Finest Quotes - Page 2

• Education is not confined to books, and the finest characters often graduate from no college, but make experience their master, and life their book. [Some care] only for the mental culture, and [are] in danger of over-studying, under the delusion . . . that learning must be had at all costs, forgetting that health and real wisdom are better.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Real, Book, Character

  Louisa May Alcott (2018). “Louisa May Alcott Collection”, p.1224, Youcanprint

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• A beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of fine arts.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.529, Library of America

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• It is not the finest wood that feeds the fire of Divine love, but the wood of the Cross.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Fire, Woods, Divine

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• Conceit spoils the finest genius.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Life, Conceited, Genius

  1868 Little Women, pt.1, ch.7.

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• The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Soul, Variety

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• The finest teaching touches in a student a spring neither teacher nor student could possibly have preconceived.

  Anne Truitt

  Education, Teacher, Spring

  Anne Truitt (1996). “PROSPECT: The Journal of an Artist”, Scribner

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• The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Time, Nature, Gentle Touch

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Thoreau's Book of Quotations”, p.91, Courier Corporation

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• The finest plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to carry them out, for emperor himself can actually be nothing.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Emperor, Ruined, Plans

  'Mutter Courage' (1939) sc. 6

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• The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Real, People

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• To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

  Henry Miller

  Fate, Men, Medicine

  Henry Miller (2010). “The Colossus of Maroussi (Second Edition)”, p.38, New Directions Publishing

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• The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Nature, Fall, Whales

  Letter, The Public Advertiser, 22 May 1765.

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• As we grow older, we live more coarsely, we relax a little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to obey our finest instincts. But we should be fastidious to the extreme of sanity, disregarding the gibes of those who are more unfortunate than ourselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Discipline, Relax, Littles

  Henry David Thoreau (1937). “The selected works of Thoreau”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• The finest victory is to conquer one's own heart.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Heart, Victory, Conquer

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• The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

  George Eliot

  Success, Congratulations, Thinking

  George Eliot “Daniel Deronda - Volume 2 of 2”, Lulu.com

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• to tempt and be tempted are closely allied; and in spite of all the finest moral maxims buried in the mind, when emotion interferes, when feeling makes its appearance, one is already much further involved that one realizes, and I have still not learnt how to prevent its appearance.

  Catherine the Great

  Feelings, Temptation, Mind

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• Intellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respectability. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The number of hysterics and compulsives is also large.

  Louise Bogan

  Strong, Real, Men

  Louise Bogan (2005). “A poet's prose: selected writings of Louise Bogan : with the uncollected poems”, Swallow Press

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• The art of reasoning becomes of first importance. In this line antiquity has left us the finest models for imitation; I should consider the speeches of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, as pre-eminent specimens of logic, taste, and that sententious brevity which, using not a word to spare, leaves not a moment for inattention to the hearer. Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Art, Taste, Firsts

  "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson". Book by Thomas Jefferson, p. 30, 1904.

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• Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.

  James Russell Lowell

  Reading, Mean, Eye

  James Russell Lowell (1887). “Democracy and other Addresses”

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• He must understand that if he is the world's finest plum and someone he loves does not like plums, he has the choice of becoming a banana. But he must be warned that if he chooses to become a banana, he will be a second rate banana. But he can always be the best plum.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Love, Choices, Doe

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• The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fashion, Past, Clothes

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.87, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Dare to be what you ought to be, dare to be what you dream to be, dare to be the finest you can be. The more you dare, the surer you will be of gaining just what you dare!

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Dream, Vision, Dare

  Norman Vincent Peale (1986). “Have a Great Day”, Fawcett Books

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• What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Writing, Done, Pieces

  Thomas Wolfe (1952). “Selections from the works of Thomas Wolfe”

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• Bush the Elder's stature as president grows with every passing year. He was the finest foreign policy president I've ever covered and a man who defied his party on tax increases while imposing budget restrictions on the Democrats.

  Joe Klein

  Party, Men, Years

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• Obamas finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They dont even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves.

  Ezra Klein

  Self, Inspire, Triumph

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• I believe without any doubt that you are the finest generation this Church has ever had.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Believe, Our Generation, Doubt

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