Wise Quotes about Ideals

It is curious to observe what different
ideals of happiness people cherish,
and in what singular places they look
for this well-spring of their life.
Many look for it in the hoarding of riches,
some in the pride of power,
and others in the achievements of art and literature;
a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds,
or in search for knowledge.
- Helen Keller

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal
of plain living and high thinking
the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants.
Man's happiness really lies in contentment.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience:
this is the ideal life.
- Mark Twain

All successful people men and women are big dreamers.
They imagine what their future could be,
ideal in every respect,
and then they work every day toward
their distant vision,
that goal or purpose.
- Brian Tracy

Interdependence is and ought to be
as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency.
Man is a social being.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The road to perdition has ever been
accompanied by lip service to an ideal.
- Albert Einstein

I have this theory - that if we're told we're bad,
then that's the only ideal we'll ever have.
- Jewel

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

I do not know whether I was then
a man dreaming I was a butterfly,
or whether I am now
a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
- Zhuangzi

When you are offended at any man's fault,
turn to yourself and study your own failings.
Then you will forget your anger.
- Epictetus

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid
as getting to know how enormously much
he is capable of doing and becoming.
- Soren Kierkegaard

A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted,
but beholds it as something
unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
- Albert Schweitzer

The man who goes alone can start today;
but he who travels with another
must wait till that other is ready.
- Henry David Thoreau

Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The man who is awakened, lives in such a way
that he leaves no footprints.
- Osho quoting The Buddha

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;
the wise grows it under his feet.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer

All this worldly wisdom was once
the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau

If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man should look for what is,
and not for what he thinks should be.
- Albert Einstein

Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis
of man's desire to understand.
- Neil Armstrong

The Universe is one great kindergarten for man.
Everything that exists has brought
with it its own peculiar lesson.
- Orison Swett Marden

A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil

Science gives man knowledge, which is power;
religion gives man wisdom, which is control.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz

Any man who reads too much
and uses his own brain too little
falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

If a man empties his purse into his head,
no man can take it away from him.
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
- Benjamin Franklin

The wise man looks into space,
and does not regard the small as too little,
nor the great as too much;
for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.
- Lao Tzu

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.
What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
- Carl Jung

Many a man fails as an original thinker
simply because his memory is too good.
- Nietzsche

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

When I am getting ready to reason with a man,
I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself
and what I am going to say
and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.
- Abraham Lincoln

Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities...
still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
- Charles Darwin

You cannot build character and courage by
taking away a man's initiative and independence.
- Abraham Lincoln

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live
that his happiness shall depend
as little as possible on external things.
- Epictetus

The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.
- Confucius

You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.
- Galileo Galilei

The more a man can forget, the greater the number
of metamorphoses which his life can undergo,
the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.
- Soren Kierkegaard

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks-
if we agree with him.
- Mark Twain

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day,
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing,
and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
- John F. Kennedy

A man is but the product of his thoughts -
what he thinks, he becomes.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The wise man looks back into the past,
and does not grieve over what is far off,
nor rejoice over what is near;
for he knows that time is without end.
- Lao Tzu

Please sign up on the form below to receive
my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.

Wisdom Quotes