Quotes About Boredom

If you can’t stand solitude, maybe you bore others too.

— Bob Gordon

I never allow myself to be bored, because boredom is ageing.  If you live in the past you grow old, and dull, and dusty.  It’s very nice, of course, to be young and beautiful; but there are other qualities, thank God.

— Marie Tempest

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.  It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

— H. L. Mencken

A bore is a fellow talking who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.

— Laurence J. Peter

A man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

— Samuel Butler

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

— Voltaire

Bore: a person who talks when you wish him to listen.

— Ambrose Bierce

Ennui, felt on the proper occasions, is a sign of intelligence.

— Clifton Fadiman

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

— Renata Adler

She has the reputation of being outspoken — by no one.

— Jack Paar

Somebody’s boring me — I think it’s me.

— Dylan Thomas

Boredom: the desire for desires.

— Leo Tolstoy

A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.

— Bert Taylor

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.

— Mignon McLaughlin

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Quotes About Argument

My pappy told me never to bet my bladder against a brewery or get into an argument with people who buy ink by the barrel.

— Lane Kirkland

People are generally better persuaded by the reason which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come to the minds of others.

— Blaise Pascal

There is no such test of a man’s superiority of character as in the well-conducting of an unavoidable quarrel.

— Sir Henry Taylor

No matter what side of an argument you’re on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side.

— Jascha Heifetz

How come nobody wants to argue with me?  Is it because I’m always so right?

— Jim Bouton

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

— Dean William R. Inge

When people agree with me, I always feel that I must be wrong.

— Oscar Wilde

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.

— Richard Whateley

I am not arguing with you — I am telling you.

— James McNeill Whistler

When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they’re not really interested in.

— Bertrand Russell

The best way of answering a bad argument is to let it go on.

— Sydney Smith

I dislike arguments of any kind.  They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

— Oscar Wilde

The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being right.

— Lord Hailsham

My idea of a disagreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

— Benjamin Disraeli

I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them.

— Charles de Gaulle

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

— Robert Quillen

The quiet shaft of ridicule ofttimes does more than argument.

— William Scarborough

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Quotes About Adversity

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

— Walter Bagehot

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

— Seneca the Younger

Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargained for.

— Stanislaus

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.

— Woodrow Wilson

I don’t say embrace trouble.  That’s as bad as treating it as an enemy.  But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don’t share it, you don’t give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

— Dinah Shore

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we had not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

— Anna Bradstreet

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.

— George Bernard Shaw

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

— Charles Dickens

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist — it reduces him to his fighting weight.

— Josh Billings

Watch a man in times of ... adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off.

— Lucretius

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.

— Horace

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it.  Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

— André Gide

Adversity is the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free from admirers then.

— Samuel Johnson

The world is quickly bored with the recital of misfortune and willingly avoids the sight of distress.

— W. Somerset Maugham

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

— G. K. Chesterton

A woman is like a teabag; you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.

— Nancy Reagan

Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.

— William Hazlitt

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

— Cicero

Each handicap is like a hurdle in a steeplechase, and when you ride up to it, if you throw your heart over, the horse will go along, too.

— Lawrence Bixby

The course of true love never did run smooth.

— William Shakespeare

Diligence overcomes difficulties; sloth makes them.

— Benjamin Franklin

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Quotes About Victory

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

— Winston Churchill

To the victor belong the toils.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

The only victory over love is flight.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

There is no substitute for victory.

— General Douglas MacArthur

Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.

— John Milton

An honorable defeat is better than a dishonorable victory.

— Millard Fillmore

I glory in conflict, that I may hereafter exult in victory.

— Frederick Douglass

History is written by the winners.

— Alex Haley

Winning is better than anything.  Better than sex.  Better than Christmas morning.

— Bill Parcells, after winning Super Bowl XXV

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Quotes About Time and Timing

I am always quarreling with time!  It is so short to do something and so long to do nothing.

— Queen Charlotte

The ultimate of being successful is the luxury of giving yourself the time to do what you want to do.

— Leontyne Price

We must use time creatively...and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute.  But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute — and it’s longer than any hour.  That’s relativity.

— Albert Einstein

Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time.

— Hippocrates

I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.

— Bernard Berenson

The less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

— Lord Chesterfield

It takes a lot of time to be sentimental.

— Don Herold

Life is short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be gained.

— Stendhal

Time is the measure of business, as money is of wares.

— Francis Bacon

Time goes, you say?  Ah no! Alas, times stays, we go.

— Austin Dobson

Ah! The clock is always slow; it is later than you think.

— Robert W. Service

Time heals what reason cannot.

— Seneca the Younger

Time makes more converts than reason.

— Thomas Paine

Time is the greatest innovator.

— Francis Bacon

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.

— Lord Chesterfield

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

— G. K. Chesterton

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

— Faith Baldwin

What is a ruin but time easing itself in endurance?

— Djuna Barnes

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

— Ecclesiastes 3:1

Time — the devourer of all things.

— Ovid

You may delay, but Time will not.

— Benjamin Franklin

Time: that which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

— Herbert Spencer

The ripeness is all.

— William Shakespeare

Time wounds all heels.

— Jane Ace

Time is money.

— Benjamin Franklin

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Quotes About Talent

There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent.  With man-made talent you have to work very hard.  With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.

— Pearl Bailey

Talent wins out.

— Althea Gibson Darben

Keep your talent in the dark and you’ll never be insulted.

— Elsa Maxwell

A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.

— Isaac Stern

Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.

— Bertrand Russell

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

— Honoré de Balzac

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.

— Honoré de Balzac

I have always thought that the surest proof of talent is its condescension to genius.

— Vincent Sheehan

I began to ration my writing, for fear I would dream through life as my father had done.  I was afraid I had inherited a poisoned gene from him, a vocation without a gift.

— Mavis Gallant

Nothing I do can’t be done by a ten-year-old . . . with fifteen years of practice.

— Harry Blackstone, Jr., on being a magician

There is no substitute for talent.  Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.

— Aldous Huxley

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

— Cyril Connolly

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

— John F. Kennedy

Neither cast ye your pearls before swine.

— Matthew 7:6

After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, “She can’t talk!  She can’t act!  She’s sensational!”

— Ava Gardner

We’ve all been blessed with God-given talents.  Mine just happens to be beating people up.

— Sugar Ray Leonard

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

— Robert Half

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Quotes About Success

The penalty of success is to be bored by the attentions os people who formerly snubbed you.

— Mary Wilson Little

The man who succeeds is never conceded the right to fail.

— William Pickens

If every successful man needs a woman behind him, every successful woman needs at least three men.

— Margot Naylor

Success is a public affair.  Failure is a private funeral.

— Rosalind Russell

The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary.

— Vidal Sassoon

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.

— William Saroyan

If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z, where X is work, Y is play, Z is keep your mouth shut.

— Albert Einstein

The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.

— Don Marquis

Success covers many blunders.

— George Bernard Shaw

Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.

— Arthur Rubinstein

Behind every successful man there’s a lot of unsuccessful years.

— Bob Brown

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Nothing fails like success because we don’t learn from it.  We learn only from failure.

— Kenneth Boulding

How can they say my life isn’t a success?  Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

— Logan Pearsall Smith

We can’t all be lions in this world.  There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.

— William Makepeace Thackeray

We may stop ourselves when going up, never when going down.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

As is the case in all branches of art, success depends in a very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and cannot be achieved except by dint of hard work.

— Anna Pavlova

Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor.

— John Churton Collins

The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world’s dreadful injustice.

— Jules Renard

If a man can build a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am perfectly happy to believe that nobody likes us but the public.

— Rudolph Bing

The toughest thing about being a success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success

— Irving Berlin

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

— Woody Allen

There’s no secret about success.  Did you ever know a successful man that didn’t tell you all about it?

— Kin Hubbard

There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.

— Christopher Morley

All you need in life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

— Mark Twain

Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.

— Oscar Wilde

The worst part of having success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.

— Bette Midler (attrib.)

Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.

— Josh Billings

I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.

— Walter Cronkite

There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything.  I do, and I demand that my players do.

— Vince Lombardi

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind.  Failure makes people cruel and bitter.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Nothing succeeds like success.

— Alexandre Dumas

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