Men Quotes

Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.

Sir Richard Steele

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.

Charles Baudelaire

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

Herbert Spence

If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.

Swami Sivanada

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Buddha

Nothing is as difficult as to achieve results in this world if one is filled full of great tolerance and the milk of human kindness. The person who achieves must generally be a one - Ideaed individual, concentrated entirely on that one idea, and ruthless in his aspect toward other men and other ideas.

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for.

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Should we feel at times disheartened and discouraged, a confiding thought, a simple movement of heart towards God will renew our powers. Whatever He may demand of us, He will give us at the moment the strength and the courage that we need.

Franois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon

Reprove thy friend privately commend him publicly.

Solon

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time, which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which nevertheless will make at the end of it no small deduction for the life of man.

Charles Caleb Colton

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.

George Bernard Shaw

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend.

Walter Savage Lando

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.

William Fullbright

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H. L. Mencken

A democratic government is only as strong as the alert conscience of its people.

Charles W. Tobey

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.

Thomas Fulle

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.

Joseph Roux

Toward no crime have men shown themselves so cold - Bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

James R. Lowell

Never have anything to do with an unlucky place, or an unlucky man. I have seen many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good for me?

Rothschild

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand? and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.

Marie Beyon Ray

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

H. L. Mencken

Every scientific fulfillment raises new questions; it asks to be surpassed and outdated.

Max Webe

During these times, when crazy people are running the government, all you can do is laugh.

Bill McKenney, Speech to the Harvard Antimony Society, August 15, 2005

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Be not too hasty either with praise or blame speak always as though you were giving evidence before the judgement - Seat of the Gods.

Seneca

Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.

Learned Hand

The most extensive computation known has been conducted over the last billion years on a planet - wide scale: it is the evolution of life. The power of this computation is illustrated by the complexity and beauty of its crowning achievement, the human brain.

David Rogers, Weather Prediction Using a Genetic Memory

The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.

C. C. Colton

Every culture has its distinctive and normal system of government. Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism, moderated by assassination.

Unknown Russian

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the other considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me the quite a nice compliment - - But if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment. A Tramp Abroad, 1880.

Mark Twain

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

Oprah Winfrey

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.

May Sarton

What experience and history teach is this - That nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.

John Burroughs

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room.

Ernest Dimnet