This is a list of quotes that I have come across in my reading, that have either had a significant effect on my world view, or have touched me on a very personal level. I believe that they encapsulate fundamental truths with uncommon elegance. I sincerely hope that you find them as useful and moving as I have.
"No man is free who is not master of himself."
"Well-makers lead the water; archers bend the bow; carpenters hew a log of wood; wise people fashion themselves."
"Every act is an act of self-definition."
"You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself."
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge."
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
"Life is occupied both in perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying."
"A good education is not so much one which prepares a man to succeed in the world, as one which enables him to sustain a failure."
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."
"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers."
"Be the change that you want to see in the world."
"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men."
"At the critical juncture in all human relationships, there is only one question: What would love do now?"
"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."
"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."
"As long as you live, keep learning how to live."
"If there were such a thing as sin, this would be it: to allow yourself to become what you are because of the experience of others."
"Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift."
"There is no sense to a sacrifice after you come to feel that it is a sacrifice."
"There ought to be more to life than increasing its speed."
"How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth than it is to maintain it?"
"The soul is that which beholds beauty even when the mind denies it."
"You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them."
"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."
"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
"If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results."
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
© 2008-2010 Hrvoje Butkovic | All rights reserved.
