Dr Saheb Sahu
I just read a book titled “Word Lover’s Book of Unfamiliar Quotation” by Wesley D. Camp.The book has 1500 quotations drawn from the wisdom of the ages. In this article I have selected about 200 of them. The selections are purely personal. I hope you like them.
“A”
Adversity
It is a painful thing
To look at your own trouble and know
That you yourself and no one else has made it.
Sophocles, c. 450 BC
Aging
Education is the best provision for the old age.
Aristotle. 322BC
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the riches experiences.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1762
Aphorism
An aphorism is never exactly true,
It is either a half truth and a truth and half.
Karl Kraus, 1904
Appreciation
Hay is more acceptable to an ass than gold.
Latin proverb
“B”
Beauty
Rarely do a great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
Petrarch (1304 – 1374)
Belief
People readily believe what they want to believe.
Julius Caesar, 49 BC
It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it belief.
G. B. Shaw
Black
What happens to a dream defer?
Does it dry up?
Like a raisin in the sand?
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes, 1951
Bureaucracy
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decision and escapes all responsibility.
Brooks Atkinson, 1951
Business
The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. White, 1942
“C”
Censorship
Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
A. Whitney Griswold, the New York Times, 1959
Wherever they burn books they will also in the end, burn human beings.
Heinrich Heine, 1823
Children
Children need models, rather than critics.
Joseph Joubert, 1842
Church
I have no objection to churches so long as they do not interfere with God’s work.
Brooks Atkinson, 1951
Civilization
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of a civilization.
Samuel Johnson, 1791
Classes
Society comprises of two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food.
Chamfort (d. 1794)
Cleverness
Here is a good rule of thumb:
Too clever is dumb.
Ogden Nash, 1949
Company
To be social is to be forgiving.
Robert Frost, 1923
Confess
We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones.
La Rochefoucauld, 1665
Conscience
… The inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H.L. Mencken, 1948
Convictions
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Nietzsche, 1878
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Van der Post, 1958
Corruption
Public money is like holy water; everybody helps himself to it.
Italian proverb
Crowds
Nothing is as uncertain or unpredictable as the feelings of a crowd.
Livy, 29 BC.
Curiosity
Curiosity is one of the permanent characteristic of a vigorous mind.
Samuel Johnson, 1750
“D”
Death and Dying
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
Socrates, 399 BC.
Deception
The easiest person to deceive one’s self.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1828
Deeds
A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another.
Marcus Aurelius, c. 180
Demagogue
The demagogue, whether of the Right or Left is an undetected liar.
Walter Lippmann, 1939
Democracy
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern; every class is unfit to govern.
Lord Acton, 1881
Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except every other that has been tried.
Winston Churchill, attributed
Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave.
Felix G. Rohatyn, New York Times, 1987
Doubt
It is easier to believe than to doubt.
E.D. Martin, 1941
Doubt is part of all religions. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1978
Drink
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
Bertrand Russell, (d 1970)
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
Ogden Nash, 1931
Duty
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
Albert Camus, 1935
“E”
Education
Do not be puffed up because of your knowledge nor overconfident because you are a learned person. Take counsel with the ignorant as well as with the wise, for the limits of proficiency cannot be reached and no person is ever fully skilled.
Egyptian Magistrate Ptah – Hotep to his son, c 2400 BC.
Children have to be educated, but they also be left to educate themselves.
Abbe Dimnet, 1928
Enemies
Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.
Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Mathew 5: 4
Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
Antisthenes, 400 BC
We have met our enemy and they are us.
Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1971
Equality
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945
Envy
How much better it is to be envied than pitied.
Herodotus, 450 BC
Experience
Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald.
Chinese proverb
Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley, 1956
“F”
Fanaticism
Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted human race.
Bertrand Russell, 1950
Fanaticism is one step away from barbarism.
Denis Diderot, 1760
Fear
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell, 1950
Flattery
Of all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
Sir Richard Steele, 1711
Forgiveness
Of course [God] will forgive me; that’s His business.
Heinrich Heine, 1850
The discoverer of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth.
Hannah Arendt, 1958
Freedom
True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944
The most certain test by which we judge a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
Lord Acton, 1877
Friendship
The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
Elbert Hubbard, 1927
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
Charles Caleb Colton, 1825
“G”
Gambling
The best throw of dice is to throw them away.
English proverb
Genius
… An infinite capacity for taking pains.
Jane Ellice Hopkins, 1870
Golden Rule
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sum up the Law and the Prophets.”
Bible, Mathew 7:12
Goodness
Goodness is the only investment hat never fails.
Henry David Thoreau, 1856
Government
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection.
Wendell Phillips, 1860
Greatness
Great and good are seldom the same man.
Thomas Fuller, 1732
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency… {to} corruption by authority.
Lord Acton, 1887
In historical events great men—so called—are but labels used for naming an event and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1865
Grief and Sorrow
There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften.
Cicero, 43 BC
Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding and softens the heart.
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 1816
Grief cannot be shared. Everyone carries it alone, his own burden, and his own way.
Anne Marrow Lindberg, 1962
Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is the grief that develops the power of mind.
Marcel Proust, 1927
