Quotes by Philosophers - Page 371

The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.
Swami Vivekananda
The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal.
Criss Jami
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
Aristotle
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.
Marcus Aurelius
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
Otto Rank
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
G.K. Chesterton
Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
Sam Harris
It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.
Bruce Lee
Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not "This is misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune.
Marcus Aurelius
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig
Life begins on the other side of despair.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
Marcus Aurelius
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Arthur Schopenhauer
To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.
Aristotle
It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.
Aldous Huxley
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
Bruce Lee
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Marcus Aurelius
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Socrates
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.
Henry David Thoreau
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
Rabindranath Tagore
Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.
Rabindranath Tagore
It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
William James
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath Tagore
Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity growswith the ability to say no to oneself.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
Seneca
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.
Henri Bergson
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
Henry David Thoreau
It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.
Confucius
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
Seneca
Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Albert Schweitzer
Know thyself.
Socrates
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau
Envy is ignorance, Imitation is Suicide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.
Voltaire
It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.
G.K. Chesterton
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You become what you think about all day long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Marcus Aurelius
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
Ayn Rand
Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always
Dante Alighieri
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
Robert M. Pirsig
Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.
Bruce Lee
When you see a good person, think of becoming like her/him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.
Confucius
He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.
Ayn Rand
I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.
Michel de Montaigne
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Seneca
Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.
Miguel de Unamuno
Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Michel de Montaigne
Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.
Aristotle
There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
G.K. Chesterton
Make the most of yourself....for that is all there is of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Friedrich Nietzsche