Top 252 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Biographers - Page 2

The trouble with lies was that once started, the fiction had to be continued, and it was hard always to be remembering details that you had made up upon the spur of the moment.

You would not think that birds who have no brain at all could become so friendly. I swear some of them are more intelligent than many humans, but that says more about our fellow beings than it does about the birds.

Even Avataras, saints, and sages have to undergo the ordeal of suffering, for they take upon themselves the burden of sins of omission and commission of ordinary human beings and thereby sacrifice themselves for the good of humanity.

From Heaven I fall, though from earth I begin. No lady alive can show such a skin. I'm bright as an angel, and light as a feather, But heavy and dark, when you squeeze me together. Though candor and truth in my aspect I bear, Yet many poor creatures I help to insnare. Though so much of Heaven appears in my make, The foulest impressions I easily take. My parent and I produce one another, The mother the daughter, the daughter the mother.

You know that the air and water are being polluted, as is everything we touch and live with, and we go on corrupting the nature that we need. We don't realize we have a commitment to God to take care of nature. To cut down a tree, to waste water when there is so much lack of it, to let buses poison our atmosphere with those noxious fumes from their exhausts, to burn rubbish haphazardly-all that concerns our alliance with God.

Philip could not have wanted to annex England militarily, since this would have opened another costly occupation struggle, and brought France in against him. He might, however, neutralize Elizabth by supporting her internal Catholic enemies, even provoking civil war.

The Italian government, a free French newspaper tartly observed, never finished a war on the same side it started on – unless the war lasted long enough to change sides twice.

One remembers horrors, I think, for the rest of one's life, but memories do not always remain so sharp, and with time, and new circumstance, do not affect us so powerfully.

There are people who may be trusted, men as well as women. There are are as many difference in their natures as there are flowers in these meadows.

Pray to God and make your heart as pure as the star.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

Anyone may have diamonds: an heirloom is an ornament of quite a different kind.

What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their students and do not settle for anything less.

Easy enough to dismiss others' problems when you had none of your own.

I think that one of the qualifications of artists should be a vow of celibacy. They should be confined to ruining only their own lives.

Madness is not enlightenment, but the search for enlightenment is often mistaken for madness.

We are being governed by the dregs of the nation - and their brutality is so capricious that no one can feel certain that he will be safe tomorrow.

When one realizes God, He grants knowledge and illumination from within; one knows it oneself. In the fullness of one's spiritual realization one will find that He who resides in one's heart, resides in the hearts of others as well - the oppressed, the persecuted, the untouchable, and the outcast.

"Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty."

The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.

Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best.

Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ...In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression.

E.P. Whipple calls fanaticism "religion caricatured," which is a full definition in a word.

Until kids decide, 'I am a miracle. I am unique. There is no one else exactly like me,' they can never draw the conclusion, 'Because I'm a miracle, I will never harm another person who's a miracle like me.' In this slippery world, they all need something to hang on to.

No one can suffer for all time. No one will spend all his days on this earth in suffering. Every action brings its own result, and one gets one's opportunities accordingly.

An error means a child needs help, not a reprimand or ridicule for doing something wrong.

If I might be the means of saving one soul I should prefer it to all the riches and honor in the world

We have to have the money to do the work we want to do, as well as to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Fat commissions are good, but not always easy to come by, and each new painting takes its time. So we need to find every way possible to earn extra income from our work.

Charge less, but charge. Otherwise, you will not be taken seriously, and you do your fellow artists no favours if you undercut the market.

Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant time. It is true that you are quietly shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front seat as spectator, and if you have really played your part you are more content to sit down and watch.

Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail.

Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.

Let me tell you how to love all equally. Do not demand anything of those you love. If you make demands, some will give you more and some less. In that case you will love more those who give you more and less those who give you less. Thus your love will not be the same for all. You will not be able to love all impartially.

Certainly you will have doubts. There will be questionings and faith will return again. That is how faith is established.

Teaching children to read was one thing; keeping them interested in reading was something else.

The sense that the meaning of the universe had evaporated was what seemed to escape those who welcomed Darwin as a benefactor of mankind. Nietzsche considered that evolution presented a correct picture of the world, but that it was a disastrous picture. His philosophy was an attempt to produce a new world-picture which took Darwinism into account but was not nullified by it.

Ordinary human love results in misery. Love for God brings blessedness.

Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies. We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us.

There isn't a certain time we should set aside to talk about God. God is part of our every waking moment

I think that feeling of reward comes from being able to find sometimes an unexpected reflection or insight that seems to transcend the description itself, where you actually realize you're concluding something that is a point of view, that may come across and actually touch people's conscience or minds in a way that could change, at least if not things, change points of view.

I am the mother of the wicked, as I am the mother of the virtuous. Never fear. Whenever you are in distress, say to yourself, ‘I have a mother.

Concern for someone else was a good remedy for taking the mind off one's own troubles.

I think it's deeply important for us to know, especially when we come from the outside, how "ordinary people" think and feel and what their expectations are and what their concerns are. Also what's in their imaginations, what's in their minds, even what their rumors are and what their gossip is.

Kids don't fail. Teachers fail, school systems fail. The people who teach children that they are failures, they are the problem.

When men are scared of a woman, they always accuse her of being mannish.

Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down.

You need to be hyper-aware because it's your survival at stake.

It is clear that the flame of True Freedom had passed with naval supremacy and constitutional, consultative government from the United Provinces to Great Britain, where it was regarded with quite as much national pride.

In practical life the wisest and soundest people avoid speculation.

If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.

That's how I try to think of education - a school is a miniature society where children learn to function in a real world.

God is not satisfied with appearance. God wants the garment of justice. God wants his Christians dressed in love.

I believe that every life , irrespective of its events and setting, holds something of unique value, which it should be possible to communicate, if only one can first see one's experiences honestly and then set them down without too much dressing-up

To have too much forethought is the part of a wretch; to have too little is the part of a fool.

It's not what you want in this life, it's what you get that you have to do with.

We suffer as a result of our own actions; it is unfair to blame anybody for it.

We live in an extraordinary time, in which one still has the ability to mold opinion. Also, it's up for grabs. Perceptions are up for grabs in a way that it hasn't been before, which makes it really interesting. Societies that have always defined other aspects of human experience, or histories, try to hold on to it and try to find ways to continue to be the ones who do the interpreting.

A thin line separates destiny from coincidence.

Mr. Meant-to has a friend, his name is Didn't-Do. Have you met them? They live together in a house called Never-Win. And I am told that it is haunted by the Ghost of Might-have-Been.