Famous Quotes & Sayings

Isaac Watts

In common discourse we denominate persons and things according to the major part of their character; he is to be called a wise man who has but few follies.

Isaac Watts

The tall, the wise, the reverend head Must lie as low as ours.

Isaac Watts

To prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.

Isaac Newton

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

Isaac Newton

. . . Newton was an unquestioning believer in an all-wise creator of the universe, and in his own inability - like the boy on the seashore - to fathom the entire ocean in all its depths. He therefore believed that there were not only many things in heaven beyond his philosophy, but plenty on earth as well, and he made it his business to understand for himself what the majority of intelligent men of his time accepted without dispute (to them it was as natural as common sense) - the traditional account of the creation.

Isaac Newton

Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.

Isabel Allende

Conceit is a privilege of the ignorant; the wise man is humble because he knows how little he knows.

Irving Kristol

If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without ... let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded, esoteric doctrine - for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Invisible threads are the strongest ties.

Jello Biafra

I was the kid in the class who was looking for the angles to question things or make wise-ass remarks, not knowing enough to be afraid of being myself or showing intelligence. But I wasn't the only kid like that in my classes because of where I grew up. I'm really thankful I grew up in a town where there were a lot of other mutant kids. I'm from Boulder, Colorado, which went through a lot of dramatic changes when I was growing up.

George Bernard Shaw

It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least.

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

Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.

Bertrand Russell

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

Howard Gossage

The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad.

Horace

Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.

Gore Vidal

The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no'.

Harold Pinter

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

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...

Francis Quarles

Hath fortune dealt thee ill cards? let wisdom make thee a good gamester. In a fair gale, every fool may sail, but wise behavior in a storm commends the wisdom of a pilot; to bear adversity with an equal mind is both the sign and glory of a brave spirit.

Horace Walpole

Who has begun has half done. Have the courage to be wise. Begin!

Homer

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.