Kind words may be short… but their echoes are endless.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Essayist)
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)
Nothing truly can be termed my own, but what I make my own by using well; those deeds of charity which we have done, shall stay forever with us; and that wealth which we have so bestowed, we only keep; the other is not ours.
—Conyers Middleton (English Clergyman)
Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)
When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)
He that is overcautious will accomplish but very little.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)
Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)
The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)
He that opposes his own judgment against the consent of the times ought to be backed with unanswerable truths; and he that has truth on his side is a fool, as well as a coward, if he is afraid to own it because of other men’s opinions.
—Daniel Defoe (English Writer)
He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself.
—William Graham Sumner (American Polymath)
Dislodging a green nut from it’s shell is almost impossible, but let it dry and the lightest tap will do it.
—Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Indian Hindu Philosopher)
All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)
Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)