Blue Book, a collection of quotes, page twenty of quotes, U–Z

"We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one."
– John Updike

"Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable."
– Theodore N. Vail

"A man is more complex, infinitely more so, than his thoughts."
– Paul Valery

"God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through."
– Paul Valery

"If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires."
– Abigail Van Buren

"People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes."
– Abigail Van Buren

"There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their 'discomfort' like a favorite shirt."
– Jhonen Vasquez

"But just the idea, just the thing that I had a show on Nickelodeon, people go, 'YOU? My gawd, what are they trying to do to the children?' And I usually throw my head back and laugh for 10 minutes. And then when I'm done, I say, 'Well, I thought it would be interesting.'"
– Jhonen Vasquez

"The prime purpose of eloquence is to keep other people from speaking."
– Louis Vermeil

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."
– Gore Vidal

"Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex these are not the affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
– Gore Vidal

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."
– Horace Walpole

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."
– Neale Donald Walsch

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."
– William Arthur Ward

"God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say 'thank you'?"
– William A. Ward

"Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting."
– William Arthur Ward

"The pessimist complains about the wind; The optimist expects it to change; The realist adjusts the sails."
– William Arthur Ward

"It must be hard to be a model, because you'd want to be like the photograph of you, and you can't ever look that way."
– Andy Warhol

"The greatest part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not our circumstances."
– Martha Washington

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want."
– Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"

"Those whose approval you seek most give you the least."
– Rozanne Weissman

"We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise."
– Raquel Welch

"Sharing what you have is more important than what you have."
– Albert M. Wells, Jr.

"The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving."
– H.U. Westermayer

"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."
– Dennis Wholey

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
– Oscar Wilde

"There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head."
– Thornton Wilder

"Only the winners decide what were war crimes."
– Gary Wills

"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."
–Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

"To feel that one has a place in life solves half the problem of contentment."
– George E. Woodberry

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
– John Wooden

"On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points."
– Virginia Woolf

"Envy is an insult to oneself."
– Yevgeny Yevtushenko

"What all of this indicates is that despite the Constitution, despite the First Amendment and its guarantees of free speech, American citizens must fear to speak their minds, knowing that their speech, their writings, their attendance of meetings, their signing of petitions, and their support of even the most nonviolent of organizations may result in their being listed in the files of the FBI, with consequences no one can surely know. It was Mark Twain who said, 'In our country, we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.'"
– Howard Zinn