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Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Related topics: Life Human-Nature Psychology Motivational
Greatness is not in where we stand,
but in what direction we are moving.
We must sail sometimes with the wind
and sometimes against it -
but sail we must,
and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
It is the province of knowledge to speak,
and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If you don't know what you want, you will probably never get it.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains,
but the thought which it suggests;
just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones
but in the echoes of our hearts.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A mind that is stretched by a new experience
an never go back to its old dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
When in doubt, do it.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Some people are so heavenly minded
that they are no earthly good.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To be seventy years young is sometimes
far more cheerful and hopeful
than to be forty years old.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Except in cases of necessity, which are rare,
leave your friend to learn
unpleasant things from his enemies;
they are ready enough to tell them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
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
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
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
The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer
If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
If a man does not know what port he is steering for,
no wind is favorable to him.
- Seneca
A wise man hears one word and understands two.
- Yiddish Proverb
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
He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
- Socrates
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
- Elbert Hubbard
No man is free who is not master of himself.
- Epictetus
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
- Henry David Thoreau
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand,
the spines of others are often stiffened.
- Billy Graham
As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The man who is successful is the man who is useful.
- Bourke Cockran
A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him,
that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men,
and when he devotes himself helpfully
to all life that is in need of help.
- Albert Schweitzer
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali
During the first period of a man's life
the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Only a man's character is the real criterion of worth.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed,
and in such desperate enterprises?
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau
Anger is a killing thing:
it kills the man who angers,
for each rage leaves him less than he had been before -
it takes something from him.
- Louis L'Amour
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy
If a man loses pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau
I wept because I had no shoes
until I met a man who had no feet.
- old Persian Proverb
For man with no forgiveness in heart,
life worse punishment than death.
- Miyagi: character in the movie Karate Kid 2
Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.
It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction
devised by the ingenuity of man.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced,
and today we think this more than ever, and are just as wrong
as all previous ages that thought so.
How often have we not seen the truth condemned!
It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.
- Carl Jung
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is,
he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
- Helen Keller
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid
as getting to know how enormously much
he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard
It is what a man thinks of himself
that really determines his fate.
- Henry David Thoreau
Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
- Mark Twain
Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil
I do not know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was a butterfly,
or whether I am now
a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
- Zhuangzi
A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer
Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie
Each man's life touches so many other lives.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)
There comes 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 or for worse as his portion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man can fail many times,
but he isn't a failure until
he begins to blame somebody else.
- John Burroughs
Each man is the architect of his own fate.
- Appius Claudius
How could man rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
- Lao Tzu
Is the babe young? When I behold it,
it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
- Henry David Thoreau
Every man must decide whether he will
walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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