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Louise Beal
- Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.
Samuel Beckett
--Irish playwright
- I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them. - from The Unnameable
Sir Thomas Beecham
- Try everything once except incest and folk dancing.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman
- Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
- The dog was created especially for children. He is the God of frolic. - from Proverbs from Pymouth Pulpit
Max Beerbohm
- Nobody ever died of laughter.
- People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
Ludwig Van Beethoven
(1770-1827) --German composer
- Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
- Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.
Hada Bejar
- The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.
Alexander Graham Bell
(1847-1922) --American inventor
- When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
George Bellows
- Art strives for form, and hopes for beauty.
Robert Benchley
- A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedence, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
- The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
Warren G. Bennis
University of Southern California sociologist
- The factory of the future will have two employees: a man and a dog. The man's job will be to feed the dog. The dog's job will be to prevent the man from touching any of the automated equipment.
- Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
Jack Benny
- Growing old is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Jon Bentley
- Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization. - from More Programming Pearls
Elizabeth Berg
- There is incredible value in being of service to others. I think if most of the people in therapy offices were dragged out to put their finger in a dike, take up their place in a working line, they would be relieved of terrible burdens.
Sally Berger
- You never saw a fish on the wall with its mouth shut.
Thomas Berger
- Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
George Bergman
- There is no time like the pleasant.
Ingmar Bergman
- No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.
Henri Bergson
(1859-1941) --French philosopher
- The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Ignas Bernstein
- Three things you can be judged by: your voice, your face, and your disposition.
Jeremy Bernstein
- Never speak more clearly than you think.
Leonard Bernstein
(1918-1990) --American composer and conductor
- A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
- Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
- I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
- The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another . . . and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
- Any great work of art revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Yogi Berra
- If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else.
Mary Frances Berry
- If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in the bus in Montgomery, she'd still be standing.
John Berry
- The bird of paradise alights only in the hand that does not grasp.
from Big Snake Bites, Part II
- Once a python weighs more than half the weight of his keeper, the potential of dangerous constriction becomes very real; snakes of this size should not be handled alone. Once a python outweighs his keeper, fatal constriction is at the discretion of the python.
Josh Billings (H.W. Shaw)
- Contentment iz a kind ov moral laziness; if thare want ennything but kontentment in his world, man wouldn't be any more of a success than an anlgeworm iz. --from Josh Billings' Encyclopedia of Wit and Wisdom (1874)
- I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
- Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
- When a young man begins to go down hill everything seems to be greased for the occasion.
- The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his way.
- Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
- Words are often seen hunting for an idea,but ideas are never seen hunting for words.
Carolyn Birmingham
- A smile starts on the lips,
A grin spreads to the eyes,
A chuckle comes from the belly;
But a good laugh burtsts forth from the soul,
Overflows, and bubbles all around.
Jim Bishop
- It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.
Bismark
- When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have
not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
Shirley Temple Black
--American actress, ambassador
- I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
William Blake
(1757-1827) --English poet, artist
- I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
- It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
- To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour. - from Auguries of Innocence
- A Truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent - from Auguries of Innocence
- Mutual forgiveness of each vice.
Such are the Gates of Paradise. - from The Gates of Paradise
- I was angry with my friend
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow. - from A Poison Tree
- He's a Blockhead who wants a proof of what he Can't Percieve
And he's a Fool who tries to make such a Blockhead believe. - from Notebooks
- A dog starv'd at the master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A horse misus'd upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear,
A skylark wounded on the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing. - from Auguries of Innocence
- When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.
- He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
Barbara Bloom
--American artist
- You have to choose where you look, and in making that choice you eliminate entire worlds.
- When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.
Srully Blotnick
- What looks like a loss may be the very event which is subsequently responsible for helping to produce the major achievement of your life.
Robert Bly
- There are a lot of men who are healthier at age fifty then they have ever been before, because a lot of their fear is gone.
Reginald Blyth
- If all men lead mechanical, unpoetical lifes, this is the real nihilism, the real undoing of the world.
Niels Bohr
(1885-1962) --Danish physicist
- Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
- The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
- An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.
Nicolas Boileau
(1636-1711) --French poet and critic
- Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.
(A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.)
William Pene du Bois
- The best way of travel, however, if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature.(The Twenty-one Balloons)
Derek Bok
- If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Erma Bombeck
--American author, humorist
- Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
- It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job.
- If a man watches three football games in a row he should be declared legally dead.
- I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.
Edward de Bono
- Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of averageintelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.
- Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach,
but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
Daniel Boorstin
- A best seller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well.
- The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.
- A sign of a celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services.
- Formerly a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary to keep him properly in the public eye.
Edwin Booth
- An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.
David L. Boren
- What makes the difference between a Nation that is truly great and one that is merely rich and powerful? It is the simple things that make the difference. Honesty, knowing right from wrong, openness, self-respect, and the courage of conviction.
Gloria Borger
- For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.
Victor Borge
- Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
Jorge Luis Borges
--Argentinean author
- To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
Jim Borgman
--Cartoonist
- We have a balance of $84.32 in the bank... Which makes us four-and-a-half trillion dollars richer than the federal government. - Woman balancing checkbook in a cartoon
Max Born
(1882-1970) --German physicist
- The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
John Collins Bossidy
- And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God. - from On the Aristocracy of Harvard
Ben Bova
--American author, editor
- Feeding the starving poor only increases their number.
John Christian Bovee
- A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough.
- Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
Ezra Bowen
- If thee marries for money, thee surely will earn it.
Elizabeth Bowen
(1899-1973) --British author
- No object is mysterious. The mystery is in your eye.
- It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's
almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to
some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights. --from The Death of the Heart (1938)
Sandra Boynton
- As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
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