Darkly Comical Quotes

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Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have. – Dr. Arthur E. Morgan

The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our government. – Eleanor Roosevelt

If you want to know how rich you really are, find out what would be left of your tomorrow if you should lose every dollar you own tonight. – Wm. J.H. Boetcker

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool. – Santayana

If we are not responsible for the thoughts that pass our doors, we are at least responsible for those we admit and entertain. – Charles B. Newcomb

Whatever may happen, every kind of fortune is to be overcome by bearing it. – Virgil

Every industrious man, in every lawful calling, is a useful man. And one principal reason why men are so often useless is that they neglect their own profession or calling, and divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits. – Emerson

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. – James F. Byrnes

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Possesions, outward success, publicity, luxury – to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for every one, best both for the body and the mind. – Albert Einstein

Part of human nature resents change, loves equilibrium, while another part welcomes novelty, loves the excitement of disequilibrium. There is no formula for the resolution of this tug-of-war, but it is obvious that absolute surrender to either of them invites disaster. – J. Bartlet Brebner

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire. – John Foster

As you cherish the things most worthwhile in your family life, cherish the things most worthwhile in your company. – Wm B. Given, Jr.

Our best friends and our worst enemies are our thoughts. A thought can do us more good than a doctor or a banker or a faithful friend. It can also do us more harm than a brick. – Dr. Frank Crane

The sense of humor is the oil of life’s engine. Without it, the machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of the life is so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh. – G.S. Merrimen

One of the most devastating experiences in human life is disillusionment. Of course there are some illusions the disillusionment of which is healthy. It takes two things to bowl over a tree – a heavy wind outside and decay inside. Much of the moral wreckage is caused by inner cynicism – a disgust with life’s futility, an inability to see sense in it. A person in that mood is an easy mark for the next high wind. – Art Sisson

Darkly Comical Quotes

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The prizes go to those who meet emergencies successfully. And the way to meet emergencies is to do each daily task the best we can; to act as though the eye of opportunity were always upon us. In the hundred-yard race the winner doesn’t cross the tape line a dozen strides ahead of the field. He wins by inches. So we find it in ordinary business life. The big things that come our way are seldom the result of long thought or careful planning, but rather they are the fruit of seed planted in the daily routine of our work. – William Feather

One pound of learning requires ten pounds of commonsense to apply it. – Persian Proverb

To save something each month develops self-control. This power frees one from fear and gives abiding courage. – Samuel Reyburn

The world is governed more by appearances than by realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. – Daniel Webster

All businesses proceeds on beliefs, or judgments or probabilities, and not on certainties. – Charles W. Eliot

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions – the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heart-felt compliment and the countless infinitesimals of pleasure and genial feeling. – Cooleridge

Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution. – John Burroughs

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owners knows not of. – Swift

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it. – Ernest Holmes

The whole are of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. – Anatole France

Indecision is debilitating; it feeds upon itself; it is, one might almost say, habit-forming. Not only that, but it is contagious; it transmits itself to others - Business is dependent upon action. It cannot go forward by hesitation. Those in executive positions must fortify themselves with facts and accept responsibility for decisions based upon them. Often a greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision. – H.A. Hopf

Business is like a man rowing a boat upstream. He has no choice; he must go ahead or he will go back. – Lewis E Pierson

It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions. – Charles F. Kettering

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test. – Elbert Hubbard

Without consistency there is no moral strength. – Owen

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Darkly Comical Quotes

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There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, and all things in succession. That which grows slowly endures. – J.G. Holland

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. – Arthur Wing Pinero

Sympathy is never wasted except when you give it to yourself. – John W. Raper

If all the gold in the world were melted down into a solid cube it would be about the size of an eight room house. If a man got possession of all that gold – billions of dollars worth, he could not buy a friend, character, peace of mind, clear conscience, or a sense of eternity. – Charles f. Banning

It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vise. I consider the real vice is making losses. – Winston Churchill

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness. – Froude

The pursuit of truth shall set you free – even if you never catch up with it. – Clarence Darrow

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. – Rodin

To me – old age is 15 years older than I am. – Bernard M. Baruch

Darkly Comical Quotes

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The world is full of cactus, but we don’t have to sit on it. – Will Foley

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire. – La Rochefoucauld

It is with life as with a play—it matters not how long the action is spun out, but how good the acting is. – Seneca

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices. – Edward R. Murrow

The man that dares traduce, because he can with safety to himself, is not a man. – Cowper

Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of the pleasures; costs nothing and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and him who receives, and thus, like mercy, is twice blessed. – Erastus Wiman

I do not understand what the man who is happy wants in order to be happier. – Cicero

Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: viz., avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. – Petrarch

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Never give a man up until he has failed at something he likes. – Lewis E. Lawes

Remember, every time you open your mouth to talk, your mind walks out and parades up and down the words. – Edwin H. Stuart

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own. – Ben Sweetland

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

A good name, like good will, is got by many actions and lost by one. – Lord Jeffrey

Someone has well said, “Success is a journey, not a destination.” Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late. Today, this hour, this minute is the day, the hour, the minute for each of us to sense the fact that life is good, with all its trials and troubles, and perhaps more interesting because of them. – Robert R. Updegraff

When you look at the world in a narrow way, how narrow it seems! When you look at it in a mean way, how mean it is! When you look at it selfishly, how selfish it is! But when you look at it in broad, generous, friendly spirit, what wonderful people you find in it. – Horace Rutledge

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Have confidence that if you have done a little thing well, you can do a bigger thing well, too. – Storey

The cynic makes fun of all earnestness; he makes fun of everything and everyone who feels that something can be done. But in his heart of hearts he knows that he is a defeated man and that his cynicism is merely an expression of the fact that he has lost courage and is beaten. – George E. Vincent

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. – Demosthenes

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. – Charles Evans Hughes

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little. – Horace

A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of that day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes today. – Bulwer

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought. – Hazlitt

There is no right without a parallel duty, no liberty without the supremacy of the law, no high destiny without earnest perseverance, no greatness without self-denial. – Lieber

Darkly Comical Quotes

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If things are not going well with you, begin your effort at correcting the situation by carefully examining the service you are rendering, and especially the spirit in which you are rendering it. – Roger Babson

Most business men generally are so busy coping with immediate and piecemeal matters that there is a lamentable tendency to let the “long run” or future take care of itself. We often are so busy “putting out fires,” so to speak, that we find it difficult to do the planning that would prevent those fires from occurring in the first place. As a prominent educator has expressed it, Americans generally “spend so much time on things that are urgent that we have none left to spend on those that are important.” – Gustav Metzman

Some of us have turned our freedom into exploitation, our land into a dust bowl. We can’t make a nation strong when it is held together by the rotten rope of self-interest. Too often we think of democracy only in terms of getting our rights. – Joseph R. Sizoo, D.D.

We sometimes speak of winning reputation as though that were the final goal. The truth is contrary to this. Reputation is a reward, to be sure, but it is really the beginning, not the end of endeavor. It should not be the signal for a let-down but rather, a reminder that the standards which won recognition can never again be lowered. From him who gives much-much is forever after expected. – Alvan Macauley

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting. – Christopher Morley

The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests. – A.J. Nock

Darkly Comical Quote

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A little experience often upsets a lot of theory. – Cadman

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim. – James A. Garfield

Regret is an appalling waste of energy. You can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in. – Katherine Mansfield

To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can. – Sydney Smith

Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honors, then to retire. – Addison

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character. – James Russell Lowell

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but instruments of the wise. – Samuel Lover

As soon as government management begins it upsets the natural equilibrium of industrial relations, and each interference only requires further bureaucratic control until the end is the tyranny of the totalitarian state. Adam Smith (1776)

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Four things come not back – the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. – Arabian proverb

Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones. – Cyrus H. K. Curtis

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. – Shelley

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition. – Dwight Morrow

Not failure, but low aim, is a crime. – Richter

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. – William James

The great business of man is to improve his mind, and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements. – Pliny

Three things too much, and three too little are pernicious to man; to speak much, and know little; to spend much, and have little, to presume much, and be worth little. – Cervantes

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Anybody can become angry – that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. – Aristotle

The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it. – C.C. Scott

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you cannot accept regret. – Amiel

Opposition inflames the enthusiast, never converts him. – Schiller

The man who follows a crowd will never be followed by a crowd. – Donnell

The parent’s job year in and year out, here a little and there a little, is to build up a disposition of good sportsmanship, of taking one’s medicine, of facing the music, of being reviled and reviling not. This sense of not always being right or recognition that perhaps we’ve made a mistake, seems left out of some grown-up children. – Samuel Smith Drury

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed. – Abraham Lincoln

Perfectionism is a dangerous state of mind in an imperfect world. The best way is to forget doubts and set about the task at hand. If you are doing your best, you will not have time to worry about failure. – Robert Hillyer

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms rather than things and, second, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about. – Colton

Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. The more one has to do the more he is able to accomplish. – Sir Thomas Buxton

An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise. – W. D. Howells

We all have to learn, in one way or another, that neither men nor boys get second chances in the world. We all get new chances to the end of our lives, but not second chances in the same set of circumstances; and the great difference between one person and another is how he takes hold and uses his first chance, and how he takes his fall if it is scored against him. – Thomas Hughes

It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear. – E. H. Harriman

If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded and labor starves. – Daniel Webster

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live. – Anthony Trollope

A quiet conscience makes one so serene. – Byron

Darkly Comical Quotes

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We work day after day, not to finish things; but to make the future better – because we will spend the rest of our lives there. – Charles F. Kettering

Ideas are the mightiest influence on earth. One great thought breathed into a man may regenerate him. – Channing

Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason. – Henry Fielding

There is only one real failure in life that is possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows. – Farrar

Five minutes, just before going to sleep, given to a bit of directed imagination regarding achievement possibilities of the morrow, will steadily and increasingly bear fruit, particularly if all ideas of difficulty, worry or fear are resolutely rules out and replaced by those of accomplishment and smiling courage. – Frederick Pierce

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. – J.M. Barrie

Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; days of joy, but not peace or happiness. – Henrik Ibsen

If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledge that of other people. – Oriental Proverb

Darkly Comical Quotes

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn’t waste time waiting for inspiration. – Ernest Newman

No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow’s burden is added to the burden of to-day that the weight is more than a man can bear. – George MacDonald

A really great man is known by three signs – generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success. – Bismark

I am glad I am an optimist. The pessimist is half-licked before he starts. The optimist has won half the battle, the most important half that that applies to himself, when he begins his approach to a subject with the proper mental attitude. The optimist may not understand, or if he understands he may not agree with, prevailing ideas; but he believes, yes, knows that in the long run and in due course there will prevail whatever is right and best. – Thomas A. Buskner

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. – Disraeli

Don’t be a fault-finding grouch; when you feel like finding fault with somebody or something stop for a moment and think; there is very apt to be something wrong within yourself. Don’t permit yourself to show temper, and always remember that when you are in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and when you are in the wrong you cannot afford to lose it. – J.J. Reynolds

Pay as little attention to discouragement as possible. Plough ahead as a steamer does, rough or smooth – rain or shine. To carry your cargo and make your port in the point. – Maltbie Babcock

People are afraid to think, or they don’t know how. They fail to realize that, while emotions can’t be suppressed, the mind can be strengthened. All over the world people are seeking peace of mind, but there can be no peace of mind without strength of mind. – Eric B. Gutkind

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Every human mind is a great slumbering power until awakened by keen desire and by definite resolution to do. – Edgar F. Roberts

When you find a man who knows his job and is willing to take responsibility, keep out of his way and don’t bother him with unnecessary supervision. What you may think is co-operation is nothing but interference. – Thomas Dreier

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. – Spinoza

There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind. – Napoleon

When a man has equipped himself by thought and study for a bigger job, it usually happens that promotion comes along even before it is expected. – P.G. Winnett

There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for whn Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meet – and that is the first requisite of business. – Thomas A. Edison

The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in long-drawn-out vacillations, and the effect of decissiveness itself “makes things go” and creates confidence. – Anne O’Hare McCormick

Second thoughts are ever wiser. – Euripides

He who considers too much will perform little. - Schiller

Darkly Comical Quotes

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An executive is a man who decides; sometimes he decides right, but always he decides. – John H. Patterson

Unless the job means more than the pay it will never pay more. – H. Bertram Lewis

A man isn’t poor if he can still laugh. – Raymond Hitchcock

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds. – Walter Duranty

While an open mind is priceless, it is priceless only when its owner has the courage to make a final decision which closes the mind for action after the process of viewing all sides of the question has been completed. Failure to make a decision after due consideration of all the facts will quickly brand a man as unfit for a position of responsibility. Not all of your decisions will be correct. None of us is perfect. But if you get into the habit of making decisions experience will develop your judgement to a point where more and more of your decisions will be right. After all, it is better to be right 51% of the time and get something done, than it is to get nothing done because you fear to reach a decision. – H.W. Andrews

Never trust a monkey.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. – John Bubbock

Unless a business can stay in the black over the long term, averaging the bad years with good, it cannot sustain itself. A manager may have laudable social intentions of providing security for his employees, better products at lower prices for his customers. But if he cannot keep the business going in realizing these intentions he is defeated before he begins. – Paul Garrett

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other. – George Eliot

The man who can put himself in the place of other men, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for him. – Owen D. Young

Darkly Comical Quotes

Success is never final and Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts. – George F. Tilton

The easiest thing of all is to deceive one’s self; for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true. – Demosthenes

At sixty a man has passed most of the reefs and whirlpools. Excepting only death, he has no enemies left to meet – That man has awakened to a new youth. – Ergo, he is young. – George Luks

You generally hear that what a man doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him, but in business what a man doesn’t know does hurt. – E.S. Lewis

It is the penalty of fame that a man must ever keep rising. “Get a reputation, and then go to bed,” is the absurdest of all maxims. “Keep up a reputation or go to bed,” would be nearer the truth. – E.H. Chapin

Either I will find a way, or I will make one. – Sir P. Sidney

The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize that it is your move. – Dr. Frank Crane

Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system, and profoundly affects the health. I have never known a man who died form overwork, but many who died from doubt. – Dr. Charles Mayo

Darkly Comical Quotes

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What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. – Albert Pine

Three-fourths of the mistakes a man makes are made because he does not really know the things he thinks he knows. – James Bryce

Most men believe that it would benefit them if they could get a little from those who have more. How much more would it benefit them if they would learn a little from those who know more. – William J.H. Boetcker

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has. – Hamilton Wright Mabie

Happiness is only a by-product of successful living. – Dr. Austen Fox Riggs

My clearest recollection of a long-ago interview with Thomas A. Edison is of a single sentence that was painted or hung on a wall in his room. In effect, the sentence was: “It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought.” That is tragically true. Some of us think, more of us think we think, and most of us don’t even think of thinking. The result is a somewhat cockeyed world. _ Pollack

When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one to a fellow creature. – Sydney Smith

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge. – Elbert Hubbard

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A man’s life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and dirction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other. – John Burroughs

Human affairs inspire in noble hearts only two feelings – admiration or pity. – Anatole France

Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve. – Clarence Darrow

Thinking, not growth makes manhood. Accustom yourself, therefore, to thinking. Set yourself to understand whatever you see or read. To join thinking with reading is one of the first maxims, and one of the easiest operations. – Isaac Taylor

There are five types of men who fail in life; the machine, the miser, the hermit, the snob, and the brute. – Walter Wilber Gruber

It is a maxim received in life that, in general, we can determine more wisely for others than for ourselves. The reason of it is so clear in argument that it hardly wants the confirmation of experience. – Junius

When possible make the decisions now, even if action is in the future. A reviewed decision usually is better than one reached at the last moment. – William B. Given, Jr.

The man who works for the gold in the job rather than for the money in the pay envelope, is the fellow who gets on. – Joseph French Johnson