Children are born with imaginations in mint condition, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Then life corrects for grandiosity.
—Phyllis Theroux (American Journalist, Author)
You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build.
—Sean O’Casey (Irish Dramatist)
It is an eternal law that man cannot be redeemed by a power external to himself.
—Helena Blavatsky (Ukrainian-born American Theosophist)
All the world is a very narrow bridge, but the main thing is to have no fear at all.
—Nachman of Breslov (Ukrainian Jewish Religions Leader)
The outward and visible way in which we move through our daily round—the time, creative energy, emotion, attitude, and attention with which we endow our tasks—is how we elevate the mundane to the transcendent. Moments of illumination aren’t just experienced by saints, mystics, and poets.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach (American Self-help Author)
Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)
It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
—Claude Monet (French Painter)
When we are depressed, being reminded of other people’s suffering only serves to increase our self-hatred.
—Dorothy Rowe (Australian Psychologist)
Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge.
—Benjamin Jowett (British Theologian)
Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).
—Stephen Jay Gould (American Paleontologist)
There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian-born British Philosopher)
Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant. Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann (Swiss Philosopher, Physician)