Famous Quotes & Sayings

C. S. Lewis

At a well in a yard they met a man who was beating a boy. The stick burst into a flower in the mans hand. He tried to drop it, but it stuck to his hand. His arm became a branch, his body the trunk of a tree, his feet took root.

Charlotte Bronte

My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty.

Charlotte Bronte

A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.

Charlotte Bronte

I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.

Charles Sumner

Moral excellence is the bright consummate flower of all progress.

Charles Dudley Warner

There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds and also when it is stirred up goes into the man who stirs it.

Charles Dickens

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Charles Dickens

The flowers that sleep by night, opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the day. The light, creation's mind, was everywhere, and all things owned its power.

Charles Caleb Colton

Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.

Carlos Ghosn

I mean, when you're a pioneer and you are at the forefront of an offensive, you're going to be the most optimistic person.

Carlos Fuentes

I discovered very quickly that criticism is a form of optimism, and that when you are silent about the shortcomings of your society, you're very pessimistic about that society. And it's only when you speak truthfully about it that you show your faith in that society.

Charlie Crist

I'm here tonight, not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as an optimistic American who understands that we must come together behind the one man who can lead the way forward in these challenging times: my president, our president, Barack Obama!

Charles Stanley

Our problems may stay, our circumstances may remain, but we know God is in control. We are focused on His adequacy, not our inadequacy.

David Miliband

"I think the wonderment of seeing my two sons developing makes me incredibly optimistic about human potential. It makes you think: 'My goodness. It's a miracle that's going on here. What could the human race do together?"'

David Rakoff

There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

Carl Sagan

The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.

Byron Katie

For me, the future lives only here in my mind, as thoughts and images, just as the past does, and I love those thoughts and the world that it produces. I am entirely optimistic about the future.

Jared Diamond

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

Charles Caleb Colton

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

David Myers

Success requires enough optimism to provide hope and enough pessimism to prevent complacency.

Cesar Pelli

Construction is a matter of optimism; its a matter of facing the future with confidence.

Alan Greenspan

Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.

Alan Greenspan

History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism. Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal in the form of imbalances that tend to grow over time.

Chogyam Trungpa

The courage to work with ourselves comes as basic trust in ourselves, as a sort of fundamental optimism.

Madeleine Albright

What distinguishes Americans from many people in the world is our kind of endemic optimism.

Bob Iger

What I've really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership.

Bill Gates

If we have optimism without empathy then it doesn't matter how much we master the secrets of science. We're not really solving problems, we're just working on puzzles.