“The meaning of life is that it stops.” –Franz Kafka
 
“Sun the father his quiver full of the infants of pure fire, But blessed be hail and upheaval.” –Dylan Thomas
 
“The reducto absurdum of human experience.” –Faulkner
 
“The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag.” –Whitman
 
“And if I sing you are my voice.” –Cummings
 
“to feel-Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural Beauty, is the sole business of poetry."”-Jeffers
 
“Time is bearing another son.  Kill time!  She turns in her pain!  The oak is felled in the acorn- And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.” –D. Thomas
 
“And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”
                                                -D. Thomas
 
“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.”
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
 
“You can't say that civilizations don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.”
-Will Rogers, New York Times, Dec. 23, 1929
 
 “Either you think - or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald
 
“The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.” –Thoreau
 
“That government is best which governs least.” –Emerson
 
“That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of govt. which they will have.” –Thoreau
 
“Let every man make known what kind of govt. would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.” –Thoreau
 
"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one." - Albert Einstein
 
 "By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong. -Charles Wadsworth
 
 "It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."  - James Thurber
 
"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." - Henry Ford
 "The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."  -William James
 "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."  - Aesop
 “If you want to get the best out of a man, you must look for the best that is in him."  -Barnard Holdrane
 "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all."  - Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, Chapter 77
 "Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything." - Blaise Pascal
 “I expect to pass through this world just once; any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show, let me do it now; for I shall not pass this way again."  -Etienne DeGrellet
 “The creation of beauty is art.” -O’Kane
 “Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor for the human mind.” -Emerson 
 “In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended.  Free should the scholar be, free and brave.”  -Emerson
 “Happiness is like a butterfly, which, when you pursue it is always beyond your grasp, but, which, when you sit down may alight upon you.”  -Nathaniel Hawthorne