Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.

Henry David Thoreau

Count your age with friends but not with years.

Henry David Thoreau

The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

Henry David Thoreau

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

Henry David Thoreau

Probe the universe in a myriad of points. ... He is a wise man who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad of objects have each suggesting something, contributed something.

Henry David Thoreau

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Henry David Thoreau

Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and classbooks, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

With children use force; with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no law.

Jerry Goldsmith

Originally I was supposed to do Grand Prix, but I was under contract to 20th Century Fox at that time and Alex North was supposed to do Sand Pebbles, but he got sick, so Fox preempted me out of Grand Prix, and to my good fortune, I got to do Sand Pebbles. It was my first time working with Robert Wise and it was a great experience.

Jean de La Fontaine

Nothing is so dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is worth more. [Fr., Rien n'est si dangereux qu'un ignorant ami; Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi.]

Jean de La Fontaine

Let fools the studious despise, There's nothing lost by being wise.

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.

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.

George Washington

If we are wise, let us prepare for the worst.

Samuel Butler

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

Samuel Butler

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