The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.
Sometimes it is not wise to make a second plan; it diminishes the power of the first plan! In risky paths, make only one plan; this will increase the possibility of success! On the edge of a precipice, if your second plan is a parachute on your back, your possibility of falling will increase! When you have nothing to trust, you will be safer, because you have no right to make any mistake!
It’s in our interest to take care of others. Self-centrednes s is opposed to basic human nature. In our own interest as human beings we need to pay attention to our inner values. Sometimes people think compassion is only of help to others, while we get no benefit. This is a mistake. When you concern yourself with others, you naturally develop a sense of self-confidence. To help others takes courage and inner strength.
A book is like a single tree in a forest, in that it exists in conjunction with and because of a great many others around it.
I suggest. . . that you develop early in life the habit of retiring and arising early. You remember the advice of Ben Franklin: "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
No armies are needed, no weapons are needed, no nations are needed, no religions are needed. All that is needed is a little meditativeness, a little silence, a little love, a little more humanity. . . just a little more, and existence will become fragrant with something so totally unique and new that you will have to find a new category for it.
You have never seen greatness in a Presidency; I have. It was a rich kid who you would think had every reason to be a horse's ass - Franklin Roosevelt. He was humane and wise and resourceful. He was called a traitor to his class.
Some folks are wise and some otherwise.
A man must know when to retreat from a woman, but a wise man knows that sometimes he must stand and face her.
If you are a sparrow, don't attack the eagle; be wise! If you are an eagle, don't attack the sparrow; be just!
Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and classbooks, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
The experienced, wise, energetic, intelligent individual functioning in a loose coalition with others in a wide network is far more effective than he is in a tightly organized group.
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple.
The unconscious process moves spiral-wise around a center, gradually getting closer, while the characteristics of the center grow more and more distinct.
The words of truth are always paradoxical.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
Almighty Power, by whose most wise command, helpless, forlorn, uncertain, here I stand, take this faint glimmer of thyself away, or break into my soul with perfect day!
If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would get written at all. It might be better to ask yourself 'Why?”'afterwards than before There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.
The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.