Wisdom Quotes - Page 29

I understand that a man can have everything having nothing and nothing having everything.

Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.

The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.

If you are proud of your descent from virtuous ancestors, how empty their virtue will leave your hands if you yourself are not virtuous. How little pride your ancestors will have in you in this world and the next if you do no good! All men are children of Adam whom Allah created by His own Hands, giving him paradise for a dwelling place and letting His angels bow down before him. But how little is the advantage from this since all the vices dwell in mankind and all the wicked impious people are among their number.

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called 'walking.'

In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

This life is not real. I conquered the world and it did not bring me satisfaction.

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

The purpose of our creation is obvious: to reach our utmost goals of belief, knowledge, and spirituality; to reflect on the universe, humanity, and God, and thus prove our value as human beings.

To take what you know for what you know, and what you do not know for what you do not know, that is knowledge indeed.

To follow without halt, one aim; there is the secret of success. And success? What is it? I do not find it in the applause of the theater; it lies rather in the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

It is important to understand that there are many different ways of seeing the world and expressing the wisdom of Native belief...No one voice speaks for all voices.

One of the greatest disasters that happened to modern civilization was for democracy to inscribe "liberty" on its banners instead of "justice." Because "liberty" was considered the ideal it was not long until some men interpreted it as meaning "freedom from justice"; then when religion and decent government attempted to bring them back to justice, organized into "freedom groups" they protested that their constitutional and natural rights were being violated.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Learning is an active process. We learn by doing.. Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.

A man's homeland is wherever he prospers.

[M]y work, which I've done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than in most other men. And therewithal, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.