A person who knows little likes to talk, and one who knows much mostly keeps silent. This is because a person who knows little thinks that everything he knows is important, and wants to tell everyone. A person who knows much also knows that there is much more he doesn’t know. That’s why he speaks only when it is necessary to speak, and when he … [ Read more ]
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge
In the marketplace for ideas, ignorance is a tenacious weed that keeps sprouting up.
Author: Joel Mokyr | Subject: Education | Scholarship
When we treat our neighbors as they deserve to be treated, we make them even worse; when we treat them as if they were who we wish they were, we improve them.
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Conquer rage with humility, conquer evil with goodness, conquer greed with generosity, and conquer lies with truth.
Author: Dhammapada | Subjects: Insight, Personal Improvement
One can deny Christ in various ways: one can blaspheme rudely, or mock his greatness. But such ways are not dangerous; religion is too precious for people, and this mockery cannot cleave them from it. But there is another way to deny Christ: this is when you call Him your master, and you claim to follow His commandments, but you suppress any free thought by … [ Read more ]
Author: Theodore Parker | Subject: Religion
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Author: Edward Everett Hale | Subject: Personal Improvement
The secret of happiness? Enjoy small pleasures.
Author: Samuel Smiles | Subjects: Happiness, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Author: Henry David Thoreau | Subject: Personal Improvement
A man receives only what he is ready to receive… We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken we hear it not, if it is … [ Read more ]
Author: Henry David Thoreau | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge
Knowledge is real knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of your intellect, not by memory. Only when we forget what we were taught do we start to have real knowledge.
Author: Henry David Thoreau | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge
In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead. […] I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but … [ Read more ]
Author: Henry David Thoreau | Subject: Life & Society
What is important is not the quantity of your knowledge, but its quality. You can know many things without knowing that which is most important. There are two types of ignorance, the pure, natural ignorance into which all people are born, and the ignorance of the so-called wise. You will see that many among those who call themselves scholars do not know real life, and … [ Read more ]
Author: Blaise Pascal | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge
The things people most commonly dread are as unworthy of dread to the wise person as the things they most desire are of wise desire.
Author: Maria Popova | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Wisdom
In our quest to do the best we can, we are apt to defeat ourselves by pushing against life with the brute force of uncalibrated ambition, razing our peace of mind on the sharp-edged sense that there is always more to achieve. If the object of life is not mere resilience but flourishing, attaining it may be less a matter of wild pursuit of favorable … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
The most we can do, [Seneca] argues, is accept every card life deals us, be it winning or losing, as temporarily borrowed from the deck to which it must ultimately return. The measure of wisdom and the key to peace of mind is the nonresistance and graciousness with which we return what we have borrowed when the time of our loan is up.
Author: Maria Popova | Subject: Personal Improvement
It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us. But the grief that has been conquered by reason is calmed forever. I am not therefore going to prescribe for you those remedies which I know many people … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Life & Society, Pain & Suffering
No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favors. Those who loved her gifts as if they were their own forever, who wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid low and grieve when the false and transient pleasures desert their vain and childish minds, ignorant of every stable pleasure. But the man who … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Fortune … falls heavily on those to whom she is unexpected; the man who is always expecting her easily withstands her. For an enemy’s arrival too scatters those whom it catches off guard; but those who have prepared in advance for the coming conflict, being properly drawn up and equipped, easily withstand the first onslaught, which is the most violent. Never have I trusted Fortune, … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subject: Life & Society
We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and rusty. But what difference does it make? The same prison surrounds all of us, and even those who have bound others are bound themselves; unless perchance you think that a chain on the left side is lighter. Honors bind one man, wealth … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life.
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge