Modern Wisdom quotes and sayings

The maxim of the British people is 'Business as usual'

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

There's no security on this earth, only opportunity.

The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.

Order is Heaven's first law; and this confessed, some are, and must be, greater than the rest, more rich, more wise; but who infers from hence that such are happier, shocks all common sense. Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; bliss is the same in subject or in king.

A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

To err is human, to forgive is divine.

What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.

The present is the only reality and the only certainty.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.

Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count.

Never complain. Never explain.

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

A wise man turns chance into good fortune.

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

Compromise does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to any general fulfillment, but to general frustration; those who try to become everything to all people end up by not being anything to anyone.

At my age I do what Mark Twain did. I get my daily paper, look at the obituaries page and if I'm not there I carry on as usual.

I'm only a four-dimensional creature. Haven't got a clue how to visualise infinity. Even Einstein hadn't. I know because I asked him.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.

In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

Never stop because you are afraid - you are never so likely to be wrong.

The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.

Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.