Truth & Wisdom

 

 

Common sense is what tells you that the world is flat.

Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.

Book of Chan compiled by O.P.U sect.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. Bertrand Russell

 

With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.

Ransom K. Ferm

 

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

William James

 

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams Last Chance to See

 

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Plutarch

 

Experience is that marvellous thing that enables you recognise a mistake when you make it again.

F. P. Jones

 

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so. An empty man is full of himself. Those who fear death most are those who enjoy life least. Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth. The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal. When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box.

Italian proverb

 

 

 

No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

Eleanor Roosevelt

 

You long for success? Start at the bottom; dig down. When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful. If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the Universe.

Carl Sagan

 

The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often. Few are the friends of your own self; most are the friends of your success. Don’t change horses while crossing a stream.

American proverb

 

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged

 

True merit is like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.

Lord Halifax

 

Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.

Victor Hugo

 

Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.

Machiavelli

 

 

 

 

What a person believes is not as important as how a person believes.

Timothy Virkkala

 

You always have to give up something you want for something you want more. When things are going well, something will go wrong. When things just can’t get any worse, they will. Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. One should always prefer the probable impossible to the improbable possible. Anything that begins well, ends badly. Anything that begins badly, ends worse. Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organisation of the entire tapestry.

Richard Feynman

 

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, co-operate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein The Notebook of Lazarus Long.

 

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.

Sacha Guitry.

 

Bachelors know more about women than married men do. If they didn’t, they’d be married too.

Henry Louis Mencken.

 

Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.

Polish proverb

 

An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.

Theodore M. Hesburgh

 

 

Dear Lady be cautious of Cupid

List well to the lines of this verse

To be kissed by a fool is stupid

To be fooled by a kiss is worse.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.

Ambrose Redmoon

Man forgives woman anything save the wit to outwit him.

Minna Antim

 

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

Charles Mingus

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

Hodding Carter

 

A tart temper never mellows with age; and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

A wise man may look ridiculous in the company of fools.

Learn as though you would never be able to master it; Hold it as though you would be in fear of losing it.

Confucius

 

Nothing dries sooner than tears.

Many a man’s tongue has broken his nose.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.

Pearl S. Buck

 

It is easy to take notice. What is difficult is getting up and taking action.

Al Batt

 

When you teach your son, you teach your son’s son.

The Talmund

 

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

James Harvey Robinson The Mind in the Making

 

 

I have one request: may I never use my reason against the truth.

Elie Wiesel quoting from a Hasidic rabbi’s prayer

 

Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

James Russell Lowell

 

You cannot get ahead while you are getting even.

Rep. Dick Armey

 

If it’s stupid, but it works, it’s not stupid.

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

Chinese proverb

 

The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.

Mark Twain

 

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.

William J.H. Boetcker

 

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.

E. M. Forster

 

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Samuel Johnson in Boswell’s Life, 1770

 

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.

Oscar Wilde

 

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. Shunryu Suzuki

 

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Buddha

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. Igor Stravinsky

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

Niels Bohr

 

The first draft of anything is shit.

Ernest Hemingway

What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?

Dr. Robert Schuller

 

Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of a wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit. James Russell Lowell

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

Marie Curie

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

Samuel Butler

 

One sign of maturity is the ability to be comfortable with people who are not like us. Virgil A. Kraft

You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

Olin Miller

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.

Sir William Haley

Happiness is not having what you want. It’s wanting what you have. Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don’t collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don’t really mean anything.

Norman Lear

 

There are two perfectly good men, one dead, and the other unborn.

Chinese proverb

 

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.

Virgil Thomson (advice given at age 93)

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Dr. Robert Anthony

 

Dignity does not consist in possessing honours, but in deserving them.

Aristotle

 

An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."

St. Augustine The City of God

 

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

Marcus Aurelius

 

Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages.

Henry Ward Beecher

 

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

 

Truth never hurts the teller.

Robert Browning

 

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Edmund Burke

 

The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Thomas Carlyle

Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Dale Carnegie

 

To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

E. E. Cummings

 

Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.

Clarence Darrow

 

A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

Charles Darwin

 

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Conan Doyle

 

Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

Finley Peter Dunne

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Will Durant

 

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. Thomas Alva Edison

 

Slight not what’s near, when aiming at what’s far.

Euripides

 

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Richard Feynman

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

Elbert Hubbard

 

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Pablo Picasso

 

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Bertrand Russell

Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington

The Idols that beset human minds lie deep in human nature itself and in the very community of our race. It is incorrectly claimed that the human sense is the measure of things. Rather, the case that all our perceptions, both of our sense and of our minds, are reflections of man, not of the universe, and the human understanding is like an uneven mirror that cannot reflect truly the rays from objects, but distorts and corrupts the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

Sir Francis Bacon Novum Organum

 

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Abraham Lincoln

 

It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.

Thomas Paine The Age of Reason (Part 1)

When you can’t have what you want, it’s time to start wanting what you have.

Kathleen A. Sutton

 

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana The Life of Reason

The best defence against logic is ignorance.

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

Mark Twain

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Oscar Wilde

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it.

Charles Buxton

 

Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.

Confucius

Only a life lived for others is worth living.

Albert Einstein

 

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

Frank Herbert Dune

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.

Wilson Mizner

There is only one rule for being a good talker - learn to listen.

Christopher Morley

The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.

Joseph Heller Catch-22

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Plato The Republic. Book II. 377B

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

Mark Twain What Is Man?

 

It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

Mark Twain

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Galileo Galilei

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. George Bernard Shaw Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

Euripides

A person is just about as big as the things that make him angry.

Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.

Kipling

Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent.

Charlston Heston

 

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Carl Jung

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

Socrates

Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them.

Obi Wan Kenobi Star Wars

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.

Georges Bernanos

While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is about. Angela Schwindt

The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it. John Ruskin

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.

Alan Ashley-Pitt

Never try to out-stubborn a cat.

Lazarus Long Time Enough for Love

I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one.

James Gordon Bennett

Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to sell it.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

During my second year of nursing school our professor gave us a quiz. I breezed through the questions until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was a joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our grade. "Absolutely," the professor said. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello." I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

Joann C. Jones

There is no such thing as ‘forget’. We just don’t remember.

Jason Q.

Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution.

Raymond E. Feist Magician (Master) The author’s preferred edition

The seagulls follow the trawler that throws sardines into the sea.

Eric Cantona

What we call human nature in actuality is human habit.

Jewel Pieces of You

 

A clever man without wisdom is like a beautiful flower without fragrance.

It is the empty can that makes the most noise - but only if it is kicked.

When counting, try not to mix chickens with blessings.

You don’t get into trouble because of the things you don’t know. It is the things you don’t know you don’t know that really get you into a mess.

Just as iron rusts from disuse, and stagnant water putrefies, or when cold turns to ice, so our intellect wastes unless it is kept in use. If you put on more garments, the cold cannot reach you. Similarly, increase your patience and concentration and even great injuries cannot vex your mind.

Leonardo Da Vinci

My father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words.

Arthur Scargill

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

Socrates

Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.

Lord Chesterfield

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. Alexander Graham Bell

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right. Hannah Whitall Smith

Ruth and I don’t have a perfect marriage, but we have a great one. How can I say two things that seem so contradictory? In a perfect marriage, everything is always the finest and best imaginable; like a Greek statue, the proportions are exact and the finish is unblemished. Who knows any human being like that? For a marriage couple to expect perfection in each other is unrealistic. The unblemished ideal exists only in happily-ever-after fairy tales. Ruth likes to say, "If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary." The sooner we accept that as a fact of life, the better we will be able to adjust to each other and enjoy togetherness. "Happily incompatible" is a good adjustment.

Billy Graham Just As I Am

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The notion that any one person can describe ‘what really happened’ is an absurdity. If ten - or a hundred - people witness an event, there will be ten - or a hundred - different versions of what took place. What we see and how we interpret it depends entirely upon our individual past experience.

David & Leigh Eddings Polgara, The Sorceress

Yield to temptation - it may not pass your way again.

Lazarus Long Time Enough for Love

The superfluous is very necessary.

Voltaire

It is impossible to love and be wise.

Francis Bacon

Women make love for love, men make love for lust.

Derrick Harge

Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with them.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

Sun Tzu The Art of War

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Winston Churchill

The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.

Friedrich Hegel

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.

Samuel Butler

The secret to life is that there is no secret. Tell me and I know. Show me and I remember. Let me do it and I understand. To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Confucius

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

Epictetus

Too clever is dumb.

Ogden Nash

We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Anaïs Nin

 

 

Sometimes a whisper speaks volumes.

Scott Sheddan

Never give advice - a wise man won’t need it, a fool won’t heed it.

Some people speak from experience; others, from experience, don’t speak.

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

Lao Tsu

SAT tests are designed by huge panels of experts in education and psychology who work for years to design tests in which not one single question measures any bit of knowledge that anyone might actually need in the real world. We should applaud kids for getting lower scores.

Dave Barry

He who laughs, lasts.

David Myers Psychology

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Benjamin Disraeli

The Bible says, ‘The truth shall make you free.’ But let’s not forget it was Spiro Agnew who said that a good lie will keep you out of jail in the first place.

Whitney Brown The Big Picture

Don’t speak unless you can improve on the silence.

Spanish proverb

A book of quotations... can never be complete.

Robert M. Hamilton

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.

Isaac D’israeli

Most battles are won before they are ever fought.

General George Patton

The cruellest lies are often told in silence.

Robert Louis Stevenson

There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he’s absolutely free to choose.

William M. Bulger

It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

Rush Freewill

Do not complain about life’s unfairness. It is never fair - at best, it is impartial.

David Gemmel Lion of Macedon

 

 

Within their own sex, men bond more easily than women, but women bond more effectively. At a gathering, men will invite a stranger they’ve just met to play football with them, but women won’t ask an acquaintance to shop with them. Those men will, at most, remain football buddies. But women will always have someone to go to the bathroom with.

David Fuhrmann-Lim What Men Learn From The Women They Love, Her World, Dec 97

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Jonathan Kozol

 

Once you have tasted the secrets, you will have a strong desire to understand them. Listening causes me to find the existence of truth behind the veil.

Loreena McKennitt

Depression is unfocused self-pity.

Bill Wilson

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Hector Louis Berlioz

The study of law is to learn how not to get into trouble with it.

Yip Weng

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Holding on to anger only gives you tense muscles.

Joan Lunden Joan Lunden’s Healthy Living

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Max Ehrman

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

George Bernard Shaw

Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

David Lloyd George

Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it.

Josephus Daniels

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

George E. Woodberry

 

 

 

 

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they find laughable.

It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be.

Brigitte Bardot

You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live now.

Joan Baez

 

Praying is like a rocking chair - it’ll give you something to do but it won’t get you anywhere.

Gypsy Rose Lee

There is only one serious conviction that man should have, and that is that nothing should be taken too seriously.

Samuel Butler

No matter how difficult the road, some will pull ahead. No matter how easy the road, some will fall behind.

old Irish proverb

Every man is a moon; he has a side no one sees.

Mark Twain

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

It is better to have people think you a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Mark Twain

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.

James Stephens

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.

Edward Gibbon

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

Thomas Paine

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.

Edward Phelps

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us we’d be millionaires.

Abigail Van Baren

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk at least, before they dance. Alexander Pope

 

 

Procrastination is the fault most people put off correcting. Don’t compromise yourself. No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.

Charles Steinmetz

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.

Theodore Hesburgh

To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have.

Ken S. Keyes, Jr.

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

William Ellery Channing

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

Walter Gilbey

One can never condescend to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Helen Keller

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.

Vernon Sanders Law

The mind of the people is like mud, from which arises strange and beautiful things.

W. J. Turner

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, it’s playing a poor hand well.

Robert Louis Stevenson

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.

Josh Billings

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men, true nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Radiohead

To generalise is to be an idiot.

William Blake

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Without original, independent reflection, everything one knows is just an echo of other people’s thoughts.

Eric Tsai

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

George Jean Nathan

 

 

If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be the sun, be a star. It isn’t by size that you win or you fail, it’s by being the best of whatever you are. Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe. To fly, we have to have resistance.

Maya Lin

Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.

Merry Browne

That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

Richard Bach

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of pale turquoise which the owner knows not of.

Jonathan Swift

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. Chief Seattle

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight... The truly wise person is colour-blind.

Albert Schweitzer

Where I was born and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

Georgia O’Keefe

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.

Erica Jong

Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

Henry David Thoreau

The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that cannot read them.

Mark Twain

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Booker T. Washington

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

Margaret Young

What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.

It takes one tree to make a thousand matches, it takes one match to burn a thousand trees.

God gives every bird it’s food, but He does not throw it into it’s nest.

The depth of your compassion lies in your ability to forgive yourself.

Mark Graham

Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.

James Dean

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Franz Kafka

Bygones, which are not forgotten, are teachers about our future.

Chinese saying

Press on; nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius had its limits.

Albert Einstein

As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.

Albert Schweitzer

My own suspicion is that the universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.

John Haldane

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook.

Thomas Jefferson

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

James Thurber

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Oscar Wilde

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

 

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labour. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.

Victor Hugo

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Theodore Roosevelt

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels fastest who travels alone.

Kipling

No man chooses to become either a philosopher or a poet; these callings choose the men for themselves.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.

Peter F. Drucker

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Bertrand Russell

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.

Havelock Ellis

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Plato

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

Edward De Bono

Children’s playthings are not sports and should be deemed as their most serious actions. Montaigne

There are some people who read too much: The bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as others are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Henry Louis Mencken

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

General George Patton

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Richard Bach

If you don’t gamble, you’ll never win.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is Music.

Aldous Huxley

 

 

 

To be a fool at the right time is also an art.

One seventh of your life is spent on Monday.

Don’t confuse excellence, which is achievable, with perfection, which is elusive.

A mind is like a parachute; it only works when it is open.

Sir James Dewar

If you must prove anything to anyone, either it’s not worth it or you’re not.

You are only as wise as others perceive you to be.

M. Shawn Cole

If one has not given everything, one has given nothing.

Georges Guynemer

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.

Lloyd Alexander, The Prydain Chronicles

Is the Archbishop’s blessing any more meaningful than the Politician’s handshake? They come, they go, with bigger things than us on their minds.

If true, rarely beautiful. If beautiful, rarely true.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right...

Mark Twain

If luck comes, who comes not? If luck comes not, who comes?

Chinese proverb

The important things are always simple. The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Albert Einstein

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

Michael de Montaigne

He who possesses most is most afraid to lose.

Leonardo Da Vinci

To be a winner you must want to win but must know of the chance of losing and must not fear of it. Isn’t the best defence always a good attack?

Ovid

Even the best of friends cannot attend each other’s funeral.

Kehlog Albran

Don’t tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

General George Patton

The most difficult thing about being humble is not being able to brag about it.

Penelope

The supreme measure of a man, is what he would risk his life for. Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise.

The Apostle Paul to the Corinthians (3:18)

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.

Tom Stoppard

Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.

Albert Camus

As in no other form of lute or combat, the conditions are such; the winner takes nothing, neither his ease, nor his pleasure, nor any notion of glory, nor if he wins far enough, will he find anything within himself.

Ernest Hemingway Winner Takes Nothing

A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.

Erasmus

Wanderers in the land of Osten Ard are cautioned not to put blind trust in old rules and forms, and to observe all rituals with a careful eye, for they often mask being with seeming. The Qanuc-folk of the snow-mantled Trollfells have a proverb. ‘He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder.’ More bluntly, new visitors to this land should take heed: Avoid Assumptions. The Qanuc have another saying: ‘Welcome stranger. The paths are treacherous today.’

Tad Williams The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow, Thorn)

Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.

Will Smith

He who has never failed somewhere... that man can not be great.

Herman Melville

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

The more opinions you have, the less you see.

Wim Wenders

Words were never invented to fully explain the peaceful aura that surrounds us when we are in communion with minds of the same thoughts.

Eddie Myers

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

A rumour goes in one ear and out many mouths.

Chinese proverb

 

I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back.

Abraham Lincoln

Two farmers each claimed to own a certain cow. While one pulled on its head and the other pulled on its tail, the cow was milked by a lawyer.

Jewish parable

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing is worth more than this day.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Samuel Butler

There is one guaranteed formula for failure, and that is to try to please everyone. What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.

Will Rogers

The secret of success is to start from scratch and keep on scratching.

It is always better to fail in doing something than to excel in doing nothing.

If you want the rainbow you got to put up with the rain.

Dolly Parton

I think I’ll learn more from listening. Anything I would say I already know.

student explaining while she did not wish to participate in a discussion

Don’t ask, "What if it doesn’t work?" Ask instead, "What if it does?" Don’t be content to be the chip off the old block - be the old block itself.

Winston Churchill

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

Lloyd Alexander

A good speech is like a miniskirt: short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the essentials.

Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make more clear.

Joseph Joubert

I have long considered it one of God’s greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable.

Eugene Forsey

The learning of books that you do not make your own wisdom is money in the hands of another in time of need.

old Sanskrit proverb

Search not the wound too deep, lest thou make a new one.

Thomas Fuller

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Mark Twain

A sailor must have his eyes trained to the rocks and sands as well as the north star.

To be poor without murmuring is difficult. To be rich without being proud is easy. Confucius

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Samuel Johnson

Be not penny-wise; riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves; sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.

Francis Bacon

Better a little fire to warm us than a great one to burn us.

Thomas Fuller

Train a fig-tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

Charles Dickens

A child becomes an adult when he realises that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

Thomas Szasz

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

William Blake

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness George Orwell

Burn not your house to fright away the mice.

Thomas Fuller

There’s only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.

J. C. Bridge

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

Randall Jarrell

Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.

Ed Howe

The kind of world we live in tomorrow depends - not partially - but entirely upon the type and quality of the education of our children today.

Martin Vanbee

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.

Roger Lewin

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.

Fran Lebowitz

Find something to praise in your child every day. If I were younger, I’d know more.

James Barrie

Children have neither past nor future - they rejoice in the present. The child must teach the man.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Never give a child a drum.

Never tell a young person that something cannot be done.

God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the impossibility to do that thing.

Dr. J. A. Holmes

You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time which the character is being formed.

Plato

Nothing speaks more loudly to a child than a good parent’s quiet example.

One thing only I know - and that is that I know nothing.

Socrates

Always be yourself. Otherwise, Who are you?

Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would be enough. Confucius

If you judge people you have no time to love them.

Mother Theresa

Most people have a desire to look at the exception instead of the desire to become exceptional.

John C. Maxwell Developing the Leader Within You

Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.

Annete Funicello

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.

Malcolm S. Forbes

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Herman Melville

Being miserable is easy. Being happy is tougher and cooler.

Thom Yorke, Radiohead

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Leo Tolstoy

To be trusted is a greater compliment then to be loved.

G. McDonald

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: one who thinks himself the happiest man really is so, but one that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Charles Caleb Colton

If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Anatole France

That all depends on what "is" is.

Bill Clinton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Friedrich Nietzsche Nachlass

It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learns how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!

Friedrich Nietzsche Daybreak

Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

The Rules of Civility

Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves.

Larry King

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

Marilyn Vos Savant

When it’s all over, it’s not who you were... it’s whether you made a difference.

Bob Dole

When you say Yes, say it quickly. But always take a half hour to say No, so you can understand the other fellow’s side.

Francis Cardinal Spellman

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.

Pythagoras

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Leo Tolstoy

If you disclose your alms, even then it is well done, but if you keep them secret, and give them to the poor, then that is better still for you; and this wipes off from you some of your evil deeds.

The Koran

 

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.

Ernst F. Schumacher

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Mahatma Gandhi

You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.

Alvin Toffler

The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the end of your own arm.

Fred Dehner

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.

Alfred North Whitehead

The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.

Leonard I. Sweet

The weather-cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.

Heinrich Heine

A moment’s thinking is an hour in words.

Thomas Hood

When the student is ready... the lesson appears.

Gene Oliver

What we do not understand, we do not possess.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Competition is easier to accept if you realise it is not an act of aggression or abrasion. I’ve worked with my best friends in direct competition. Whatever you want in life, other people are going to want too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it.

Diane Sawyer

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

Chuang Tzu

You never actually know how you’re going to handle a problem until you actually have it.

Daniel Quinn Ishmael

It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.

W. C. Fields

One who is too wise an observer of the business of others, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

Alexander Pope

 

To think is to differ.

Clarence Darrow Scopes Trial

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

Clarence Darrow

Two things help to keep one’s job. First, let the boss think he’s having his own way. Second, let him have it.

Sam Ewing

We are all born into the world with nothing. Everything we acquire after that is profit.

Sam Ewing

Don’t drive as if you own the road; drive as if you own the car.

Sam Ewing

It takes a lot of things to show you’re smart, but only one thing to prove you’re not.

Sam Ewing

If you’re not learning while you’re earning, you’re cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation.

Napoleon Hill

A man often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Joan de Arc

There’s nothing shameful in acknowledging that you don’t have the answers to every question about life. Just accept the fact that you know only a fraction of what’s going on in the world. You don’t have to attach explanations in terms of a special revelation of God’s will, a glimpse at the supernatural, evidence of a conspiracy, or anything else.

Harry Browne How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

Nothing can harm a good man, in life or after death.

Socrates

We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

Will Rogers

You are only as good as the woman you are standing beside.

Charlie Chaplin

"Lurking" is one metaphor that the Omniscience has allowed us to borrow.

Larry Wall

No woman should say, "I am but a woman!" But a woman! What more can you ask to be?

Maria Mitchell

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damned fool about it.

W. C. Fields

Make it and spend it. Money is the means to the end. In itself, it doesn’t mean anything. When you look at your total expenditure over your lifetime, you don’t want to quibble over a few dollars.

Nicholas Lee

I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

Thomas Jefferson

Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.

Ann Landers

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.

Reggie Leach

The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.

Thomas Henry Huxley Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley

When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundredth blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it but all that had gone before. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

George Bernard Shaw

Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.

Robert Schuller

Don’t waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the trade.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Opportunities are never lost; someone will take the one you miss.

We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.

Charlie Brown