“The fool who repeats again and again: "I am bound, I am bound," remains in bondage. He who repeats day and night: "I am a sinner, I am a sinner," becomes a sinner indeed.”
Wise feeling
Wise Quotes — page 220 of 916
“It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.”
“Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.”
“Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.”
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.”
“Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse?”
“Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.”
“[On Jane Austen:] To believe her limited in range because she was harmonious in method is as sensible as to imagine that when the Atlantic Ocean is as smooth as a mill-pond it shrinks to the size of a mill-pond.”
“Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.”
“Wise man was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed.”
“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”
“He that has one eye is a prince among those that have none.”
“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
“For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further.”
“Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.”
“The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.”
“I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.”
“It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)”
“I've always said that Watership Down is not a book for children. I say: it's a book, and anyone who wants to read it can read it.”