I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize.
The first is gentleness;
the second is frugality;
the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others.
Be gentle and you can be bold;
be frugal and you can be generous;
avoid putting yourself before others
and you can become a leader among men.
- Lao Tzu
A wise and frugal government,
which shall leave men free to regulate
their own pursuits of industry and improvement,
and shall not take from the mouth
of labor and the bread it has earned -
this is the sum of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson
Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The more he became truly wise,
the more he distrusted everything he knew.
- Voltaire
I was wise enough to never grow up
while fooling most people into believing I had.
- Margaret Mead
He who knows others is wise.
He who knows himself is enlightened.
- Lao Tzu
Self-pity is our worst enemy
and if we yield to it,
we can never do anything wise in this world.
- Helen Keller
See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.
- Japanese pictorial maxim (the Three Wise Monkeys)
Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone
what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
Take risks: if you win, you will be happy;
if you lose, you will be wise.
- Anonymous
A wise girl kisses but doesn't love,
listens but doesn't believe,
and leaves before she is left.
- Marilyn Monroe
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is,
he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
- Helen Keller
If you wish to succeed in life,
make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor,
caution your elder brother,
and hope your guardian genius.
- Joseph Addison
Everyone is wise, until he speaks.
- Irish proverb
The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought,
sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.
- The Buddha
Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
- Albert Einstein
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
- William Shakespeare
Wise men put their trust in ideas
and not in circumstances
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down
on the tracks of history
to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu
The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man
are those of bearing and forbearing.
- Epictetus
The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
The wise man looks into space,
and does not regard the small as too little,
nor the great as too much;
for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.
- Lao Tzu
It is noted that a stopped clock is correct twice each day.
In a similar manner, a person who is unchanging appears wise occasionally.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
He is a wise man who does not grieve
for the things which he has not,
but rejoices for those which he has.
- Epictetus
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz
I have always been regretting that
I was not as wise as the day I was born.
- Henry David Thoreau
When you are winning a war
almost everything that happens
can be claimed to be right and wise.
- Winston Churchill
A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson
Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.
- Publilius Syrus
All this worldly wisdom was once
the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau
An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere,
while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight.
The truly wise person is colorblind.
- Albert Schweitzer
The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question
than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
- Bruce Lee
It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures,
but the foolish to be a slave to them.
- Epictetus
A wise man hears one word and understands two.
- Yiddish Proverb
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu
Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin
It is always wise to look ahead,
but difficult to look further than you can see.
- Winston Churchill
Every day is a new beginning -
a day for a new plan and new action.
If today, in conscious awareness, you choose
the same plan as yesterday, you are wise.
If you choose a different plan, you are equally wise.
Whatever you choose, choose with intention.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Thoughtful people seldom share exactly the same opinion -
the same point-of-view.
The wise ones understand that they know nothing -
for virtually none of our experience is truly factual -
and they graciously honor all other opinions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Excellence is the result of
caring more than others think wise,
risking more than other's think safe,
dreaming more than others think practical,
and expecting more than others think possible.
- Anonymous
It cannot be wisdom to assert the truth of one faith over another.
In our troubled world so full of contradictions,
the wise person makes justice his guide and learns from all.
- Akbar the Great (1542-1605)
A wise one said, "We are most like God when we forgive."
It is easy for us to blame, but hard for us to forgive.
Yet that is what we are called upon to do -
to forgive everyone for everything.
And the reward?
In this life, the reward for forgiveness
is your own happiness.
Unconditional universal forgiveness is
the key to your own happiness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
To be idle is a short road to death
and to be diligent is a way of life;
foolish people are idle,
wise people are diligent.
- The Buddha
Laws are sand, customs are rock.
Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped,
but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
The penalty may be unfair, unrighteous, illogical, and a cruelty;
no matter, it will be inflicted, just the same.
Certainly, then, there can be but one wise thing
for a visiting stranger to do -
find out what the country's customs are,
and refrain from offending against them.
- Mark Twain
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt
towards people whom we personally dislike.
- Oscar Wilde
Oh, if only God would give me some sign.
If He would just speak to me once. Anything.
One sentence. Two words. If He would just cough.
- the movie Love and Death
Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training,
for it trains people as to how they should think.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
I don't doubt God. I have firm faith absolutely in God.
It's religion I'm doubting.
- Bono
Anyone who can worship a trinity
and insist that his religion is a monotheism
can believe anything.
- Robert A Heinlein
Almost any sect, cult, or religion will
legislate its creed into law
if it acquires the political power.
- Robert A. Heinlein
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell -
you see, I have friends in both places.
- Mark Twain
An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.
- Don Marquis
A common denominator of all religions is that
they have the power to bring out the best and the worst in people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
It ain't those parts of the Bible
that I can't understand that bother me,
it is the parts that I do understand.
- Mark Twain
The existence of an anthropomorphic
"Father-figure" deity is not impossible,
merely exceptionally improbable and illogical.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Gods always behave like the people who make them.
- Zora Neale Hurston
Never trust spiritual leader who doesn't dance.
- Miyagi: character in the movie The Next Karate Kid
Jesus was all right,
but his disciples were thick and ordinary.
It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
- John Lennon
It is the things for which there is no evidence
that are believed with passion.
- Bertrand Russell
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blind-folded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
The Christian missionary may preach the gospel
to the poor naked heathen,
but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe
have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.
- Carl Jung
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
- Thomas Jefferson
Morality which depends upon the helplessness
of a man or woman has not much to recommend it.
Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
It is an open question whether any behavior
based on fear of eternal punishment
can be regarded as ethical
or should be regarded as merely cowardly.
- Margaret Mead
I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity.
- John Lennon
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory'
is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
- Isaac Asimov
If it turns out that there IS a God,
I don't think that he's evil.
I think that the worst you can say about him
is that basically he's an underachiever.
- the movie Love and Death
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day,
I would have studied harder.
- Pope John Paul I
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.