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Frank Ball writing in his study

The quote library

Frankisms

Short truths, collected over a lifetime of writing and teaching. Read a few, or lose an afternoon.

Collected
1,993
  • To be visionary, a person must see beyond popular views of reality. — Robert Fritz

    philosophy

  • To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee. — William H. Walton

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  • To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it. — Syrus

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  • To live without a memory is to live alone. — Gilles Marcotte

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  • Tomorrow becomes never. — Timothy Ferriss

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  • Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything. — Gregg Easterbrook

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  • Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things. — Henry Ward Beecher

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  • Truth is generally the best vindication against slander. — Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), Letter to Secretary Stanton, refusing to dismiss Postmaster-General Montgomery Blair [July 18, 1864]

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  • Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. — Matthew Arnold

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  • Truths kindle light for truths. — Lucretius (95–55 BC), De Rerum Natura, I, 1. 1117

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  • Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. — Albert Einstein

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  • United we stand. Divided we fall. — Aesop

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  • Unless energy is deliberately and repeatedly applied to new courses of action, we will continue to do the same thing the same old way. — Thomas Harris

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  • Usually, when we say we can’t do something, what we mean is that we won’t do something unless we can guarantee that we’ll do it perfectly. — Julia Cameron

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  • Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it. — George Bernard Shaw (1846–1950), Man and Superman. Maxims for Revolutionists

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  • Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars on poverty are fought to map change. — Muhammad Ali

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  • Wars to end wars are an illusion. Wars, more than any other form of human activity, create the conditions which breed more war. — John Foster Dulles

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  • Wars will occur until man changes his nature. — Millard Fillmore

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  • Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla. — Jim Bishop

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  • We all fear the pain of rejection when we commit to emotional openness. But accepting some suffering in life is necessary to live fully. — Eric Edson

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  • We are driven more strongly to avoid losses than to achieve gains. — Daniel Kahneman

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  • We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong. — William Hazlitt, 1778–1830

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  • We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness. — Daniel Kahneman

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  • We cannot escape fear. We can only transform it into a companion who accompanies us on all our exciting adventures. — Susan Jeffers

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  • We develop emotionally and spiritually until the moment we die. — Tim Sanders

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  • We get so much in the habit of wearing a disguise before others that we eventually appear disguised before ourselves. — Jim Bishop

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  • We judge ourselves by our motives and others by their actions. — Dwight Morrow

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  • We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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  • We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately. — Benjamin Franklin

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  • We never repent of having eaten too little. — Thomas Jefferson

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  • We rarely find that people have good sense unless they agree with us. — François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), Reflections, maxim 347

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  • We see more of ourselves in people who mess up, who say dumb things at exactly the wrong moment. — Eric Edson

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  • We shall be judged more by what we do at home than what we preach abroad. — John F. Kennedy

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  • We were poor when I was young, but the difference then was that the government didn’t come around telling you you were poor. — Ronald Reagan

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  • We’re pursuing pleasure and painlessness because we think that’s where we’re most happy. But we’re not. — Jeff Goins

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  • Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants. — Epicurus

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  • Well done is better than well said. — Benjamin Franklin

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  • What counts is not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. — Dwight David Eisenhower

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  • What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. — Albert Camus

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