BrainyQuote

"May you live all the days of your life." - Jonathan Swift brainyquote.com/quotes/jonatha… Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, Anglican cleric, and Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. He is widely regarded as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, best known for Gulliver's Travels (1726), A Modest Proposal (1729), and A Tale of a Tub (1704). (1667-1745)

"If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun." - Katharine Hepburn brainyquote.com/quotes/kathari… Katharine Hepburn was an American actress whose career in Hollywood and on Broadway spanned more than 60 years. Known for her fierce independence, sharp wit, and distinctive screen presence in films like Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, and On Golden Pond, she won four Academy Awards for Best Actress, more than any other performer in that category. (1907-2003)

"What you do today can improve all your tomorrows." - Ralph Marston brainyquote.com/quotes/ralph_m… Ralph Marston is an American motivational writer and self-help author based in Austin, Texas. He is best known as the creator of The Daily Motivator, a website he launched in 1995 that has published a brief positive message nearly every weekday for more than 25 years, growing into multiple books, audio programs, and a large online following. (1956-)

"Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!" - Dr. Seuss brainyquote.com/quotes/dr_seus… Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel, was an American children's author, illustrator, political cartoonist, and animator who wrote and illustrated more than 60 books that have sold over 600 million copies and been translated into more than 20 languages. Famed for nonsense words, rollicking rhymes, and fantastical creatures, his most beloved works include The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Lorax, Horton Hears a Who!, and Oh, the Places You'll Go!. He received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 1984, and his March 2 birthday is celebrated annually as National Read Across America Day. (1904-1991)

"There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself." - Louis XIV brainyquote.com/quotes/louis_x… Louis XIV, known as Louis the Great or the Sun King (Le Roi Soleil), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715, a reign of 72 years and 110 days that remains the longest of any sovereign monarch in recorded history. The defining symbol of European absolutism, he centralized power, expanded the French colonial empire, transformed Versailles into the seat of his court, and presided over a golden age of French arts, architecture, and culture. (1638-1715)

"Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier.'" - Alfred Lord Tennyson brainyquote.com/quotes/alfred_… Alfred, Lord Tennyson was an English poet widely regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry, celebrated for his metrical mastery, rich imagery, and verbal melodies. He served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom for 42 years under Queen Victoria, the longest tenure ever, and his best-known works include In Memoriam A.H.H., The Charge of the Light Brigade, Ulysses, The Lady of Shalott, and Idylls of the King. He was raised to the peerage in 1884, becoming the first person ever ennobled solely for services to poetry. (1809-1892)

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." - Robert Frost brainyquote.com/quotes/robert_… Robert Frost was an American poet celebrated for his realistic depictions of rural New England life and his masterful command of American colloquial speech. He is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry and is best known for works such as The Road Not Taken, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Mending Wall, and Fire and Ice. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 1958 and famously recited The Gift Outright at President John F. Kennedy's 1961 inauguration. (1874-1963)

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." - Aesop brainyquote.com/quotes/aesop_1… Aesop was an ancient Greek fabulist and storyteller, traditionally said to have been born a slave in Thrace before earning his freedom through wit and intelligence. He is credited with the vast body of brief, animal-centered moral tales collectively known as Aesop's Fables, including The Tortoise and the Hare, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and The Fox and the Grapes, which have shaped Western literature, ethics, and popular wisdom for more than two and a half millennia. (c. 620 BC-c. 564 BC)

"Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so." - Galileo Galilei brainyquote.com/quotes/galileo… Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, and mathematician often called the father of observational astronomy, modern physics, and the scientific method. Using telescopes he built and improved, he discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, lunar mountains and craters, and sunspots, providing decisive evidence for the Copernican heliocentric model, for which he was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. (1564-1642)

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." - Frederick Douglass brainyquote.com/quotes/frederi… Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman who became the most prominent leader of the 19th-century African-American civil rights movement. After escaping from slavery in Maryland in 1838, he gained international fame for his electrifying oratory and incisive antislavery writings, authoring three influential autobiographies including the 1845 bestseller Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and later serving as a U.S. marshal, recorder of deeds, and minister to Haiti. (1818-1895)

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln brainyquote.com/quotes/abraham… Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest American presidents. A self-taught lawyer from a humble Kentucky frontier upbringing, he led the nation through the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, delivered the Gettysburg Address, and championed the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery. (1809-1865)

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - Aristotle brainyquote.com/quotes/aristot… Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher, scientist, and polymath who studied under Plato at the Academy in Athens, tutored Alexander the Great, and later founded his own school, the Lyceum. His writings span logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, biology, physics, poetics, and rhetoric, and his works, including the Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics, and Metaphysics, shaped the foundations of Western philosophy and science for more than two millennia. (384 BC-322 BC)

"Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." - Mother Teresa brainyquote.com/quotes/mother_… Mother Teresa, born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950 and dedicated her life to serving the poorest of the poor, the sick, orphans, and the dying. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work, and was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016. (1910-1997)

"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony." - Thomas Merton brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_… Thomas Merton was an American Trappist monk, theologian, mystic, poet, and social activist who lived at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky from 1941 until his death. He wrote more than 50 books on spirituality, contemplation, social justice, and pacifism, including the bestselling spiritual autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), and became a pioneering proponent of interfaith dialogue, particularly between Christianity and Eastern religions such as Zen Buddhism. (1915-1968)

"Our work is the presentation of our capabilities." - Edward Gibbon brainyquote.com/quotes/edward_… Edward Gibbon was an English historian, writer, and Member of Parliament best known for his monumental six-volume work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788. Combining immense learning with a polished style and gently ironic wit, his rigorous use of primary sources and relative objectivity earned him recognition as the first modern historian of ancient Rome and helped set the standard for later historiography. (1737-1794)

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else." - Margaret Mead brainyquote.com/quotes/margare… Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, author, and speaker who became one of the most influential public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Best known for her groundbreaking ethnographies of Oceania, including Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), Growing Up in New Guinea (1930), and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), she championed the idea that culture, not biology, primarily shapes human behavior, gender, and adolescence. She served as curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1979. (1901-1978)

"We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving." - Friedrich Nietzsche brainyquote.com/quotes/friedri… Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, classical scholar, poet, and cultural critic regarded as one of the most influential modern thinkers. Famous for his proclamation "God is dead" and his uncompromising critiques of traditional European morality and religion, he developed signature concepts including the Ubermensch (overman), the will to power, eternal recurrence, master and slave moralities, and amor fati. His major works include Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, and Ecce Homo. (1844-1900)

"People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." - Isaac Asimov brainyquote.com/quotes/isaac_a… Isaac Asimov was a Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers alongside Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote or edited more than 500 books, best known for his Foundation series, the Robot series and the I, Robot collection (1950) in which he introduced the famous Three Laws of Robotics, and the celebrated short story "Nightfall." A prolific popularizer of science as well, he won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards and is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the genre. (1920-1992)

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett brainyquote.com/quotes/samuel_… Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist, playwright, poet, and literary critic widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and a key figure in the Theatre of the Absurd. Writing in both English and French, he is best known for the tragicomic play Waiting for Godot (1953), as well as Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days, and the prose trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. He served in the French Resistance during World War II and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969. (1906-1989)

"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive." - Elbert Hubbard brainyquote.com/quotes/elbert_… Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher best known as the founder of the Roycroft artisan community in East Aurora, New York, an influential center of the American Arts and Crafts movement. His most famous works include the inspirational essay "A Message to Garcia" (1899), which sold tens of millions of copies and championed individual initiative, and the 14-volume biographical series "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great." He and his second wife Alice died on May 7, 1915 aboard the RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland. (1856-1915)