"Nobody ever did anything very foolish except from some strong principle."

Melbourne, Lord on principles
4 fans of this quote   

"The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows what to say, a wise man knows whether or not to say it."

Garafola, Frank M. on intelligence and intellectuals
11 fans of this quote   

"We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see."

Peguy, Charles on perception
5 fans of this quote   

"Great intellects are skeptical."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on skepticism
11 fans of this quote   

"Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

Sun Tzu on persuasion
7 fans of this quote   

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."

Gibran, Kahlil on suffering
24 fans of this quote   

"Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct."

Bradley, Francis H. on physics   

"What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?"

Osler, Sir William on students
5 fans of this quote   

"If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself."

Chesterfield, Lord on persuasion   

"Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind."

Nightingale, Earl on mind   

"Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with."

Johnson, Samuel on law and lawyers   

"The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better."

Dewey, John on self-improvement
4 fans of this quote   

"Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."

Koestler, Arthur on creativity
4 fans of this quote   

"There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all."

West, Rebecca on conversation
9 fans of this quote   

"Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought."

Hill, Napoleon on suggestion
3 fans of this quote   

"Know the self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect the charioteer, and the mind the reins."

Upanishads, Veda on love   

"The illiterate of the future are not those that cannot read or write. They are those that can not learn, unlearn, relearn."

Toffler, Alvin on illiteracy
5 fans of this quote   

"It requires more than mere genius to be an author."

La Bruyere, Jean De on writers and writing   

"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it."

Lawrence, D. H. on criticism   

"You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks."

Wittgenstein, Ludwig on tragedies   

"The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town."

Ondaatje, Michael on fiction   

"My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily."

Lawrence, D. H. on love
8 fans of this quote   

"It is not the literal past, the facts of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language."

Friel, Brian on past   

"Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators."

Lincoln, Abraham on ambiguity
9 fans of this quote   

"We are not hypocrites in our sleep."

Hazlitt, William on sleep   

"I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd."

Lawrence, D. H. on books - reading   

"Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity"

Jones, Chuck on anxiety
5 fans of this quote   

"Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on laughter
13 fans of this quote   

"Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it."

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand on experience
4 fans of this quote   

"A wounded deer leaps the highest."

Dickinson, Emily on adversity
31 fans of this quote   

"Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth."

Woolf, Virginia on truth   

"Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and the angels know of us."

Paine, Thomas on character
10 fans of this quote   

"You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on."

Heraclitus on change
10 fans of this quote   

"What is reading, but silent conversation."

Landor, Walter Savage on books - reading
5 fans of this quote   

"Troubles impending always seem worse than troubles surmounted, but this does not prove that they really are."

Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M. on trials   

"Death is a Dialogue between, the Spirit and the Dust."

Dickinson, Emily on death
9 fans of this quote   

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."

Voltaire on problems
4 fans of this quote   

"Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious naturethis is alike the aim of parent and teacher. "

Spencer, Herbert on uncategorised
3 fans of this quote   

"We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders."

Angelou, Maya on isolation
10 fans of this quote   

"Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination."

Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti on fantasy
6 fans of this quote