Famous Quotes & Sayings

William Mapother

Generally a wise actor will be very careful about the person to whom he gives that power.

William James

To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.

Will Durant

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard

Sara Evans

Even the wise need wisdom.

William Ellery Channing

Men are never very wise and select in the exercise of a new power.

William Ellery Channing

The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.

William Faulkner

You can't beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to.

Raymond E. Feist

Dolgan: ’Tis a wise thing to know what is wanted, and wiser still to know when ‘tis achieved. Rhuagh: True. And still wiser to know when it is unachievable, for then striving is folly.

Richard Francis Burton

[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.

Richard Page

As someone who has shot in most disciplines, I can tell the House that when one is lying on ones stomach in Bisley with a sling round ones arm to hold the rifle steady, it is hard enough to hit the target on the right spot even when it is obligingly staying still. Foxes do not stay still. They move with remarkable rapidity.

Richard P. Feynman

The chance is high that the truth lies in the fashionable direction. But, on the off chance that it is in another direction — a direction obvious from an unfashionable view of field theory — who will find it? Only someone who has sacrificed himself by teaching himself quantum electrodynamics from a peculiar and unfashionable point of view; one that he may have to invent for himself.

Richard Hofstadter

Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.

Richard Hofstadter

To the zealot overcome by his piety and to the journeyman of ideas concerned only with his marketable mental skills, the beginning and end of ideas lies in their efficacy with respect to some goal external to intellectual processes.

Rebecca West

There was too much hatred in the world; it was manifestly as dangerous as gunpowder, yet people let it lie about, in the way of ignition.

Umberto Eco

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Umberto Eco

Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treausre of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.

Umberto Eco

The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

Raymond Chandler

Dames lie about anything - just for practice.

Michael Winter

The greatness of being an artist is the kind of ridiculous guffaw you can have at one's own misery. 'That was miserable! Now how can I write about it?'

Norman Reedus

I'm so fortunate, it's ridiculous.

Brad Penny

It's ridiculous that they worry about stuff like that. It shows (the Marlins) don't know anything about the game.

Marilyn Monroe

It's better being completely ridiculous than unbelievably boring.

David Pogue

I travel a ridiculous amount, so I've thought a lot about, and spent a lot of time refining, what I carry and how I carry it.

Robert Blair

Affectation is certain deformity; by forming themselves on fantastic models, the young begin with being ridiculous, and often end in being vicious.

Roy Hattersley

In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

Napoleon Bonaparte

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.

Eugene Ionesco

It's not a certain society that seems ridiculous to me, it's mankind,