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  • Jesse Jackson
    • We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.
    (topic: dreams)

  • Harriet Ann Jacobs
    • Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
    (topic: cruelty)

  • Jacques Jacques Maritain
    • We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
    (topic: love)

  • William James
    • There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
    (topic: indecision)

    Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
    (topic: kindness)

    All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.
    (topic: movies)

    We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.
    (topic: poverty)

    Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.
    (topic: experience)

  • Storm Jameson
    • Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn't learn very young the trick of calling attention to himself in the right quarters?
    (topic: success)

  • Thomas Jefferson
    • In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
    (topic: manners)

    I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
    (topic: power)

    Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
    (topic: business)

    Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
    (topic: mind)

    Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.
    (topic: religion)

    Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
    (topic: leisure)

  • Jerome K. Jerome
    • It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.
    (topic: truth)

  • Samuel Johnson
    • So different are the colours of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.
    (topic: age)

    Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
    (topic: future)

    We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
    (topic: happiness)

    Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials.
    (topic: heroes)

    It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
    (topic: marriage)

    Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
    (topic: poverty)

    When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn't know it had a name.
    (topic: poverty)

    He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
    (topic: praise)

    Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
    (topic: praise)

    A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
    (topic: reading)

    The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
    (topic: secrets)

    The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
    (topic: travel)

    It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
    (topic: truth)

    The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.
    (topic: voting)

    What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
    (topic: writing)

    Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
    (topic: night)

    A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
    (topic: food)

    Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.
    (topic: gifts and giving)

    Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.
    (topic: misfortune)

    Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
    (topic: leisure)

  • James Earl Jones
    • There is not enough magic in a bloodline to forge an instant, irrevocable bond.
    (topic: family)

  • Erica Jong
    • Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
    (topic: advice)

    Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.
    (topic: gossip)

    Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
    (topic: men and women)

  • Ben Jonson
    • Blueness doth express trueness.
    (topic: colors)

    Ill fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not.
    (topic: luck)

    O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks,
    Or make the sun forget his motion!
    (topic: time)

    I have been at my book, and am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honour and reputation.
    (topic: education)

  • June Jordan
    • The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.
    (topic: manners)

  • Conrad Joseph
    • Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.
    (topic: vanity)

  • Joseph Joubert
    • Imagination is the eye of the soul.
    (topic: imagination)

    Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.
    (topic: words)

  • Carl Jung
    • Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
    (topic: misfortune)

  • Juvenal
    • This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.
    (topic: guilt)

    Seldom do people discern
    Eloquence under a threadbare cloak.
    (topic: poverty)