Wise Quotes about Excusing

If I seem to boast more than is becoming,
my excuse is that I brag
for humanity rather than for myself.
- Henry David Thoreau

Personally, I have fond memories of playing
on slippery rocks on the banks of a rushing river
as a child and hitchhiking in college.
To those who say, "But times are different now,"
I reply that statistically life is much safer now
than in the 1950s, with regard to both crime and accidents.
What has changed is our attitudes.
In those years, a broken leg from falling off a swing
or the back of a tractor was just part of childhood -
an excuse for gathering autographs.
Today that broken leg would be a source
of outrage and probably lawsuits.
I long for a simpler time when life was taken less seriously.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay...
does not represent the will of the American people.
I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong.
I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse
to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.
- Jimmy Carter

Ninety-nine percent of the failures
come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
- George Washington Carver

What are you committed to?
Have you started, or are you still thinking about it -
and making excuses?
Do you work toward your goal each day?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay
and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.
I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism,
but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists
to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.
- Jimmy Carter

I am the owner of my choices.
I am the source for the perspectives I choose to hold...
regardless of how aware I am of why or how I come to possess
that particular perspective.
It takes courage to look into the mirror of our souls, absent excuses.
I will look into that mirror little bits at a time.
SEE and ACT. SEE what I can bear to see and ACT upon what I am able.
This is the heart of a gentle invitation to personal responsibility.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

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

Ninety-nine percent of who you are
is invisible and untouchable.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Life is ten percent what happens to you
and ninety percent how you respond to it.
- Lou Holtz

I think and think for months and years.
Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false.
The hundredth time I am right.
- Albert Einstein

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

Please sign up on the form below to receive
my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.

Wisdom Quotes