Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.
In my judgment, excellence and wealth are direct opposites, since when the one shrinks, the other grows, and when one grows, the other shrinks.
If you see a man approaching with the obvious intent of doing you good, run for your life. Consider pleasures as they depart, not as they come.
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
In painting, the most brilliant colors, spread at random and without design, will give far less pleasure than the simplest outline of a figure.
People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things which are just.
Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.
To read a book is to hold an entire world in the palm of your hand. That world is unique to you; no two readers can ever inhabit the same world
People who express themselves in paradoxes are in a strong position; and the more outrageous the paradox, in general the stronger the position.
I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.
The one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions.
This branch of mathematics [Probability] is the only one, I believe, in which good writers frequently get results which are entirely erroneous.
Tai chi does not mean oriental wisdom or something exotic. It is the wisdom of your own senses, your own mind and body together as one process.
In the Book of Poetry there are three hundred poems, but the meaning of all of them may be put in a single sentence: Have no debasing thoughts.
Part of the challenge of the Barack Obama campaign was to try to neutralize that white backlash, and of course, he was masterful in doing that.
Natural selection has ensured that each species achieves the requisite effect somehow, but it doesn't care, so to speak, how the trick is done.
Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets.
Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.
To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.
If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.
Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.
Aren't you ashamed, you who walk backward along the whole path of existence, and blame me for walking backward along the path of the promenade?
You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.
Faith is primarily a process of identification; the process by which the individual ceases to be himself and becomes part of something eternal.
When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed.
I will not let you (or me) make me dishonest, insincere, emotionally tied-up or constricted, or artificially nice and social, if I can help it.
The method of Fluxions is the general key by help whereof the modern mathematicians unlock the secrets of Geometry, and consequently of Nature.
You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.
Every time someone puts an objection to me, I want to say: 'OK, OK, let's go on to something else.' Objections have never contributed anything.
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.
Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.
... the will always wills to do something and thus implicitly holds in contempt sheer thinking, whose whole activity depends on "doing nothing.
For both art and the historical sciences are ways of experiencing in which our own understanding of existence is immediately brought into play.
However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.
Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.
The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.
All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.
The public debate about evolution itself, as opposed to whether to teach it, is something else. It is boring, demeaning, and insufferably dull.
Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.
We have to admit that there is an immeasurable distance between all that we read in the Bible and the practice of the Church and of Christians.
Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning.
But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people.
We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.
The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.