Top 252 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Biographers - Page 3

If you don't give anything, don't expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.

That holy, humble, meek, modest, retiring Form, sometimes called the Spirit of Prayer, has been dragged from the closet, and so rudely handled by some of her professed friends, that she has not only lost all her wonted loveliness, but is now stalking the street, in some places, stark mad.

The conjunction of the day and the night is the most auspicious time for calling on God. The mind remains pure at this time.

A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth - beware! - is not the true church of Jesus Christ. A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call.

A warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.

To try and change opinion by law is worse than futile.

If people try to push me over into the category of not being a major success, I can think to myself, "Well, of course I'm not. I just started!"

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

Fidelity is seven-tenths of business success.

We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn — the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perennial, like the music of the spheres.

Love has no place in a lawyer's office.

Everyone who comes in is just amazed that our children do not have the animosity, the hatred, because these children are into it. You know, once you learn to like yourself, then you don't see this black-white bit. I still say that a good basic education is the only thing. I feel guilty sometimes because I don't think Jesus Christ could get any more accolades than I do when I walk through that classroom, even from the children I do not teach. They know that I love them, but I am forever telling them, "Get into that seat so you can have choices in this world."

Behind each biography there should always be a rich treasury of unformulated knowledge, a tapestry that has not been unrolled.

The biographer's real business - if it is not too arrogant to say so - is simply this: to bring the dead to life.

It varies by community. At (one local community) we've never offered them. But at most communities, we offer 2 or 3 percent off base price.

Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have.

You can pay people to teach, But you can't pay them to care.

It requires as much reflection and wisdom to know what is not to be put into a sermon, as what is.

A person may have no relatives anywhere, but Mahamaya may make him keep a cat and thus make him worldly. This is how She plays!

On the eve of the Civil War, James Parton could write that 'the political history of the United States, for the last thirty years, dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton's knocker.'

There is no treasure equal to contentment and no virtue equal to fortitude.

There is no dichotomy between man and God's image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image.

whereas in childhood ... it was the parents' judgement that mattered to the child, later on the situation becomes reversed: it is then that the opinions of one's grown-up children become what matters, as well as their kindness.

Open your grief-stricken heart to the Lord. Weep and sincerely pray, 'O Lord, draw me towards You; give me peace of mind.' By doing so constantly you, will gradually attain peace of mind.

However strong or beautiful this body may be, its culmination is in those three pounds of ashes. And still people are so attached to it. Glory be to God.

Although still viewed as lovely and alluring by many, Winston Churchill's mother shocked society when at 46 she married a man 20 years her junior. Most malicious of the many jibes launched at her was that of one lady who went about peering into perambulators. When asked her reason, she replied, "I am searching for my future husband."

You can't jump down the stairs in one leap, however much you might wish to, and you even more surely can't jump up it, but one step and then the next and there you are, at the top or the bottom and not a bit out of breath or discomposed.

The more I've traveled to war zones, the more I'm convinced that the impact and the effects are way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.

while it is certainly the biographer's business to describe the foibles, passions and idiosyncrasies which make his subject a person, his work will be very meagre if these individual traits are not also seen as part of a universal drama - for each man's life is also the story of Everyman.

I have believed for many years that Oscar Peterson is not only the greatest pianist in jazz today, but the greatest it has ever known.

Power rests in tranquillity.

People complain about their griefs and sorrows and how they pray to God but find no relief from pain. But grief itself is a gift from God. It is the symbol of His compassion.

People make one happy, not houses.

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind.

Don't be afraid. Human birth is full of suffering and one has to endure everything patiently, taking the Name of God. None, not even God in human form can escape the sufferings of the body and mind.

It is better to have a plain, substantial building, with no extravagance about it, but without a debt, than to have the most splendid specimen of Gothic architecture that is overlaid by a mortgage.

Life has become terribly insecure. It's on the vortex of civil war. It's difficult to know how America will bring it back from the brink and build up good will.

I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.

Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world.

As you smell the fragrance of a flower by handing it or the smell of sandalwood by rubbing it against a stone, so you obtain spiritual awakening by constantly thinking of God.

I tell you one thing - if you want peace of mind, don not fault with others.

Author says that, while Eisenhower had other intellectual mentors, he learned how to lead men from Gen. Walter Krueger. Krueger was the first American enlisted man to rise to four-star general, and he so identified with those he led that he once invited a sentry out of the rain and gave him his own dry uniform.

One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love.

A man's looks are measured by the depth of his pockets.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

It does not matter that Dickens' world is not life-like; it is alive.

If God accepts the sacrifice of my life, may my death be for the freedom of my people. A bishop will die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will never perish. I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.

A vivid tale of exploration set in a howling, deadly wilderness.

Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can only do as much as God makes us able to do; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be.

Hypocrisy is folly. It is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man aims to appear, than to keep up the appearance of being what he is not.

Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton... remember, there is the face of Christ.

What an illusion Mahamaya has conjured up! Here is this infinite world, and what one claims as his possession will be left behind at death. Still men cannot understand this simple truth.

Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span on this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal.

We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed at night with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways.

One must be patient like the earth. What iniquities are being perpetuated on her! Yet she quietly endures them all.

Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world. Let us not tire of preaching love. Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love, love must win out; it is the only thing that can.

My son, forbearance is a great virtue; there's no other like it.

Inthehistorian'sview biography isa kindoffrogspawn it takes ten thousand biographies to make one small history.

I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.

When we speak for the poor, please note that we do not take sides with one social class. What we do is invite all social classes, rich and poor, without distinction, saying to everyone let us take seriously the cause of the poor as though it were our own.