Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.
Our most important decisions are made while we are thinking about something else.
Proverbial wisdom counsels against risk and change. But sitting ducks fare worst of all.
All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.
Love lives on hope, and dies when hope is dead; It is a flame which sinks for lack of fuel.
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise; He who defers his work from day to day, Does on a river's bank expecting stay; Till the whole stream which stopped him should be gone, That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on.
Money was made, not to command our will, But all our lawful pleasures to fulfill. Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey; The horse doth with the horseman away.
I would not enter in my list of friends, Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path, But he has the humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste His works. Admitted once to his embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou was blind before: Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart Made pure shall relish with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.
O solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.
A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "That fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
Oh hast thou forgotten this day we must part? It may be for years and it may be forever; Oh why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?
International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.
Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
Instead of this we have luxury and avarice; public indigence side by side with private opulence; we glorify wealth and pursue idleness; between the worthy and the unworthy we make no distinction; all the prizes of virtue are awarded to ambition.
In battle it is the cowards who run the most risk; bravery is a rampart of defense.
It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible thin
Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.
Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
This is perhaps the most distinctive Buddhist teaching, that suffering is the product of 'the craving of the passions, the craving for existence, the craving fornonexistence.' It is, however, far from an obvious truth. Certain cases of suffering areplainly due to craving, namely, those that are due to frustrated desires. Desires may be eased by satisfaction or extirpation; and one may allow that if one stopped desiring, itwould amount to preventing all the suffering due to frustration. But this does not provethe general case.... Body, feelings, perception, mentality, and consciousness are separate sets of graspings. There is nothing that -does- the grasping. -We- are the aggregate ofthe graspings, not something, apart from them, that does the grasping. This is an interesting and startling thought.