Famous Quotes & Sayings

George Washington

I shall take my present leave-but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication [prayer] that...His Divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in...the wise measures on which the success of this government must depend.

George Washington

Much indeed to be regretted, party disputes are now carried to such a length, and truth is so enveloped in mist and false representation, that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it. This difficulty to one, who is of no party, and whose sole wish is to pursue with undeviating steps a path which would lead this country to respectability, wealth, and happiness, is exceedingly to be lamented. But such, for wise purposes, it is presumed, is the turbulence of human passions in party disputes, when victory more than truth is the palm contended for.

George Washington

It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.

George Saunders

It really was something, to see Ram Bahadur Bomjon, apparently living without food or water. Before I went on that trip I'd asked advice on it from a very wise person who I love and revere - basically trying to see if I was somehow disrespecting Buddhism by trying to write about it, and also looking for some grounding on what stance to take ... and my friend said, "Well, why don't you just go and see?" And I hear that in my head all the time now: "Why don't you go and see?"

George Santayana

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.

George Santayana

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

George Santayana

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it...

George Santayana

Happiness is impossible, and even inconceivable, to a mind without scope and without pause, a mind driven by craving, pleasure, or fear. To be happy, you must be reasonable, or you must be tamed. You must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world and what things in it can really serve you. To be happy, you must be wise.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Then Christ will say to us, 'Come you also! Come you drunkards! Come you weaklings! Come you depraved!' And he will say to us, 'Vile creatures, you in the image of the beast and you who bear his mark. All the same, you come too!' And the wise and prudent will say, 'Lord, why are you welcoming them? And he will say, 'O wise and prudent, I am welcoming them because not one of them has ever judged himself worthy. And he will stretch out his arms to us, and we shall fall at his feet, and burst into sobs, and then we shall understand everything, everything! Lord, your kingdom come!

Geoffrey Chaucer

A whetstone is no carving instrument, And yet it maketh sharp the carving tool; And if you see my efforts wrongly spent, Eschew that course and learn out of my school; For thus the wise may profit by the fool, And edge his wit, and grow more keen and wary, For wisdom shines opposed to its contrary.

George Bernard Shaw

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Galileo Galilei

To be humane, we must ever be ready to pronounce that wise, ingenious and modest statement 'I do not know'.

J. I. Packer

God has spoken to man, and the Bible is his Word, given to us to make us wise unto salvation... Godliness means responding to God's revelation in trust and obedience, faith and worship, prayer and praise, submission and service. Life must be seen and lived in the light of God's Word. This, and nothing else, is true religion.

Israel Zangwill

You cannot be anything if you want to be everything. But if you are content to be something, you may by analogy be many things.

Bill Vaughan

The wise man realistically accepts as part of life and builds a philosophy to meet them and make the most of them. He lives on the principle of nothing attempted, nothing gained and is resolved that if he fails he is going to fail while trying to succeed.

Bertrand Russell

The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.

Horace

Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.

Frank Herbert

Every civilization must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscious intention of the collectivity.

Frank Herbert

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Greg Mortenson

A wise man from my home once told me that these mountains have seen far too much suffering and killing, and that each rock and every boulder you see represents a mujahadeen who died fighting either the Russians or the Taliban. Then the man went on to say that now that the fighting is finished, it is time to build a new era of peace-and the first step in that process is to take up the stones and start turning them into schools.

Jim Butcher

I am blind and limited. I would be a fool think myself wise. And so, not knowing what the universe means, I can only try to be responsible with the knowledge, the strength, and the time given to me. I must be true to my heart.

Hudson Taylor

Depend on it. God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply. He is too wise a God to frustrate His purposes for lack of funds, and He can just as easily supply them ahead of time as afterwards, and He much prefers doing so.

Isaac Asimov

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Then I turned to him commanding That he go the way he came, whence he came. But he answered me in sorrow, "May the Past not seek to borrow From the Present without blame - Just one memory from its store, Ere it goes to come no more, Back the pathway that it came, whence it came?"

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

No accidents are so unlucky [bad] but that the wise may draw some advantage [good] from them...

H. L. Mencken

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

Richard L. Evans

There never was a tonic that would cure more social ailments than a healthy, happy home. There never was a greater source of social stability than an affectionate and understanding family. There never was a better way of helping children to happiness than the close confidence of wise and loving and responsible parents.

Roger Ascham

He hazardeth much who depends for his learning on experience. An unhappy master, he that is only made wise by many shipwrecks; a miserable merchant, that is neither rich nor wise till he has been bankrupt. By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

Sara Teasdale

O lovely chance, what can I doTo give my gratefulness to you?You rise between myself and meWith a wise persistency;I would have broken body and soul,But by your grace, still I am whole.

Virginia Woolf

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

William Blake

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.