R
Rabi, Isidor Isaac.
“[Science is] a great
game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe
itself.”
Radner, Gilda.
“I base most of my
fashion sense on what doesn't itch.”
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've
learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have
a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to
change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's
going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
Ramón y Cajal,
Santiago.
“As long as our brain is a mystery, the universe, the reflection of the
structure of the brain, will also be a mystery.”
Rand, Ayn.
See separate file.
Rascoe, Burton.
”What no wife of a
writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of
the window.”
Rasmussen, Steen Eiler.
“There is no objectively
correct idea of a thing's appearance, only an infinite number of subjective
impressions of it.”
Rassias, John A.
"Language is a living, kicking, growing, flitting, evolving
reality, and the teacher should spontaneously reflect its vibrant and protean
qualities."
Ratcliffe, Michael.
”A computer lets you make more
mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible
exceptions of handguns and tequila.”
Ravn, Karen.
“Only as high as I reach
can I grow,
Only as far as I seek can I go,
Only as deep as I look can I see,
Only as much as I dream can I be.”
Ray, Marie Bayon.
“Begin doing what you
want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment,
sparkling like a star in our hand -- and melting like a snowflake.”
Redon, Odilon.
”While I recognize the
necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is
felt.”
Reed, Lou.
“There's a bit of magic
in everything, and some loss to even things out.”
Reed, Thomas B.
"One of the
greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to
be cured by legislation."
Reik, Theodor.
"Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream world into
reality."
Renard, Jules.
“I
am not sincere, even when I say I am not.”
“If you are afraid of
being lonely, don't try to be right.”
“Laziness
is nothing more than resting before you get tired.”
“Love is like an
hourglass, with the heart filling up as the head empties.”
”The only man who is
really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving
an excuse.”
”The story I am writing
exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air.
All I must do is find it, and copy it.”
”Writing is a way of
talking without being interrupted.”
Renkel, Ruth.
”Never fear shadows. They
simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby.”
Repplier, Agnes.
“It is in his pleasure that a
man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of
self.”
“There are few nudities
so objectionable as the naked truth.”
“We cannot really love
anybody with whom we never laugh.”
Reynolds, Wynetka Ann.
”Anyone who says you
can't see a thought simply doesn't know art.”
Rhoades, John.
”1. Do more than
exist, live.
2. Do more than touch, feel.
3. Do more than look, observe.
4. Do more than read, absorb.
5. Do more than hear, listen.
6. Do more than listen, understand.
7. Do more than think, ponder.
8. Do more than talk, say something.”
Rice, Anne.
“There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and
understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world - its beauty, its
mysteries, its riddles. The more
you understand, the more you look, the greater is your enjoyment of life and
your sense of peace. That's all there is to it. If an activity is not grounded
in 'to love' or 'to learn,' it does not have value.”
Rice, Helen Steiner.
“Even
that which is beautiful
Can sometimes bring pain,
So to love from the heart,
Is to invite the rain.
But to reach for the rose,
You must fear not the thorn,
So to love from the soul,
Is to embrace the storm.”
Richardson, Justin.
“For years a secret
shame destroyed my peace - I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece. But now I
think a thought that brings me hope: Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton,
Pope.”
Richardson, Sir Ralph.
”Acting is merely the
art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.”
Richter, Jean Paul.
See separate file.
Ridgeway, Joseph.
“Youth is the gay and
pleasant spring of life, when joy is stirring in the dancing blood, and nature
calls us with a thousand songs to share her general feast.”
Riley, James Wittcomb.
“When I see a bird that
walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that
bird a duck.”
Rilke, Rainer Maria.
See separate file.
Rinder, Walter.
"How small
a grain of sand
a whisp of hair
and man!
How large
a grain of time
a whisp of giving
and love."
"The tide washes
in...
I walk with thoughts of the dreamer's wine
and a thousand nights pass
mirrored by the sea."
Rinpoche, Sogyal.
"Saints
and mystics throughout history have adorned their realisations with different
names and given them different faces and interpretations, but what they are all
fundamentally experiencing is the essential nature of the mind."
Rita, Dereke.
”In order to keep a true
perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship
him and a cat that will ignore him.”
Rivarol
“Mind
is the partial side of men; the heart is everything.”
“Of every ten persons
who talk about you, nine will say something bad, and the tenth will say
something good in a bad way.
Robbins, Tom.
See separate files.
Roberts, Gareth.
"It may not seem
like much, but think of the consequences. One overdue library book today, the
collapse of the universe by the end of the week."
Roberts, Nora.
“Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the
heart. And they both take practice.”
Robertson, Frederick
Williamson.
”This world is given as
the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world, is
truer still of the world to come.”
Robespierre, Maximilien.
“Any institution which
does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.”
Robinson, Haddon W.
“What worries you
masters you.”
Robinson, Spider.
“Librarians are the
secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss
one off.”
Rockefeller, David.
“If
necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress.”
Rockefeller, John.
”I will pay more for the
ability to deal with people
than for any other ability under the sun.”
Rodan of Alexandria
”Only a brave person is
willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical
mind discovers.”
Roddenberry, Gene.
”Time is the fire in
which we burn.”
Roden, Claudia.
“Coffee is a fleeting
moment and a fragrance.”
Rodin, Auguste.
“Art is contemplation. It
is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines
the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.”
“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”
“The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and
before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his
own creation.”
Roethke, Theodore.
”Time
marks us while we are marking time.”
Rogers, Will.
”Be an explorer... read,
surf the internet, visit customers, enjoy arts, watch children play...do
anything to prevent yourself from becoming a prisoner of your knowledge,
experience, and current view of the world.”
“Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you
just sit there.”
“Everybody
is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
“The only time people
dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.”
“You can't legislate
intelligence and common sense into people.”
Rohault, Jacques.
”It was by just such a
hazard, as if a man should let fall a handful of sand upon a table and the
particles of it should be so ranged that we could read distinctly on it a whole
page of Virgil's Aenead.”
Rohn, Jim.
"Human beings have
the remarkable ability to turn nothing into something. They can turn weeds into
gardens and pennies into fortunes."
"The book you don't
read cant help."
Rollin, Betty.
”Scratch most feminists
and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object. The
difference is that is not all she wants to be.”
Romanian Proverbs
“Abundance,
like want, ruins many.”
”Adversity
makes a man wise, not rich.”
”An
ass is but an ass, though laden with gold.”
”Better
a mouse in the pot than no meat at all.”
”Do
not put your spoon into the pot, which does not boil for you.”
“Every
sin brings its punishment with it.”
”If
you wish good advice, consult an old man.”
”Long
absent, soon forgotten.”
”The
anvil fears no blows.”
”What
the heart thinks, the tongue speaks.”
”When
a thing is done, advice comes too late.”
”Under a ragged coat
lies wisdom.”
Romney, George.
"I
didn't say I didn't say it. I said I didn't say I said it. I want that to be
perfectly clear.”
Rondstadt, Linda.
“The thing you have to
be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream.”
Rooney, Andrew.
“Computers
make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it
easier to do don't need to be done.”
“The average dog is a
nicer person than the average person.”
Roosevelt, Eleanor.
"A day
out-of-doors, someone I loved to talk with, a good book and some simple food
and music -- that would be rest."
“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to
endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”
“Nobody
can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
“You gain strength,
courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look
fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this
horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you
think you cannot do.”
"You must do the
things you think you cannot do."
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
“Men are not prisoners
of fate, but only prisoners of their own mind.”
Roosevelt, Theodore.
"Believe you can
and you´re halfway there."
“In
any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next
best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
“The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does
anything.”
Rorty, Richard.
"One can use
language to criticise and enlarge itself, as one can exercise one's body to
develop and strengthen and enlarge it, but one cannot see language-as-a-whole
in relation to something else to which it applies, or for which it is a means
to an end."
Rose, Aaron.
“In
the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.”
Rosenblueth, A.
”The best material model
of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat.”
Rosenthal, A.M.
“When
something important is going on, silence is a lie.”
Ross, Andrew.
”The smallest bookstore
still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire
history of television.”
Ross, Harold.
”I asked Ring Lardner
the other day how he writes his short stories, and he said he wrote a few
widely separated words or phrases on a piece of paper and then went back and
filled in the spaces.”
”If you can't be funny,
be interesting.”
Rossetti, Christina
Georgina.
See separate file.
Rotsler, William.
"You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide.
Both are forces of nature."
Rousseau, Jean Jacques.
”A mere machine is evidently incapable of
thinking . . . whereas in man there exists something perpetually prone to expand, and to burst the chains by
which it is confined.”
”Happiness: a good bank
account, a good cook and a good digestion.”
"The world of
reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless."
“To write a good love
letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish
without knowing what you have written.”
Rostand, Jean.
”In our ideals we
unwittingly reveal our vices.”
Rosten, Leo C.
"A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is
driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need
to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer
wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or
even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others."
“I think the purpose of
life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate.
It is, after all, tomatter: to count, to stand for something, to have made
somedifference that you lived at all.
"In the dark colony
of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness,
folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end
up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all
the words in all the books with covers closed."
Roszak, Theodore
”Nature composes some of
her lovliest poems for the microscope and the telescope.”
Roth, Dennis.
”If it takes a lot of
words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought.”
Rothman, Buster.
“Do
not let the good things in life rob you of the best things.”
Rotsler, William.
“People
are always making rules for themselves and always finding loop- holes.”
Rouault, Georges.
”Anyone can revolt. It
is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our
lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and
our gifts.”
“For me, painting is a
way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.”
Rowland, Helen.
”A
husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.”
”A man snatches the
first kiss, pleads for the second, demands the third, takes the fourth, accepts
the fifth - and endures all the rest.”
”In
olden times sacrifices were made at the altar - a practice which is still
continued.”
”One man's folly is
another man's wife.”
Rubin, Theodore.
"The problem is not
that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise
and thinking that having problems is a problem."
Rubinstein, S. Leonard.
“Curiosity is a willing,
a proud, an eager confession of ignorance.”
Rudner, Rita.
”Before
I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few
times.”
”I love being
married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy
for the rest of your life.”
"Men do not like to
admit to even momentary imperfection. My husband forgot the code to turn off
the alarm. When the police came, he wouldn't admit he'd forgotten the code...he
turned himself in."
”Men
reach their sexual peak at eighteen. Women reach theirs at
thirty-five. Do you get the feeling that God is playing a practical
joke?”
“Men who have a pierced
ear are better prepared for marriage - they've experienced pain and bought
jewelry.”
Rudnick, Paul.
“There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to
experience joy.”
Rukeyser, Muriel.
“Great
knowledge sees all in one. Small knowledge breaks down into the many.”
Ruiz, Don Miguel.
"Using
the analogy of the human mind as a computer, gossip can be compared to a
computer virus."
Rumi, Jalal ud-Din.
See separate file.
Runes, Dagobert D.
“You
cannot train a horse with shouts and expect it to obey a whisper.”
Rushdie, Salman.
"A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it,
ignore it; or offer your own version in return."
”A poet's work is to
name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape
the world, and stop it going to sleep.”
“The real risks for any artist are taken...in pushing the work to the
limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is
possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling
over it--when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not,
artistically dared.”
Ruskin, John.
See separate file.
Russell, Bertrand.
See separate file.
Russell, David.
“The hardest thing to
learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
”The Present is a Point
just passed.”
“We live in a Newtonian
world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.”
Russell, George.
”Our hearts are drunk
with a beauty our eyes could never see.”
Russell, Mark.
"The scientific
theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage."
Russel, John.
“Sanity calms, but
madness is more interesting.”
Russian Proverbs
“Acknowledgement is half
of correction.”
”Ask a lot, but take
what is offered.”
”Every peasant is proud
of the pond in his village because from it he measures the sea.”
”For him who does not
believe in signs, there is no way to live in the world.”
”If the thunder is not
loud, the peasant forgets to cross himself.”
”If you chase two
rabbits, you will not catch either one.”
”Love and eggs are best
when they are fresh.”
“Pray to
God, but continue to row toward shore.”
”Success and rest don't
sleep together.”
“Tell me who's your
friend and I'll tell you who you are.”
”The hammer shatters
glass but forges steel.”
“There
is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.”
“The tears of strangers
are only water.”
"You are the master
of the unspoken word; once spoken, you are the slave."
Rutherford, Ernest.
“All of physics is
either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and
then it becomes trivial.”
Rutherford, Samuel.
“After winter comes the
summer. After night comes the dawn. And after every storm, there comes clear,
open skies.”
Ryokan
”In all ten directions
of the universe,
there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost? What can be attained?
If we attain something,
it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it-is hiding somewhere near us.
Look: this ball in my pocket:
can you see how priceless it is?”
”Someday I'll be a
weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow,
Serenaded by a stray bird or two.
Kings and commoners end up the same,
No more enduring than last night's dream.”
”Where there is beauty,
there is ugliness.
When something is right, something else is wrong.
Knowledge and ignorance depend on each other.
It has been like this since the beginning.
How could it be otherwise now?
Wanting to toss out one and hold onto the other
makes for a ridiculous comedy.
You must still deal with everything ever-changing,
even when you say it's wonderful.”
Last update: July 2nd,
2002.