by Curt Kovener
Over the decades I have amassed a number of quotes and thoughts of both the serious and humorous nature.
There is not money in poetry, but then there is not poetry in money, either.
~Robert Graves
Poets, we know, are very sensitive people, and in my observation, one of the things they are most sensitive about is cash.
~Robert Penn Warren
You don’t have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
~John Ciardi
People who have read me seem to be divided into four groups: Twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; 25% like me for the wrong reasons; 25% hate me for the wrong reasons; 25% hate me for the right reasons. It’s that last 25% that worries me.
~Robert Frost
Originality is the art of concealing your source.
~Franklin P. Jones
The command, “Be fruitful and multiply,” was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two persons.
~Dean William R. Inge
No man would listen to you if he didn’t know it was his turn next.
~Ed Howe
It is alright to hold a conversation but you should let go of it now and then.
~Richard Armour
One man with courage makes it a majority.
~Andrew Jackson
A neighborhood is where, when you go out of it, you get beat up.
~Murray Kempton
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.
The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr
A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.
~Wendell L. Willkie
There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.
~Dr. George Crane
If people really liked to work, we’d still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our backs.
~William Feather
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. ~Robert Frost
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside then was superior to circumstances.
~Bruce Barton
Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.
~Austin O’Malley
In my opinion, we are in danger of developing a cult of the Common Man, which means a cult of mediocrity.
~Herbert Hoover
I reckon there’s as much human nature in some folks as there is in others, if not more.
~Edwards Noyes Wescott
It is the mark of the cultured man that he is aware of the fact that equality is an ethical and not a biological principle.
~Ashley Montague
There is only one thing that can keep growing without nourishment: The human ego.
~Marshall Lumsden
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
~William Jennings Bryan
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, “Ours.”
~Vine Deloria, Jr.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
~Henry David Thoreau
Success is the one unpardonable sin against one’s fellows.
~Ambrose Bierce
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
~George Bernard Shaw
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
~Mary Ellen Kelly
The truth is more important than the facts.
~Frank Lloyd Wright
Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.
~Mark Twain
The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
~Lao-tzu (604-531 B.C.)
Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.
~Carl Schurz
Never face facts; if you do, you’ll never get up in the morning.
~Marlo Thomas
Husbands are like fires; they go out when unattended.
~Zsa Zsa Gabor
Genius is perseverence in disguise.
~Mike Newlin
Love: Two minds without a single thought.
~Philip Barry
Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.
~William Gaddis