Famous Quotes & Sayings

Herman Melville

Better be an old maid, a woman with herself as a husband, than the wife of a fool; and Solomon more than hints that all men are fools; and every wise man knows himself to be one.

Herman Melville

Aside from higher considerations, charity often operates as a vastly wise and prudent principle-a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy.

Herman Melville

It is-or seems to be-a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it.

Herman Melville

Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them.

Herman Melville

There are some persons in this world, who, unable to give better proof of being wise, take a strange delight in showing what they think they have sagaciously read in mankind by uncharitable suspicions of them.

Herman Melville

The earliest instinct of the child, and the ripest experience of age, unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest part for man. Likewise this simplicity is so universal and all-containing as a rule for human life, that the subtlest bad man, and the purest good man, as well as the profoundest wise man, do all alike present it on that side which they socially turn to the inquisitive and unscrupulous world.

Henry David Thoreau

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Henry David Thoreau

For the most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.

Henry David Thoreau

What the essential difference between man and woman is, that they should be thus attracted to one another, no one has satisfactorily answered. Perhaps we must acknowledge the justness of the distinction which assigns to man the sphere of wisdom, and to woman that of love, though neither belongs exclusively to either. Man is continually saying to woman, Why will you not be more wise? Woman is continually saying to man, Why will you not be more loving? It is not in their wills to be wise or to be loving; but, unless each is both wise and loving, there can be neither wisdom nor love.

Henry David Thoreau

The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.

Henry David Thoreau

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.

Henry David Thoreau

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.

Henry David Thoreau

The wise are not so much wiser than others as respecters of their own wisdom.

Henry David Thoreau

It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.

Henry David Thoreau

Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

Henry David Thoreau

A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.

Henry David Thoreau

Count your age with friends but not with years.

Henry David Thoreau

The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

Henry David Thoreau

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

Henry David Thoreau

Probe the universe in a myriad of points. ... He is a wise man who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad of objects have each suggesting something, contributed something.

Henry David Thoreau

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Henry David Thoreau

Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and classbooks, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Let it not, therefore, be said that the Sovereign is not subject to the laws of his State; since the contrary is a true proposition of the right of nations, which flattery has sometimes attacked but good princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their dominions. How much more legitimate is it to say with the wise Plato, that the perfect felicity of a kingdom consists in the obedience of subjects to their prince, and of the prince to the laws, and in the laws being just and constantly directed to the public good!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

With children use force; with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no law.

Jerry Goldsmith

Originally I was supposed to do Grand Prix, but I was under contract to 20th Century Fox at that time and Alex North was supposed to do Sand Pebbles, but he got sick, so Fox preempted me out of Grand Prix, and to my good fortune, I got to do Sand Pebbles. It was my first time working with Robert Wise and it was a great experience.

Jean de La Fontaine

Nothing is so dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is worth more. [Fr., Rien n'est si dangereux qu'un ignorant ami; Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi.]

Jean de La Fontaine

Let fools the studious despise, There's nothing lost by being wise.

Jerry Seinfeld

Wise is what you want to be. Smart is easy compared to wise.

Jim Elliot

The will of God is sweet tonight, altogether ‘good and acceptable and perfect.’ The considerate love of the Lord Jesus for us seems such a kind thing now. I know it has always been so, but somehow I didn’t see how wise it was when it didn’t seem kind… Remind me of this when I cannot regard His love as considerate some time.

Jim Gaffigan

I do have some Catholic stuff that is done from the perspective of an ignorant Catholic. But other than that, topic-wise, there's nothing really filthy.

Jesse McCartney

I went to a public high school that had a very small graduating class of 156 students. I lived a relatively normal childhood until I turned probably around 16. Things started to take off career-wise.