Labor Day differs in every essential from other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflict and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.
– Samual Gempers

Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.

• Raymond Chandler

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

• Jack London

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.

• Josiah Bailey

The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost expurgated of idiots.

• Alfred Jarry

Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.

• Earl Nightingale

Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.

• Antoine Rivarol

It doesn’t pay to say too much when you are mad enough to choke. For the word that stings the deepest is the word that is never spoke, Let the other fellow wrangle till the storm has blown away, then he’ll do a heap of thinking about the things you didn’t say.

• James Whitcomb Riley

But not the first Illusion, the new earth,The march upon the solitary fire,The casting of the dice of death and birthAgainst a giant, for a blind desire,The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried,The metal sleeping in the mountainside.

• Stephen Vincent Benet

The intellect is weak; it has no power except over what is as weak as itself.

• Al Nuri