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Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

- Vladimir Nabokov

 

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

- Ogden Nash

 

People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it.

- Ogden Nash

 

Women would rather be right than reasonable.

- Ogden Nash

 

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.

- Jawaharial Nehru

 

Of those who say nothing, few are silent.

- Thomas Neiel

 

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

- Lord Nelson

 

Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability.

- Flower A. Newhouse

 

Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.

- John Henry Newman

 

People forget how fast you did a job -- but they remember how well you did it.

- Howard W. Newton

 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

- Reinhold Niebuhr

 

What is evil? - Whatever springs from weakness.

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

- Anais Nin

 

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

- Anais Nin

 

Every individual is representative of the whole and should be intimately understood, and this would give a far greater understanding of mass movements and sociology.

- Anais Nin

 

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

- Anais Nin

 

When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.

- Richard M. Nixon

 

Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral.

- Richard M. Nixon

 

I made my mistakes, but in all my years of public life I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.

- Richard M. Nixon

 

The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.

- Albert Jay Nock

 

The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.

- Albert Jay Nock

 

How you spend your time is more important than how you spend your money. Money mistakes can be corrected, but time is gone forever.

- David Norris

 

Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

- Kathleen Norris

 

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face us with the reality of our powerlessness. That is the friend who cares.

- Henri Nouwen

 

A conservative is a man who wants the rules changed so no one can make a pile the way he did.

- Gregory Nunn

 

A kiss to or from a woman we love is a far too delicate pledge of affection to bear the gaze of strangers.

- Christopher Nyrop

 

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

- Flannery O'Connor

 

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

- Flannery O'Connor

 

Exclusiveness is a characteristic of recent riches, high society, and the skunk.

- O'Malley

 

The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.

- Aristotle Onassis

 

If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.

- Aristotle Onassis

 

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

- P.J. O'Rourke

 

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

- P.J. O'Rourke

 

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

- George Orwell

 

Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

- George Orwell

 

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not to good and not quite all the time.

- George Orwell

 

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

- George Orwell

 

While the Pobble was in the water some unidentified creatures came and ate his toes off, and when he got home his aunt remarked: It's a fact the whole world knows, That Pobbles are happier without their toes, which is funny because it has a meaning, and one might even say a political significance. For the whole theory of authoritarian government is summed up in the statement that Pobbles are happier without their toes.

- George Orwell

 

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

- George Orwell

 

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

- George Orwell

 

Being Politically Correct means always having to say you're sorry.

- Charles Osgood

 

You're never really alone if you have yourself and your spirituality.

- Susan Ott-Lin

 

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

- Otway

 

The man who has nothing to boast of but his ancestry is like a potato. The only good belonging to him is underground.

- Sir Thomas Overbury

 

Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.

- Mark Overby

 

There are a thousand forms of evil; there will be a thousand remedies.

- Ovid

 

To be loved, be lovable.

- Ovid