Smartenings Quotes & Sayings

My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport. — Sherman Alexie

The profound difference that divides the human race is a question of bait - whether to fish with worms or not ... — Virginia Woolf

People who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don't, nothing will work out the way they want. — Stephen Chbosky

Who would be so mocked with glory, or to live
But in a dream of friendship,
To have his pomp and all what state compounds
But only painted, like his varnished friends? — William Shakespeare

The only antidote to chaos is peace itself. — Marianne Williamson

There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization. — Felix Adler

Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential. — Sheryl Sandberg

Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you. — Zadie Smith

Are you well? You look a trifle peaked.'
'If I do, it is because black doesn't become me. I mean to lighten my mourning, and have ordered a charming gray gown.'
'You are mistaken.'
'What, in going into half-mourning?'
'No, in thinking black does not become you. — Georgette Heyer

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
[Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950] — Harry Truman

What the hell-you might be right, you might be wrong ... but don't just avoid. — Katharine Hepburn