Quotes
Quotes about Wit
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.
If a person is obviously mentally disabled, such as having Down's syndrome or Alzheimer's, decent people exercise sympathy and understanding in their interactions. So why, if someone merely has a low IQ, is he treated with ridicule and contempt?
It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.
People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.
The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher.
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.
We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.
To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of lifeâthis is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
All zoos actually offer the public, in return for the taxes spent upon them, is a form of idle witless amusement, compared to which a visit to the state penitentiary, or even a state legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.
If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself.
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.
As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis.
