"Do it or do not do it -- you will regret it either way." -Soren Kierkegaard

This is from Part II of the famously difficult (and ingenious) Danish philosopher's masterpiece, Either/Or, in which Kierkegaard contrasts the lives of two fictional authors, one a moralist and one an aesthete. The above quote again appeared in an expanded format when a character in Either/Or lamented: "Marry, and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way... Whether you laugh at the stupidities of the world or you weep over them, you will regret it either way... Hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way. Whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret it either way. This, gentlemen, is the quintessence of all the wisdom of life."
 

"A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free." - John Stuart Mill

Mill's On Liberty set forth the harm principle: "The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others... Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." In The Contest in America, the British philosopher addressed the American Civil War, writing that he cannot agree with those who cry for peace at any cost. War, he wrote, "is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice -- is often the means of their regeneration."
 

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life." -Robert Louis Stevenson

"There is a rude nobility, like that of a barbarian king, in this unshaken confidence in himself and indifference to the wants, thoughts, or sufferings of others. In his whole works I find no trace of pity," wrote Stevenson of Henry David Thoreau in Familiar Studies of Men and Books. Stevenson paints Thoreau as a man of contrasts, a figure who deserves his place in history even if he seems to have stumbled tactlessly into it. "Thus this singularly eccentric and independent mind, wedded to a character of so much strength, singleness, and purity, pursued its own path of self-improvement for more than half a century."
 

"Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography." -Robert Byrne

Robert Byrne is a civil engineer, novelist and professional pool player. He was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame in 2001, the highest honor in billiards. In addition to his books on cue sports and his many novels, Byrne has also published seven books of quotations, which include sayings of his own. Also from The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said: "Getting caught is the mother of invention."
 

"Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost." -Arthur Schopenhauer

"The man who seeks to do what is good and genuine, must avoid what is bad, and be ready to defy the opinions of the mob, nay, even to despise it and its misleaders," writes Schopenhauer in The Wisdom of Life. Hence, "Fame shuns those who seek it, and seeks those who shun it," and the only men who end up immortalized for their achievements pursued them out of passion, not as a means to an end. "The truth is that fame means nothing but what a man is in comparison with others," he concludes, contrasting fame with honor; "Fame is only an accident."

"A good character is the best tombstone." - Charles Spurgeon

Charles Spurgeon was a British preacher whose sermons have been translated into dozens of languages and collected in numerous published works. This line is from John Ploughman's Talk: Or, Plain Advice for Plain People, a book written in simple and straightforward language ("there is no particular virtue in being seriously unreadable," Spurgeon writes in the book's preface). "Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered," the above quote continues. "Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble."

'We have it in our power to begin the world over again. ' -Thomas Paine

Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it. ' -D.H. Lawrence