The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Better to prevent than regret.
In every generation there are some outstanding chiefs.
A careless person will be taken by surprise by his observant enemy.
The person with burnt fingers asks for tongs.
It is useless to shake the branch that bears no fruit.
Let each person do his share of the work.
...Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
Control your emotion or it will control you.
In the maintenance of health and the cure of disease, cheerfulness is a most important factor. ...The effect of cheerfulness is an actual life-giving influence through a normal channel, the results of which reach every part of the system.
The greatest hero is the person who controls his desires.
You can’t cook one half of a chicken and expect the other half to lay eggs.
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
If you must kick, kick towards the goal!
Look at your own moccasin tracks before pronouncing someone else’s faults.
You cannot purchase friendship—you have to do your part to make it.
I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and your words, because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.
The deep grief we feel at the loss of a friend arises from the feeling that in every individual there is something which no words can express, something which is peculiarly his own and therefore irreparable.
If we were not all of us exaggeratedly interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that no one could endure it.
We should be much less ready to lose our temper over an insult… if, on the one hand, we have not such an exaggerated estimate of our value and dignity… and, on the other hand, if we had arrived at any clear notion of the judgment which, in his heart, one man generally passes upon another.
To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experience.
Money is never spent to so much advantage as when you have been cheated out of it; for at one stroke you have purchased prudence.
…We live through our days of happiness without noticing them; it is only when evil comes upon us that we wish them back. A thousand gay and pleasant hours are wasted in ill-humor; we let them slip by unenjoyed... Those present moments that are bearable, be they never so trite and common,—passed by in indifference, or, it may be, impatiently pushed away,—those are the moments we should honor...
Hope is the result of confusing the desire that something should take place with the probability that it will.
...When we perceive generosity [in another person], we infer justice; from piety, we infer honesty; from lying, deception; from deception, stealing, etc.; a procedure which opens the door to many false views, partly because human nature is so strange, partly because our standpoint is so one-sided. It is true, indeed, that character always forms a consistent and connected whole; but the roots of all its qualities lie too deep to allow of our concluding from particular data in a given case whether certain qualities can or cannot exist together.
It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
The little incidents and accidents of every day fill us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, so serious; but as soon as they are borne down the restless stream of time, they lose what significance they had; we think no more of them and soon forget them altogether. They were big only because they were near.
…A man should never let himself be mastered by the impressions of the moment, or indeed by outward appearances at all...
The course of our individual life and the events in it, as far as their true meaning and connection is concerned, may be compared to a piece of rough mosaic. So long as you stand close in front of it, you cannot get a right view of the objects presented, nor perceive their significance or beauty. Both come in sight only when you stand a little way off. And in the same way you often understand the true connection of important events in your life, not while they are going on, nor soon after they are past, but only a considerable time afterwards.
We are not always able to form new ideas about; our surroundings, or to command original thoughts: they come if they will, and when they will.
Men of learning are those who have done their reading in the pages of a book. Thinkers and men of genius are those who have gone straight to the book of Nature…
A man sees a great many things when he looks at the world for himself, and he sees them from many sides; but this method of learning is not nearly so short or so quick as the method that employs abstract ideas and makes hasty generalizations about everything.
For the practical man, the most needful thing is to acquire an accurate and profound knowledge of the ways of the world. …
The study is difficult enough in itself; but the difficulty is doubled by novels, which represent a state of things in life and the world, such as, in fact, does not exist.
No man ought to expect much from others, or, in general, from the external world.
Profit sharing works well almost anywhere. I use it in my own home. Not long ago the expenses of running my New York house got exorbitant. I called in the steward and said to him: “George, I want to strike a bargain with you. I will give you ten percent of the first thousand dollars you save in house expenses, twenty-five per cent of the second thousand, and one-half of the third thousand.”
The expense of operating the house was cut in two.
That’s the way character is formed—doing callisthenic feats with obstacles and adversities. I tell you the hard knocks are the nest eggs of our fortunes. The men that are not made of the right stuff go under with them and are never heard of again.
And there are the others who are soured and embittered by them, and they’re heard from eternally. They haven’t a good word to say for the world’s plan, because when it got a trifle complicated it baffled them.
Those are the men who do more harm to the youth of civilization than its vices. Then there are those who start out, sometimes with bare feet and holes in their trousers, bravely resolving never to let circumstances crush them, never to harbor bitterness over defeat, but to save their energies for the next encounter.
These are the men hard knocks don’t hurt. They toughen them; they help them get ready for the next encounter. To these men, it’s only a question of sufficient hardship, and sacrifice, and battle, to make them proof against any onslaught. These are the soldiers, the victors.
Did you ever find a successful soldier who hadn’t seen a fight?
The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have.
The first essential in a boy’s career is to find out what he’s fitted for, what he’s most capable of doing and doing with a relish.*
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few more upon it.
Rather spoil your joke than lose your friend.
Please yourself and you’ll please somebody.
Better to bend than to break.
Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.
Many a good tale is spoiled in the telling.
Life without learning bears the stamp of death.
Before leaving your host, give him a little present—it will serve as a little courtesy, and will not offend.
The more often you ask how much farther you have to go, the longer your quest will feel. *
Fate leads the willing, but drags along the unwilling.
I will govern my life, and my thoughts, as if the whole world were to see the one, and to read the other; for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God (who is the searcher of our hearts) all our privacies are open?
It was the wisdom of ancient times to consider what is most useful as most illustrious.
If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don’t wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.
He may say that he loves you, wait and see what he does for you.
We won the war, but we lost peace.
Believing is easier than investigating.
Complain to someone who can help you.
You are not being honest if you burn your tongue and don’t tell everyone else the soup is hot.
Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.
God dwells in the intellect of the wise man.
By honoring a wise man, you will honor yourself.
To live, indeed, is not in our power, but to live rightly is.
The wise man follows God, and God follows the soul of the wise man.
Thank heaven I can do good and find heaven in it. I know nothing else that is heavenly.
What friend art thou like to prove to others, if not so to thyself.
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge that no king can corrupt.
This above all: to thine own self be true...
I’m rough on them [the candidates on the show I Hate My Job] because life is rough. You should not assume that just because you have a dream, the whole world is going to fold to your dream.
If we keep un-perverted the human heart—which is like unto heaven and received from the earth—that is God.
Do not be sluggish in your work.
Leave the things of this world, and come to me daily with pure bodies and pure hearts.
Sincerity is the single virtue that binds the divine and man in one.
If you pray to a deity with sincerity, you will surely feel the divine presence.
Even in one single leaf on a tree, or in one blade of grass, the awesome Deity presents itself.
Our eyes might see un-cleanliness, but let not our minds see un-cleanliness. Our ears might hear un-cleanliness, but let not our minds hear un-cleanliness.
All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals and humans. The reason Wakan Tanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly the same is because each is placed here by Wakan Tanka to be an independent individual and to rely upon itself.
Some people are smart but not wise.
[King Wu or Khan said,] “Where you go, employ all your heart. Do not seek repose, nor be fond of ease and pleasure.”
The love of heaven makes one heavenly.
Phfft! Facts. You can use them to prove anything.
And what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week, we’re just making God madder and madder!
Where there is a sea, there are pirates.
The person who can see a house in China is unaware of an elephant on his nose.
When the dogs bark at the moon, the moon is not brought down because of it.
When a man moves from nature, his heart becomes hard.
True peace between nations will only happen when there is true peace within people’s souls.
Life is a series of awakenings.
In fine, human character is molded by a thousand subtle influences; by example and precept; by life and literature; by friends and neighbors; by the world we live in as well as by the spirits of our forefathers, whose legacy of good words and deeds we inherit. But great, unquestionably, though these influences are acknowledged to be, it is nevertheless equally clear that men must necessarily be the active agents of their own well-being and well-doing; and that, however much the wise and the good may owe to others, they themselves must in the very nature of things be their own best helpers.
Newton’s was unquestionably a mind of the very highest order, and yet, when asked by what means he had worked out his extraordinary discoveries, he modestly answered, “By always thinking unto them.” At another time he thus expressed his method of study: “I keep the subject continually before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by little and little into a full and clear light.”
When Dr. Abbot, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, drew the character of his deceased friend Thomas Sackville, he did not dwell upon his merits as a statesman, or his genius as a poet, but upon his virtues as a man in relation to the ordinary duties of life. “How many rare things were in him!” said he. “Who more loving unto his wife? Who more kind unto his children?—Who more fast unto his friend?—Who more moderate unto his enemy?—Who more true to his word?” Indeed, we can always better understand and appreciate a man’s real character by the manner in which he conducts himself towards those who are the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of the seemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his public exhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman.
A strong temper is not necessarily a bad temper. But the stronger the temper, the greater is the need of self-discipline and self-control.
Winning is something that builds physically and mentally every day that you train and every night that you dream.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.
Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a venom, a poison, or quicksilver that consumes the flesh and dries up the marrow of the bones.
If thou continuest to take delight in idle argumentation thou mayest be qualified to combat with the sophists, but will never know how to live with men.
We’re all in denial about something.
Do not reprove a scorner, lest he hate you: rebuke a wise person, and he will love you.
Do not boast of tomorrow—for you do not know what a day may bring forth.
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool—this also is vanity.
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not [always] to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill—but time and chance happens to them all.
Let not the tongue utter what the head must pay for.
Though the speaker be a fool, let the hearer be wise.
He who has no shame has no conscience.
What does not happen in a year may happen in a moment.
Tomorrow’s remedy will not ward off the evil of today.
Don’t believe what you see, but only what I tell you.
He who follows his own advice must take the consequences.
Make your affairs known in the marketplace, and one will call them black and another white.
Begin in other people’s way so as to end by having your own way.
What is much desired is not believed when it comes.
Every season brings its joy.
If you want to be respected, you must respect yourself.
The person who plants the lettuce does not always eat the salad.
It is beautiful to do nothing and then rest afterwards.
Give the grateful man more than he asks for.
He who talks a lot is bound to be right sometimes.
I dance to the tune that is played.
If you don’t pay a servant his wages, then he will pay himself.
If someone cannot even keep his own secrets, don’t count on him to keep someone else’s.
Tomorrow is often the busiest time of the year.
The secret of patience is to do something else in the meantime.
Sell publicly and buy privately.
Buy from people who are desperate, and sell to newlyweds.
He that has a good harvest must be able to endure a few thistles.
Every person is a fool in some person’s opinion.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
When the cat’s away, the mice will play
Talking about bulls is not the same thing as being in the bullring.
A gentle breeze blowing in the right direction is better than a pair of strong oars. (Canary Islands)
With children we must mix gentleness with firmness. They must not always have their own way, but they must not always be thwarted.
He who gazes at the stars unavoidably starts thinking.
If you’re gonna be a failure, at least be one at something you enjoy
It becomes no wise man to expose himself to danger on account of the faults or follies of others.
It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man’s conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
Never be enslaved to principles.
When a pickpocket sees a saint, all he sees are his pockets.
Do not repeat the [exact same] tactics just because they have gained you one victory—instead, let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.
The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.
When the general is weak and without authority; when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixed duties assigned to officers and men, and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter disorganization.
Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. Look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.
If, however, you are lenient, but unable to make your authority felt; kind-hearted, but unable to enforce your commands; and incapable, moreover, of quelling disorder; then your soldiers must be likened to spoilt children—they are useless for any practical purpose.
Carefully study the well-being of your men, and do not overtax them. Concentrate your energy and hoard your strength…
By purity of heart, one reaches Nirvana.
Putting aside all undertakings, he [a monk] should wander about for the welfare of his soul.
But those who exert themselves at the proper time, feel no remorse afterwards.
He should know that the present time is the best opportunity to mend, and that awakening is difficult to obtain. A wise man should be aware of this.
Don’t cross the stream to find water.
Don’t throw away an old bucket until you know the new one holds water.
Those who want to sing will always find a song.
Shared joy is double joy.
Sometimes you must be silent in order to be heard
A small house is enough room for a thousand friends.
It is cruelty to the innocent not to punish the guilty.
He who wishes to injure another will soon find a pretext.
It is as well now and then not to remember all we know.
Even speed when we are anxious seems like delay.
Without danger, danger cannot be surmounted.
The happy man is not he who seems so to others, but he who seems so to himself.
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety.
A plan is bad if it is not capable of being changed.
We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
Many receive advice; few profit by it.
Every one excels in something in which another fails.
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.
Some people say they haven’t yet found themselves. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.
The proverb warns; “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.