Thomas Quotes

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.

I cannot live without books.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Are you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact?" Will demanded with mock horror. "Clearly I have been doing something wrong. Or not something wrong, as the case may be." He banged on the side of the carriage. "Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel. I seek scandal and low companionship.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.

What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.

Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.

What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.

Brave doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you go on even though you're scared.

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

Shouldn't someone give a pep talk or something?" Minho asked, pulling Thomas's attention away from Alby. "Go ahead," Newt replied. Minho nodded and faced the crowd. "Be careful," he said dryly. "Don't die.

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

These are the times that try men's souls.

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

Minho looked at Thomas, a serious expression on his face. "If I don't see you on the other side," he said in a sappy voice, "remember that I love you.

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

Kill me. If you’ve ever been my friend, kill me.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

I don't think a tough question is disrespectful.

They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.

At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.

For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.

We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work

Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.

Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.

KILL ME!" And then Newt's eyes cleared, as if he'd gained one last trembling gasp of sanity, and his voice softened. "Please, Tommy. Please." With his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas pulled the trigger.

A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Clocks will go as they are set, but man, irregular man, is never constant, never certain.

That's the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.

On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place

It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.

I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

They're in love. Fuck the war.

Choose your love. Love your choice.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

We are not going to die." Butters stared up at me, pale, his eyes terrified. "We're not?" "No. And do you know why?" He shook his head. "Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die." I hauled on the shirt even harder. "And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this - you haven't.

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro. (Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.)

When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.

Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

WICKED is good

I can't change where I come from or what I've been through, so why should I be ashamed of what makes me, me?

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Oh, I can never get enough," he said. "Which, incidentally, is what your sister said to me when - " The carriage door flew open. A hand shot out, grabbed Will by the back of the shirt, and hauled him inside. The door banged shut after him, and Thomas, sitting bolt upright, seized reins of the horses. A moment later the carriage had lurched forth into the night, leaving Gabriel staring, infuriated, after it.

Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!

Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the gate: ‘To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods, ‘And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife who nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame? ‘Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may; I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play. In yon strait path a thousand May well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, And keep the bridge with me? Then out spake Spurius Lartius; A Ramnian proud was he: ‘Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee.’ And out spake strong Herminius; Of Titian blood was he: ‘I will abide on thy left side, And keep the bridge with thee.’ ‘Horatius,’ quoth the Consul, ‘As thou sayest, so let it be.’ And straight against that great array Forth went the dauntless Three. For Romans in Rome’s quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old. Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old. Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe, And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low. As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets