Wise Quotes about Yearnings

I seldom think about my limitations,
and they never make me sad.
Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times;
but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
- Helen Keller

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
- inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth.
The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.
- Mark Twain

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous.
We are timid only when
there is something we can still cling to.
- Carlos Castaneda

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make the better.
What if they are a little coarse,
and you may get your coat soiled or torn?
What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled
in the dirt once or twice.
Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination,
which the steadfast heart will conquer,
and the large mind will transcend.
- Helen Keller

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism
to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

History does not long entrust the care of freedom
to the weak or the timid.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

If you wait for opportunities to occur,
you will be one of the crowd.
- Edward de Bono

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

No one was ever named "Hero" for following the crowd.
Heroes set their own course.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Never be fooled into believing that
there is one speck out of order.
- Byron Katie

There are as many pillows of illusion
as flakes in a snow-storm.
We wake from one dream into another dream.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is well to remember that the
entire population of the universe,
with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
- Andrew J. Holmes

The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Decide questions without regard for tradition -
one way or the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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

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

An instructed and intelligent people
are always more decent and orderly
than an ignorant and stupid one.
- Adam Smith

Watch what people are cynical about,
and one can often discover what they lack.
- George S. Patton

Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

We have two ears and one mouth so that
we can listen twice as much as we speak.
- Epictetus

When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln

One of the surest ways to cause
yourself great suffering
is to insist upon being right -
to demand that all others view life
exactly as you view it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I had three chairs in my house;
one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
- Henry David Thoreau

Society is a masked ball,
where every one hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off
a portion of one's being,
but by integration of the contraries.
- Carl Jung

The fox has many tricks.
The hedgehog has but one.
But that is the best of all.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whenever you're in conflict with someone,
there is one factor that can make the difference
between damaging your relationship and deepening it.
That factor is attitude.
- William James

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor,
nor should life rest on a single hope.
- Epictetus

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong

Loving, hating, having expectations:
all these are attachments.
Attachment prevents the growth of one's true being.
- Lao Tzu

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

The mystery of the beginning
of all things is insoluble by us;
and I for one, must be content to remain an agnostic.
- Charles Darwin

This isn't a rehearsal or a practice life.
This is your real life - your one and only real life.
There are no retakes - no second chances.
Begin now - live full out.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To acquire knowledge, one must study;
but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
- Marilyn vos Savant

The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self,
can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.
- Soren Kierkegaard

I am one with the Earth,
with the Water, with the Fire,
with the Air that I breathe,
with all Living Things,
and we are all one with Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

This day I will marry my friend,
the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.
- Anonymous

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson

One thing I know: the only ones among you
who will be really happy are those
who will have sought and found how to serve.
- Albert Schweitzer

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying
about things which are beyond the power of our will.
- Epictetus

Joy increases and suffering decreases
as one masters the distinction between events
and one's feelings about those events.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is impossible to begin to learn
that which one thinks one already knows.
- Epictetus

One cannot have a mind that is empty of all thoughts,
but one can have a mind that is content with
whatever thoughts fill it at the moment.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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Wisdom Quotes