Here's some quotes I've picked up over the years, most if not all have had some relation in my life. There is some posted text here, which is my own writing. Basically I really enjoy 'oneliners' which makes you pause and think. A powerful statment, comprised of only a few words, but one that states so much. Somewhat similar to 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' I'm sure the reader will find a quote here which will have some meaning for them.

• "If an experiment works, something has gone wrong."
  -Finagles first law

• "No matter what the experiment's result,
  there will always be someone eager to:
  (a) misinterpret it,
  (b) fake it,
  (c) believe it supports his or her pet theory."
  -Finagles second law

• "In any collection of data, the figure most
  obviously correct, beyond all need of checking,
  is the mistake."
  -Finagles third law

•  "Once a job is fouled up,
  anything done to improve it only makes it worse."
  -Finagles forth law

• "The palest ink is better than the best memory."
  -Finagles memorial

• "Anything that can go wrong - will go wrong - and at the worst possible moment."
  -Murphy

• "He who fights too long against deamons becomes a deamon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you."
  -Nietzsche

• "I have seen soldiers panic at the first sight of battle, and a wounded squire pulling arrows out from his leg to fight and save his dying horse. Nobility is not a birth right but is defined by one's action."
  -Kevin Costner, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, 1991

• "...But what he lacks in most cases is that tenacious desire to make it reality, that obstinate gnashing of teeth and saying, 'Although I know it can't be done, I want to do it anyway.'"
  -M.C. Escher

• "As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses."
  -M.C.Escher

• "I don't give reasons, only statments"
  -M.C. Escher

• "Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."
  -William Shakespeare, 'Twelfth Night'

• "Reality is what won't go away when you stop beliving in it."
  -Phillip K Dick

• "Destiny is no 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

• "The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue."
  -Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects

• "Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."
  -Richard M. Nixon, in his White House farewell

• "Often the best thing about not saying anything is that it can't be repeated."
  -Suzan Wiener

• "A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child."
  -Knights of Pythagoras

• "What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams."
  -Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Life is a Dream

• "It is a very lonely life that a man leads, who becomes aware of truths before their times."
  -Thomas Brackett Reed

• "Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds."
  -C. Chesterfield

• "Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but the capacity to prevent it. Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them."
  -Neil Gaiman, The Sandman #20: Facade

• "Facing it, always facing it, that the way to get through. Face it."
  -Joseph Conrad

• "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
  -Martin Luther King, Jr.

• "It is not every question that deserves an answer."
  -Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

• "Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."
  -William Saroyan

• "The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."
  -G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy; p. 14

• "Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare."
  -Harriet Martineau

• "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
  -Emiliano Zapata

• "I must stand up in search of the truth, if I don't I only roll with the flow of the lie and make it stronger."
  -Sovereign

• "Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
  -Martin Fraquhar Tupper

• "You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader."
  -Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

• "Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority."
  -Doctor Who

• "Everything on earth is created for a purpose, it's up to us to find out what purpose each thing serves."
  -Chan Yew Kuen

• "Never doubt a small group of thoughful citizens can change the world.
  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
  -Margret Mead

• "Frendship is born at the moment when one person says to another:
  'What! You too? Thought I was the only one...'"
  -Clive Staple Lewis, Novelist and essayist

• "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men, No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
  -Elbert Hubbard

• "The triangle of truisms, of father, mother, and child, cannot be destroyed it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it."
  -G. K. Chesterton

• "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
  -Carl Jung

• "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
  -T.S. Eliot

• "Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."
  -Martin Luther King

• "Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd."
  -From the I Ching

• "The essence of true friendship is to make allowances for another's little lapses."
  -David Storey

• "Any technology no matter how primitive, is magic to those that don't understand it"
  -Florence Ambrose

• "You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us - the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain!"
  -Kirk to McCoy, The Final Frontier

• "Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteer is in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe."
  -Unknown

• "If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater."
  -Unknown

• "Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire"
  -Unknown

• "Great minds discuss ideas.
  Average minds discuss events.
  Small minds discuss people."
  -Unknown

• "When in danger, or in doubt.
  Run in circles, scream and shout."
  -Unknown

• "The race is long.
  In the end, it's only with yourself."
  -Unknown

• "Choose your enemies wisely
  Because you friends don't come back to kill you"
  -Unknown

• "To do the right thing is usually never easy.
  To do the easy thing is not always right.
  To do the right thing is usually never popular.
  To do the popular thing is not always right.

  However, as for us. We will do the right thing
  and not defend the popular and easy things."
  -Unknown

• "When I die, I want to be remembered...
  That way I will go on forever, an maybe see the end of time."
  -Goldpearl

• "Like everything else in life, I know where I want to go, I'm just not too sure how to get there."
  -Me

• "love,... such a powerful word, no other word
  in every other language, carries such impact."
  -Me

• 'Life suddenly becomes very fair.
  When you realize it isn't."
  -Me

• "Learn from yesterday,
  live for today,
  dream for tomorow."
  -Me

• "Is this all that I am?
  Is there nothing more?
  Is the spirit of my existance nothing then what I see before me?
  Am I ment to trancend my earthly bonds to acheive something greater?
  And if not, then why does every fiber of my being behave otherwise?" (1998)
  -Me

• "Everybody has an issue, and its all priority one.
  So take a number, and get in line."
  -Me

• "Wrong numbers are never busy"
  -Me

• "Do not confuse your career with your life."
  -Me

• "Question not the words, but the thought behind them."
  -Me

• "One cannot look upon life and see a constant thing, it is forever in motion, with out any set shape or form. Its only definitive is change. Those that exist in it, must be ready at all times to accept and adapt to that change, For it will not be kind to those that don't..."
  -Me

  ---

  The present is gone.
  Fantasy is a part of reality
  when we take the brakes off.
  We're thinking clearly,
  yet not thinking at all...
  and this feels right.
  We stop trying to control things.
  Warm rush of feelings through us.
  Is this brain damage?
  We forget all the pain and hurt in life.
  We want to go somewhere else.
  We're not threatened by people anymore.
  All our insecurities have evaporated.
  We're in the clouds now.
  We're wide open.
  We're spacemen.
  Orbiting the earth.
  The world looks beautiful from here.
  We're nympholeptics
  desiring the unattainable.
  We risk sanity
  for moments of temporary enlightenment.
  So many ideas, so little memory.
  The last thought
  killed by the anticipation of the next.
  We embrace an overwhelming feeling
  of love.
  We flow in unison.
  We're together.
  I wish this was real.
  We want a universal level of togetherness.
  Where we're comfortable with everyone.
  We're in rhythm.
  Part of movement.
  A movement to escape.
  We wave goodbye.
  Ultimately, we just want to be happy.
  -Jip from human traffic-

  ---

  My life is nothing but wandering,
  Nowhere feels right.
  It seems that my destiny is to be,
  Alone and in the night.

  Forever searching, Forever wanting,
  Running from my past.
  My endurance will only hold so long,
  How long will it last?

  Can I care? can I love?
  Can I amend that hateful time?
  With wings spread wide I roar out loud
  "Damn this all, for I know too well. The answers I may never find!"

  My eyes grow weary, my breath becomes ragged
  My body begins to fall.
  No longer do I care, no longer do I want,
  This life that means nothing at all.

  I drop to the ground and lay on my side,
  My eyes turn up to the sky.
  I peer to the millions of stars above,
  and ask the question, "Why?"

  I lie there in wait, my eyes pleading,
  my chest aches with each breath I take.
  Still, in motionless solitude,
  the silence speaks volumes of my fate.

  Those that try to know me,
  Those that try to care.
  Their kindness will be repaid in full,
  With longing and despair.

  For this is who I am, a Black dragon,
  a creature of the night.
  One who oddly wants to feel joy,
  forever out of reach but never out of sight.

  Always the past, that horrid day
  the one that destroyed all
  The death, the pain, the hurt abound
  the terrified, screaming, fall.

  -Me

  ---

  Of all the times that come and go,
  of what has come to pass.
  Nothing means more to us,
  then the memories that last.

  Throughout times plenty,
  we all have felt doubt.
  Searching, feeling, desiring the truth
  wringing our very souls, turning them inside-out.

  With the comfort of others,
  friends, loved ones, at our side.
  We find that life isn't about the finality,
  its about the journey, its about the pride.

  No matter who you are, or what you've done,
  the amount of tangibles you've acquired.
  Nothing really matters, nothing really counts,
  but the lives that you inspire.

  And so I close this chapter on my life,
  the last trailing thought, some final inspiration.
  Go out, be open, give what you can to all
  without second thought, to any remuneration.

  -Me

  ---

      "Before the exploration of space, of the moon and planets. Man held that the heavens, were the home and providence of powerful gods. Who controlled not just the vast firmament, but the earthly fate of man himself. And the panethiem of the powerful warring deities was the cause, and reason, for the human condition. For the past and the future, and for which great monuments would be created, on earth, as in heaven. But in time man replaced these gods with new gods and new religions, which proved no more certain or greater answers than those worshipped by his Greek, or Roman, or Egyptian ancestors. and now we've chosen our monolithic and benevolent gods, and found our certainties in science. Believers all... We wait for a sign, a revelation, out eyes turn skyward ready to accept the truly incredible. To find our destinies written in the stars. But how do we best look to see? With new eyes?...or old?"

  -Unknown

  ---

  "From space it seems an abstraction. A magicians trick from a darkened stage. And from this distance one might never imagine that it is alive.
  It first appeared in the sea, almost 4 billion years ago in the form of single celled life. In a explosion of life spanning millions of years, natures first multi-cellular organisms began to multiply.

  And then it stopped.

  440 million years ago a great mass extinction would kill off nearly every species on the planet. Leaving the vast oceans decimated and empty.
  Slowly plants began to evolve, than insects. Only to be wiped out in the second great mass extinction upon the earth. The cycle repeats again and again, reptiles emerging independent of the sea.
  Only to be killed off.
  Then dinosaurs, struggling to life, along with the first birds, fish, and flowering plants.
  Their decimation? earth's forth and fifth great extinction's.
  Only 100,000 years ago homo-sapians appear --- Man. From cave paintings to the bible, to Columbus and Apollo 11 we have been a tireless force. On the earth and off. Cataloging the natural world as it unfolds to us. Rising to a world population of over 5 billion people all descended from that original single cell.
  That first spark of life.
  But for all our knowledge what no one can say for certain, is what or who ignited that original spark. Is there a plan, a purpose or reason to our existence.
  Will we pass on as those before us into oblivion.
  Into the sixth extinction that scientists already warn is in progress.

  It began with an act of supreme violence, a big bang expanding ever outward. Cosmos born of matter and gas, matter and gas 10 billion years ago.
  Who's idea was this? Who had the audacity for such invention? And the reason? Were we part of that plan, 10 billion years ago.
  Are we born only to die.
  To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth before giving way to our generations?
  If there is a beginning, must there be an end.

  We burn like fires in our time, only to be extinguished. To surrender to our elements eternal reclaim, matter and gas.
  Will this all end one day? Life no longer passing to life?
  The earth left barren like the stars above, like the cosmos.
  Will the hand that lit the flame, let it burn down, let it burn out?
  Could we too become extinct.?
  Or if this fire of life burning inside us is meant to go on, who decides?
  Who tends the flame.
  Can he re-ignite the spark even as it grows cold and weak."

  -Unknown