Quote Grab Bag for Journaling
Instructions: Select a quote from the list below, contemplate the quote for at least five
minutes, considering what it means for your bar exam preparations as well as for your
overall life. Then, write a response to the quote in your journal.
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“To learn is a natural pleasure, not confined to philosophers, but common to all
men.” – Aristotle, Poetics
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“One should always think of what one is about; when one is learning, one should not
think of play; and when one is at play, one should not think of one’s learning.” – Lord
Chesterfield, Letters to His Son, July 24, 1739
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“Let a man accept his destiny, no pity and no tears.” – Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris
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“It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work, it
usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.” – Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from
Plymouth Pulpit
© 2011-2013 BarExamMind.com
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“The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.”
– Montesquieu, Pensées diverses
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“Engineers conduct water, fletchers make arrows true, carpenters straighten wood,
the well disciplined train themselves.” – Buddha, “Violence”, The Dhammapadda, tr.
Thomas Cleary
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“Everyone must row with the oars he has.” – English Proverb
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“A man’s behavior is the index of the man, and his discourse is the index of his
understanding.” – Ali ibn-abi-Talib, Sentences
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“He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.” – William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell,”
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
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“Shallow men believe in luck . . . . Strong men believe in cause and effect.” –
Emerson, The Conduct of Life
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“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.” –
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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“There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s
controls. There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.” – Aeschylus, The
Eumenides
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“Do not consider painful what is good for you.” – Euripides, Medea
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“Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” – John Locke, Two Treatises on Government
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“Lawyers and painters can soon change white to black.” – Danish Proverb
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“If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.” – Charles Dickens,
The Old Curiosity Shop
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“Most [people] that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time
that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is
too late for them to enjoy it.” – Samuel Pepys, Diary
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“Nothing is so uncertain or unpredictable as the feelings of a crowd.” – Livy, Ab Urbe
Condita
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“We are not machines that can produce the same output every day, endlessly.” –
Shakti Gawain, The Path of Transformation
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“The mightiest rivers lose their force when split up into several streams.” – Ovid,
Love’s Cure
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“Divide the fire, and you will the sooner put it out.” – Publilius Syrus, Moral Sayings
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© 2011-2013 BarExamMind.com
“The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the
history of the moral development of the race.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” –
Thoreau, Journal
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“Courage is a kind of salvation.” – Plato, The Republic
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“For those who have completed their journey, left sorrow behind are free in all
circumstances, and liberated from all bondage, affliction does not exist.” – Buddha,
“The Worthy”, The Dhammapadda, tr. Thomas Cleary
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“There is no success without hardship.” – Sophocles, Electra
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“Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he
was.” – Richard L. Evans, Time, July 26, 1963
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© 2011-2013 BarExamMind.com
“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” – Emerson, “New England
Reformers,” Essays: Second Series
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“Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.” – Aristotle, as
quoted in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
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“He that can’t endure the bad, will not live to see the good.” – Yiddish Proverbs, ed.
Hanan J. Ayalti
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“A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.” – Dostoevsky
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“To win without risk is to triumph without glory.” – Corneille, The Cid
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“Calmness is always Godlike.” – Emerson, Journals
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“Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.”
– Thomas Jefferson
© 2011-2013 BarExamMind.com
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“Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.” – Thomas Fuller, M.D., Gnomologia
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“We do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad
laws.” – G. K. Chesterton, “Thoughts Around Koepenick,” All Things Considered
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“The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” – Edward
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one’s
own efforts.” – Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years
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“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain,
Pudd’nhead Wilson
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“No one knows what he can do till he tries.” – Publilius Syrus, Moral Sayings
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© 2011-2013 BarExamMind.com
“Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky,
the sunshine, the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch
with the wonders of life. They are within us and all around us, everywhere, any time.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
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“We are adhering to life now with our last muscle – the heart.” – Djuna Barnes,
Nightwood
© 2011-2013 BarExamMind.com