Wise Quotes about Centuries

A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century;
a passion is old at the end of three months.
- Madame Swetchine

Before printing was discovered,
a century was equal to a thousand years.
- Henry David Thoreau

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

Let the word go forth from this time and place,
to friend and foe alike,
that the torch has been passed
to a new generation of Americans -
born in this century, tempered by war,
disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.
- John F. Kennedy

Men of lofty genius,
when they are doing the least work,
are most active.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage
to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein

Everyone is born a genius,
but the process of living de-geniuses them.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

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

Genius is one percent inspiration
and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
- Thomas Edison

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, Begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it, Begin it now.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Genius is the power to labor better and more availably.
Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm not a genius.
I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge

The man of genius inspires us with
a boundless confidence in our own powers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity;
so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
- Henry David Thoreau

Everybody is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein

There's a fine line between genius and insanity.
I have erased this line.
- Oscar Levant

Important ideas can come from unexpected places.
We tend to label people - Genius, Idiot,
Socialist, Regressive, Wingnut, Revolutionary, Terrorist.
But it is helpful to remind ourselves to be open
to good ideas - whatever their source.
It is equally important to avoid accepting any idea
merely because we respect that person's
other ideas or accomplishments.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The difference between stupidity and genius
is that genius has its limits.
- Albert Einstein

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation
of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
- Winston Churchill

When you have shut your doors, and darkened your room,
remember, never to say that you are alone,
for you are not alone, but God is within,
and your genius is within.
- Epictetus

Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
- Abraham Lincoln

When nature has work to be done,
she creates a genius to do it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius
and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous
than absolutely boring.
- Marilyn Monroe

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung

Everyone is a genius at least once a year;
a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
- Georg Lichtenberg

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord,
for I was not anchored to a house or farm,
but could follow the bent of my genius,
which is a very crooked one, every moment.
- Henry David Thoreau

Genius may have its limitations,
but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
- Elbert Hubbard

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law
from observation of the works of Genius,
whether of man or Nature.
The Artisan is he who merely applies
the rules which others have detected.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

Men are disturbed not by things,
but by the view which they take of them.
- Epictetus

Men and women are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood
between sincere men of all denominations.
- Helen Keller

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste
that they hurry past it.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Men in general judge more from
appearances than from reality. All
men have eyes, but few have
the gift of penetration.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

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

Wise men put their trust in ideas
and not in circumstances
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is the property of no individual
but is the treasure of all men.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not believe in a fate that
falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in a fate
that falls on them unless they act.
- The Buddha

Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
- Henry David Thoreau

When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
- Joseph Addison

Achievement seems to be connected with action.
Successful men and women keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

Great men or men of great gifts
you shall easily find,
but symmetrical men never.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Women must try to do things as men have tried.
When they fail their failure must be
but a challenge to others.
- Amelia Earhart

There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shallow men believe in luck.
Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed,
for if you merely offend them, they take vengeance,
but if you injure them greatly, they are unable to retaliate,
so that the injury done to a man
ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock

For those men who, sooner or later, are lucky enough
to break away from the pack, the most intoxicating moment
comes when they cease being bodies in other men's command
and find that they control their own time,
when they learn their own voice and authority.
- Theodore H. White

The majority of men meet with failure
because of their lack of persistence
in creating new plans to take
the place of those which fail.
- Napoleon Hill

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Wisdom Quotes