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

Authors by Name: S

Saadi (4)

I fear God and next to God I mostly fear them that fear him not.

Anwar Sadat (5)

There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, not as many separate ones.

Carl Sagan (9)

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Jonas Salk (4)

Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.

George Sand (9)

Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age.

Carl Sandburg (24)

Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.

Margaret Sanger (2)

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts.

George Santayana (46)

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

Edward Sapir (2)

It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.

David Sarnoff (3)

We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.

May Sarton (3)

In the country of pain we are each alone.

Virginia Satir (2)

Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.

Fritz Sauckel (4)

I was elected to the Diet in the same way as at every parliamentary election.

George Savile (2)

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

Jessica Savitch (14)

By far my most perilous assignment was covering a tank car explosion.

Dorothy L. Sayers (3)

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.

Pierre Schaeffer (2)

Sound is the vocabulary of nature.

Friedrich Schiller (29)

The strong man is strongest when alone.

Oskar Schindler (2)

If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?

Arthur Schopenhauer (29)

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Olive Schreiner (2)

Our fathers had their dreams we have ours the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.

Franz Schubert (5)

You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.

Charles M. Schulz (9)

Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and your feet. It's also very good for the ground. If makes it feel needed.

E. F. Schumacher (2)

Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

Clara Schumann (2)

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.

Robert Schumann (2)

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.

James Schuyler (2)

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Charles M. Schwab (3)

The man who has done his best has done everything.

Delmore Schwartz (2)

Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.

Morrie Schwartz (2)

Everything that gets born dies.

Albert Schweitzer (15)

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

Walter Scott (15)

Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.

Robert Falcon Scott (3)

Hunger and fear are the only realities in dog life: an empty stomach makes a fierce dog.

David Seabury (2)

Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others.

Andres Segovia (2)

Among God's creatures two, the dog and the guitar, have taken all the sizes and all the shapes, in order not to be separated from the man.

John Selden (2)

Old friends are best.

Hans Selye (2)

Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.

David O. Selznick (2)

I don't think I'm going to do any good work this morning.

Robert W. Service (2)

No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success If he thinks he is a winner, then he is.

Dr. Seuss (8)

You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.

Eric Sevareid (2)

Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.

Anne Sexton (2)

Death's in the good-bye.

Jane Seymour (8)

People say women shouldn't have long hair over a certain age, but I've never done what everyone says.

William Shakespeare (81)

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

Bill Shankly (3)

Football (soccer) is a matter of life and death, except more important.

Karl Shapiro (2)

Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.

Moshe Sharett (2)

Arabs respect only the language of force.

George Bernard Shaw (115)

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Robert Shea (3)

Ultimately we may still ask, why can't humans design a perfect society?

George A. Sheehan (3)

Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

Fulton J. Sheen (3)

Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (19)

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

William Shenstone (8)

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

Alan Shepard (2)

I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (3)

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.

William Tecumseh Sherman (20)

An Army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every change in the rules which impairs the principle weakens the army.

Florence Scovel Shinn (2)

No man is a success in business unless he loves his work.

David M. Shoup (2)

Remember, God provides the best camouflage several hours out of every 24.

Philip Sidney (2)

It is great happiness to be praised of them who are most praiseworthy.

Shel Silverstein (2)

To me, freedom entitles you to do something, not to not do something.

Georges Simenon (2)

One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication.

Georg Simmel (3)

For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation it is a specific form of interaction.

Charles Simmons (3)

Never go backward. Attempt, and do it with all your might. Determination is power.

Matthew Simpson (4)

I do not purpose to discuss faith in its dogmatic sense today.

Frank Sinatra (10)

Cock your hat - angles are attitudes.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (10)

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

Douglas Sirk (2)

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is.

Edith Sitwell (2)

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.

Swami Sivananda (7)

The harder the struggle, the more glorious the triumph. Self-realization demands very great struggle.

Red Skelton (5)

His death was the first time that Ed Wynn ever made anyone sad.

B. F. Skinner (7)

If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.

Joe Slovo (2)

When a man has been consistently battering his wife, he shouldn't expect a bouquet of roses from her the morning after he promises to stop.

Samuel Smiles (7)

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

Kate Smith (7)

In 29 years, I had recorded over 2,200 songs. I was amazed.

Sydney Smith (7)

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

Alexander Smith (6)

Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.

Lillian Smith (3)

Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.

Frederick Smith (2)

Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.

George A. Smith (3)

Let those who, still in their youth, have preserved their faith and fullness of hope, keep looking up.

Adam Smith (9)

All money is a matter of belief.

Robert Smithson (3)

Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is.

Georg Solti (2)

My entire learning process is slow, because I have no visual memory.

John Philip Sousa (3)

Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.

Robert Southey (3)

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth.

Catherine Helen Spence (2)

After the break up of the municipality and the loss of his income my father lost health and spirits.

Herbert Spencer (20)

In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.

Baruch Spinoza (18)

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Benjamin Spock (6)

There are only two things a child will share willingly communicable diseases and its mother's age.

Charles Spurgeon (9)

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

Joseph Stalin (11)

In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.

Constantin Stanislavski (3)

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (9)

I shall not grow conservative with age.

Freya Stark (2)

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.

Wallace Stegner (2)

A teacher enlarges people in all sorts of ways besides just his subject matter.

Edward Steichen (3)

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

Gertrude Stein (31)

It is very easy to love alone.

John Steinbeck (9)

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Stendhal (14)

The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.

Casey Stengel (12)

Sure I played, did you think I was born at the age of 70 sitting in a dugout trying to manage guys like you?

Laurence Sterne (14)

Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.

Wallace Stevens (16)

Death is the mother of Beauty hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.

Adlai E. Stevenson (24)

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.

Robert Louis Stevenson (39)

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords.

Adlai Stevenson (3)

The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers.

Ezra Stiles (2)

A monarchy conducted with infinite wisdom and infinite benevolence is the most perfect of all possible governments.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (7)

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.

Igor Stravinsky (5)

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

Billy Strayhorn (2)

All music is beautiful.

August Strindberg (3)

I always disliked dogs, those protectors of cowards who lack the courage to fight an assailant themselves.

Theodore Sturgeon (5)

Writing is a communication.

Louis Sullivan (2)

But the building's identity resided in the ornament.

Anne Sullivan (2)

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

Billy Sunday (10)

There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.

Shinichi Suzuki (4)

What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty.

Gloria Swanson (7)

The first feminine feature that goes, with advancing age, is the neck.

Jonathan Swift (19)

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

John Millington Synge (3)

The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously enough, on the direction of the wind.