Quotations for Toasts and Speeches Often the hardest part of writing a speech is getting started. If you’re hung up, don’t keep trying to think of that all-important first line yourself when there’s so much great material out there. Use a quote! At all parties, you should say a few words to welcome your guests. At weddings and anniversaries, the theme is, of course, love and commitment. At bar/bat mitzvahs, graduations and Sweet 16 parties, your thoughts turn to children and the life ahead of them. So, this section contains quotations on love, life, children and friendship. Excerpted from the book MitzvahChic. Quotations on Love and Marriage In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities. – Janos Arany (1817-82), Hungarian poet What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork. – Pearl Bailey (1918-90), American singer, actress The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're alive. – Orlando A. Battista The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you. – Brendan Francis Behan (1923-64), Irish writer, playwright To love is not a passive thing. To love is active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so love I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself. – Bernard Iddings Bell I have made a great discovery. What I love belongs to me. Not the chairs and tables in my house, but the masterpieces of the world. It is only a question of loving them enough. – Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco, The Fir and the Palm I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste. – David Bissonette 'Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it. – Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), Anglo-Irish novelist You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. – Carmichael I love you/Not only for what you are/But for what I am/When I am with you. –Roy Croft Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense. – E(dward) E(stlin) Cummings (1894-1962), American writer At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary: dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds. – Michael Dorris, American novelist Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' – Erich Fromm (1900-80), German-born American psychoanalyst Where there is love there is life. – Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948 Music is expression of harmony in sound. Love is the expression of harmony in life. –Stephen (F.) Gaskin (b. 1935), American writer, author We love because it's the only true adventure. – Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943), American writer, author You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. – Herman Hesse (1877-1962), German-born Swiss writer (Siddhartha, Steppenwolf) Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years. – Robert Oxton Bolt (b. 1924), English author (Man for All Seasons) Success in marriage does not come merely through finding the right mate, but through being the right mate.-- Barnett Brickner, rabbi and author What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility. – George Levinger Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid. – Harlan Miller To keep your marriage brimming/With love in the loving cup/Whenever you're wrong, admit it/ Whenever you're right, shut up. – Ogden Nash (1902-71), American writer The greatest thing you ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. --Nat King Cole Love is not something you feel. It's something you do. --David Wilkerson Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. --Pierre Teilhard de Chardin One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.--Sophocles Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.--Mother Teresa The best way to love is to love like you have never been hurt. --Anonymous It is better to break one's heart than to do nothing with it. --Margaret Kennedy Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work. --Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more. --Erica Jong Love is the only thing you get more of by giving it away. --Tom Wilson To love and be loved is the greatest happiness of existence. – Sydney Smith Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. --Charlie Brown Quotations on Life and How Best to Live It The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. – Helen Keller (Note: this quotation is about writing, but it works perfectly as a comment on life!) It's like driving a car at night. You can never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole journey that way. – E.L. Doctorow Start living now. Stop saving the good china for that special occasion. Stop withholding your love until that special person materializes. Every day you are alive is a special occasion. --Mary Manin Morrissey Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything seems to speak to me of my passion, everything invites me to cherish it. – Anne De Lenclos Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life. – Elie Wiesel We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. – Albert Einstein Love the moment and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries. – Corita Kent We can all be angels to one another. We can choose to obey the still small stirring within, the little whisper that says, 'Go. Ask. Reach out. Be an answer to someone's plea. You have a part to play. Have faith.' We can decide to risk that He is indeed there, watching, caring, cherishing us as we love and accept love. The world will be a better place for it. And wherever they are, the angels will dance. -- Joan Wester Anderson (b. 1938), American writer, author Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Live each day as if your life had just begun. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps. – David Lloyd George Life Is A Challenge - Meet It! Life Is A Song - Sing It! Life Is A Dream - Realize It! Life Is A Game - Play It! Life Is Love - Enjoy It! -- Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. – George Bernard Shaw It is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the doing. It is not how much we give, but how much love we put in the giving. – Mother Teresa We can do no great things, only small things with great love. – Mother Teresa Do it trembling if you must, but do it. – Unknown The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. – Samuel Johnson Do just once what others say you can’t do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again. – James R. Cook Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. – Mark Twain Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome. – Samuel Johnson If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you. – Billy Wilder It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is impossible to find it elsewhere. – Agnes Repplier Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt I haven’t failed; I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work. – Ben Franklin Quotations on Children and Adolescents There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child. – Henry Ward Beecher It is not what a teenager knows that worries his parents. It's how he found out. – Unknown Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. – John W. Whitehead The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults. – Peter De Vries A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child. – Knights of Pythagoras Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years. – Anonymous If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance. – Al Bernstein You don’t have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. – John Ciardi Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up, does rejoice. – Shawshank Redemption, script by Frank Darabont from the novel by Stephen King Quotations on Friendship Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. – C.S. Lewis Love is blind, but friendship closes its eyes. – Unknown Friendship is Love without his wings! – Lord Byron Friendship is a sheltering tree. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own. – Benjamin Disraeli What is a friend? I will tell you… it is someone with whom you dare to be yourself. – Frank Crane I never came to you, my friend, and went away without some new enrichment of the heart; How can I find the shining word, the glowing phrase that tells all that your love has meant to me, all that your friendship spells? – Grace Noll Crowell A friend is one to whom one can pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keeping what is worth keeping, and, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away. – Arabian Proverb A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and sings it back to you when you have forgotten how it goes. – Unknown A friend drops their plans when you're in trouble, shares joy in your accomplishments, feels sad when you're in pain. A friend encourages your dreams and offers advice--but when you don't follow it, they still respect and love you. – Doris Wild Helmering A friend is one who believes in you when you have ceased to believe in yourself. – Unknown The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy together those moments of life that are utterly simple? They are the moments people look back on at the end of life and number as their most sacred experiences. – Eugene Kennedy Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. – Anaïs Nin 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 with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. – Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. – Ralph Waldo Emerson If I die, I forgive you; if I live, we will see. – Spanish Proverb