John Lubbock Quotes

A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.

In this world we do not see things as they are. We see them as we are, because what we see depends mainly on what we are looking for.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

To be happy ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others.

Cultivate all your faculties; you must either use them or lose them

Happiness is a condition of mind not a result of circumstances.

Fresh air is as good for the mind as for the body. Nature always seems trying to talk to us as if she had some great secret to tell. And so she has.

Before buying anything, it is well to ask if one could do without it.

Try to realize all the blessings you have, and you will find perhaps that they are more than you suppose.

Be cautious, but not too cautious; do not be too much afraid of making a mistake; a man who never makes a mistake will make nothing.

Earth and Sky, Woods and Fields, Lakes and Rivers, the Mountain and the Sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

A kind word will give more pleasure than a present.

A man who is not a good friend to himself cannot be so to any one else.

It always seems to be raining harder than it really is when you look at the weather through the window.

Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven.

Rest is by no means a waste of time.

Time is a trust, and for every minute of it you will have to account.

To render ourselves insensible to pain we must forfeit also the possibilities of happiness.

Many savage nations worship trees, and I really think my first feeling would be one of delight and interest rather than of surprise, if some day when I am alone in the woods one of the trees were to speak to me.

Our great mistake in education is ... the worship of book-learning-the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. ... We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children-to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavour to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee.

Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education, any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner.