Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

Authors by Name: B

Charles Babbage (3)

At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.

Irving Babbitt (5)

Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself.

Roger Babson (3)

It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.

Johann Sebastian Bach (2)

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.

Gaston Bachelard (5)

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

Francis Bacon (67)

Age appears to be best in four things old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Roger Bacon (2)

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

John Bacon (2)

I heard that Jesus had a pet dinosaur. Evolution must be a myth then.

Robert Baden-Powell (3)

The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.

Arthur Baer (2)

She used to diet on any kind of food she could lay her hands on.

Walter Bagehot (7)

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

Enid Bagnold (2)

A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.

Liberty Hyde Bailey (6)

When the traveler goes alone he gets acquainted with himself.

Pearl Bailey (7)

You must change in order to survive.

Philip James Bailey (6)

The sole equality on earth is death.

Abu Bakr (21)

Do not follow vain desires for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger.

Mikhail Bakunin (6)

A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished.

James Baldwin (3)

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

James A. Baldwin (24)

People can cry much easier than they can change.

Faith Baldwin (2)

Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.

Stanley Baldwin (4)

I am one of those who would rather sink with faith than swim without it.

Arthur Balfour (3)

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Lucille Ball (11)

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

Hosea Ballou (8)

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Toni Cade Bambara (2)

The dream is real, my friends. The failure to realize it is the only unreality.

George Bancroft (3)

Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

Lester Bangs (2)

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

Tallulah Bankhead (7)

(On seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car.

Benjamin Banneker (3)

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

Anna Letitia Barbauld (3)

We neither laugh alone, nor weep alone, why then should we pray alone?

William Barclay (2)

There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.

Amelia Barr (5)

Old age is the verdict of life.

Bob Barr (2)

It is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that laws written in the 1970s are adequate for today's intelligence challenges.

Luis Barragan (5)

I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening to me they are one.

James M. Barrie (13)

The best place a person can die, is where they die for others.

J. M. Barrie (2)

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants' hall.

Dave Barry (27)

It was Public Art, defined as art that is purchased by experts who are not spending their own personal money.

John Barrymore (12)

In Genesis, it says that it is not good for a man to be alone but sometimes it is a great relief.

Karl Barth (6)

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.

Roland Barthes (2)

Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.

Clara Barton (3)

Everybody's business is nobody's business, and nobody's business is my business.

Bernard Baruch (12)

To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.

Frederic Bastiat (3)

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Gregory Bateson (4)

All experience is subjective.

Charles Baudelaire (25)

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Anne Baxter (3)

It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes.

Pierre Beaumarchais (3)

I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.

Francis Beaumont (3)

Faith without works is like a bird without wings though she may hop with her companions on earth, yet she will never fly with them to heaven.

Samuel Beckett (4)

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

Henry Ward Beecher (58)

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Max Beerbohm (10)

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

Brendan Behan (4)

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

Aphra Behn (5)

Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life.

Alexander Graham Bell (3)

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

Hilaire Belloc (6)

Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.

Eleanor Robson Belmont (2)

A private railroad car is not an acquired taste. One takes to it immediately.

David Ben-Gurion (2)

Courage is a special kind of knowledge: the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.

Robert Benchley (10)

A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.

Julien Benda (2)

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war but on the love of peace.

Ruth Benedict (3)

I gambled on having the strength to live two lives, one for myself and one for the world.

Stephen Vincent Benet (2)

Dreaming men are haunted men.

Walter Benjamin (7)

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

William Bennett (2)

All real education is the architecture of the soul.

Arnold Bennett (3)

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

Jack Benny (4)

Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

A. C. Benson (3)

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

Jeremy Bentham (7)

The age we live in is a busy age in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.

Bernard Berenson (2)

When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.

Jose Bergamin (5)

To sin offers repentance and forgiveness not to sin offers only punishment.

Ingrid Bergman (5)

I have grown up alone. I've taken care of myself. I worked, earned money and was independent at 18.

Henri Bergson (3)

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

George Berkeley (3)

Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

Irving Berlin (2)

Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.

Hector Berlioz (3)

At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings.

Georges Bernanos (7)

Hell, madam, is to love no longer.

Claude Bernard (7)

The investigator should have a robust faith - and yet not believe.

William Bernbach (5)

Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

Sarah Bernhardt (6)

He who is incapable of feeling strong passions, of being shaken by anger, of living in every sense of the word, will never be a good actor.

Leonard Bernstein (5)

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

Annie Besant (2)

Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

Mary McLeod Bethune (3)

Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

Ugo Betti (2)

There is no forgiveness in nature.

Aneurin Bevan (11)

Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.

Vinoba Bhave (2)

If a man achieves victory over this body, who in the world can exercise power over him? He who rules himself rules over the whole world.

Steven Biko (2)

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

Buffalo Bill (7)

But the love of adventure was in father's blood.

Josh Billings (42)

I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.

Augustine Birrell (3)

Friendship is a word, the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm.

Jim Bishop (3)

A newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.

William Blake (32)

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

H. P. Blavatsky (2)

The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life.

Allan Bloom (2)

Education is the movement from darkness to light.

William J. H. Boetcker (4)

You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.

Boethius (3)

A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.

H. G. Bohn (2)

Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms.

Niels Bohr (9)

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

Erma Bombeck (33)

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.

Napoleon Bonaparte (50)

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Edward Bond (3)

Religion enabled society to organise itself to debate goodness, just as Greek drama had once done.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (7)

God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.

Pierre Bonnard (2)

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

Sonny Bono (2)

I'm not a lawyer, and maybe I should have used more specific legal language.

Corrie Ten Boom (7)

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.

Daniel Boone (3)

In this situation I was constantly exposed to danger and death.

Victor Borge (2)

My father invented a cure for which there was no disease and unfortunately my mother caught it and died of it.

Jorge Luis Borges (7)

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

Hal Borland (3)

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.

Ludwig Borne (2)

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

George Borrow (2)

Next to the love of God, the love of country is the best preventive of crime.

Anatoli Boukreev (2)

I respect Everest very much.

Randolph Bourne (2)

Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.

Elizabeth Bowen (10)

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

Omar N. Bradley (5)

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.

F. H. Bradley (2)

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.

David Brainerd (4)

I have a secret thought from some things I have observed, that God may perhaps design you for some singular service in the world.

Constantin Brancusi (2)

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

Louis D. Brandeis (7)

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Georg Brandes (3)

Being gifted needs courage.

Georges Braque (2)

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.

Bertolt Brecht (14)

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.

Gerald Brenan (3)

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

Andre Breton (5)

Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.

Joseph Brodsky (8)

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

Jacob Bronowski (6)

Every animal leaves traces of what it was man alone leaves traces of what he created.

Charlotte Bronte (5)

I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.

Emily Bronte (6)

I see heaven's glories shine and faith shines equal.

Anne Bronte (2)

A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine.

Rupert Brooke (3)

The cool kindliness of sheets, that soon smooth away trouble and the rough male kiss of blankets.

Gwendolyn Brooks (2)

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.

Van Wyck Brooks (2)

The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

Phillips Brooks (7)

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.

James Broughton (12)

I'm happy to report that my inner child is still ageless.

David R. Brower (2)

It seems that every time mankind is given a lot of energy, we go out and wreck something with it.

Dennis Brown (3)

No man is an island. No man stands alone.

John Mason Brown (2)

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

Thomas Browne (8)

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

Robert Browning (22)

A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (9)

God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

Anatole Broyard (2)

Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words.

Lenny Bruce (5)

When you're eight years old nothing is your business.

Giordano Bruno (2)

It may be you fear more to deliver judgment upon me than I fear judgment.

William Jennings Bryan (5)

If we have to give up either religion or education, we should give up education.

William C. Bryant (5)

A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.

Georg Buchner (6)

I'll know how to die with courage that is easier than living.

Pearl S. Buck (18)

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

Eustace Budgell (2)

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another.

Charles Bukowski (5)

I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.

Thomas Bulfinch (2)

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

Sitting Bull (2)

Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.

John Bunyan (2)

My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it.

Luther Burbank (6)

If you violate Nature's laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.

Anthony Burgess (2)

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.

Edmund Burke (37)

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

Leo Burnett (2)

I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.

Daniel Burnham (2)

Make big plans aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.

George Burns (21)

At my age flowers scare me.

John Burroughs (17)

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

William S. Burroughs (9)

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.

Robert Burton (4)

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

Leo Buscaglia (17)

Change is the end result of all true learning.

Samuel Butler (68)

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Nicholas M. Butler (4)

America is the best half-educated country in the world.

Joseph Butler (2)

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.

Smedley Butler (2)

There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.

Charlie Byrd (2)

A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life.

Lord Byron (36)

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.