Quotes by American Authors - Page 120

Our opportunities to do good are our talents.
Cotton Mather
Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation.
Starhawk
You decide you'll wait for your pitch. Then as the ball starts toward the plate you think about your stance. And then you think about your swing. And then you realize that the ball that went past you for a strike was your pitch.
Bobby Murcer
The sad truth is that opportunity doesn't knock twice. You can put things off until tomorrow but tomorrow may never come. Where will you be a few years down the line? Will it be everything you dreamed of? We seal our fate with the choices we take but don't give a second thought to the chances we take.
Gloria Estefan
I have always been waiting for something better-sometimes to see the best I had snatched from me.
Dorothy Reed Mendenhall
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity they seem more afraid of life than of death.
James F. Byrnes
There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.
General Douglas MacArthur
He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner.
Benjamin Franklin
You don't just luck into things ... you build step by step whether it's friendships or opportunities.
Barbara Bush
Life is what we make it always has been always will be.
Grandma Moses
Life is a narrative that you have a hand in writing.
Henriette Anne Klauser
If you want to succeed in the world you must make your own opportunities.
John B. Gough
You create your opportunities by asking for them.
Patty Hansen
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
James Russell Lowell
Public opinion though often formed upon a wrong basis yet generally has a strong underlying sense of justice.
Abraham Lincoln
It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.
Thomas Jefferson
Too often we . . . enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F Kennedy
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
James Russell Lowell
A difference of opinion is what makes horse racing and missionaries.
Will Rogers
The world is not run by thought nor by imagination but by opinion.
Elizabeth Drew
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Hubert Humphrey
The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere you can't see it - but all the same it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.
James Russell Lowell
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
Adlai Stevenson
When I want your opinion I'll give it to you.
Laurence J. Peter
To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce
This gathering is what I call "intimate " which really means "Where is everybody?"
Tim Conway
It has been discovered experimentally that you can draw laughter from an audience anywhere in the world of any class or race simply by walking on a stage and uttering the words "I am a married man."
Ted Kavanaugh
The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist Jack.
H.L. Mencken
We will then hear from the founder of the Mayo Clinic . . . Dr. Ted Clinic.
Dave Barry
Even more exasperating than the guy who thinks he knows it all is the one who really does.
Al Bernstein
Goldie Hawn is funny sexy beautiful talented intelligent warm and consistently sunny. Other than that she doesn't impress me at all.
Neil Simon
Once you get people laughing they're listening and you can tell them almost anything.
Herb Gardner
On how to become a good speaker: Practice all the time. One of the best ways is to put a bunch of marbles in your mouth while you talk. Slowly but surely you take away a marble. And then when you've lost all your marbles you're a public speaker.
George Jessel
Buffet: A French word that means "get up and get it yourself."
Ron Dentinger
A bore is a man who spends so much time talking about himself that you can't talk about yourself.
Melville Landon
I'm an idealist: I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
Carl Sandburg
A toastmaster is a man who eats a meal he doesn't want so he can get up and tell a lot of stories he doesn't remember to people who've already heard them.
George Jessel
Thank you for the privilege of speaking to you in this magnificent auditorium. You know the meaning of the word auditorium don't you? It is derived from two Latin words audio "to hear " and taurus "the bull."
Larry Wilde
I was told to be accurate be brief and then be seated. ... So I promise I shall be brief as possible - no matter how long it takes me.
Willard Pearson
I'd like to tell you some jokes now but you'd only laugh.
Milton Berle
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain
speaker: I have only ten minutes and hardly know where to begin. voice in back: Begin at the ninth.
Jacob Braude
My job is to talk to you and your job is to listen. If you finish first please let me know.
Harry Hershfield
As Spinoza or someone very much like him once said . . .
Judith Viorst
I sort of feel like Cindy Crawford's new husband on their wedding night. I know what's expected of me. I'm just not sure I've got the ability to make it interesting.
Melvin Helitzer
My father gave me these hints on speech making: Be sincere ... be brief ... be seated.
James Roosevelt
At the end of a long introduction: You omitted perhaps one thing - that in 1974 I had a hemorrhoidectomy.
Howell Heflin
The number-one fear in life is public speaking and the number-two fear is death. This means that if you go to a funeral you're better off in the casket than giving the eulogy.
Jerry Seinfeld
I do not stand on protocol. If you just call me Excellency it will be okay.
Henry Kissinger
I'd like to introduce a man with a lot of charm talent and wit. Unfortunately he couldn't be here tonight so instead . . .
Melvin Helitzer
Time is the longest distance between two places.
Tennessee Williams
Time is a flowing river. Happy those who allow themselves to be carried unresisting with the current. They float through easy days. They live unquestioning in the moment.
Christopher Morley
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
Henry David Thoreau
Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
Faith Baldwin
Time is a circus always packing up and moving away.
Ben Hecht
Time is the stuff life's made of.
David Belasco
The surest poison is time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time is an illusion-to orators.
Elbert Hubbard
Time is an eternal guest that banquets on our ideals and bodies.
Elbert Hubbard
Time is an available instrument for reaching the eternal.
John W. Lynch