Sayings that illustrate the memorable use of language:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Give me a fish and I eat for a day; teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime. --Confucius

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

If you fail to plan, then plan to fail.

Better safe than sorry.

Once bitten, twice shy.

You snooze, you lose.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. --Alfred Lord Tennyson

The hottest love has the coldest end. --Socrates

From the tiny acorn the mighty oak tree grows.

Actions speak louder than words.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. --Benjamin Franklin

Don't look for the meaning of life; look for what gives life meaning.

When one door closes, another is opened.

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

As one person I cannot change the world, but I can change the world of one person. --Paul Shane Spear

Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child. --Ron Wild

Wisdom outweighs any wealth. --Sophocles

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened; happiness never decreases by being shared. --Buddha

Philosophical quotations concerning knowledge, wisdom, and other virtues:

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people. --Confucius

We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. --Aristotle

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing. --Socrates

Real knowledge is to know the extent of your ignorance. --Confucius

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. --Epicurus

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. --Henry David Thoreau

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. --Socrates

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. --Confucius

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn, is in great danger. --Confucius

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. --Ben Franklin

To love truth for truth's sake is the principle part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. --John Locke

The beginning and the greatest good is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly. --Epicurus

Far surpassing everything in bliss it is to occupy the high, serene, embattled eminence, the ivory tower, whose battlements are thought and high philosophy---the wisdom of the wise. --Lucretius

Philosophy without history has no roots; history without philosophy bears no fruit. --Source unknown

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. --Edmund Burke

...of (Conservatism and Reform,) each is a good half, but an impossible whole...in a true society, in a true man, both must combine. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are two kinds of fool: one says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." --John Brunner

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. --John Locke

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one---if he had the power---would be justified in silencing mankind. --John Stuart Mill

Society can overlook murder, adultery, or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel. --Edmund Burke

Every great movement must experience three distinct stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption. --John Stuart Mill

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. --Henry David Thoreau

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. --Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. --Henry David Thoreau

Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency. --Epicurus

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know? --Socrates

Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. --Epicurus

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death is not, and when death has come, we are not. --Epicurus

Happiness is the greatest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue. --Aristotle

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. --Plato

The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. --Epicurus

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. --Henry David Thoreau

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature. --Socrates

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. --Socrates

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor. --Ben Franklin

He that is of the opinion that money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. --Ben Franklin

The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance. --Epicurus

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. --Socrates

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship. --Epicurus

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing. --Ben Franklin

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government. --Socrates

If a state is governed by the principles of reason, then poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, then riches and honor are the subjects of shame. --Confucius

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all people alike share in the government to the utmost. --Aristotle

I believe that justice is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society. --Thomas Jefferson

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. --James Madison

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried. --Winston Churchill

It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen. --Muhammad Ali

Wisdom about humor, and some plain old humor

The gods, too, are fond of a joke. --Aristotle

Humor is the only test of seriousness, and seriousness of humor; for a subject which will not bear levity is suspicious, and a joke that will not bear serious examination is false wit. --Aristotle

No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up. --Lily Tomlin

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. --George Carlin

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. --Lily Tomlin

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends, unless his friends are failures. --Stephen Colbert (based on a line by Clarence the angel in "It's A Wonderful Life.")

There's nothing wrong with being shallow, as long as you're insightful about it. --Dennis Miller

Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things. --George Carlin

No good deed goes unpunished. --Oscar Wilde

Local Sayings from Darnell Wright

We've barely learned the first letter in God's alphabet, so who can claim to know His Mind?

The ruts we live in our day-to-day lives are the shallow graves of our souls.

Wisdom is the ability to turn the True into the Good.

Fit theory to facts, not facts to theory; no ship can sail where it wishes the wind to blow.

A closed mind is rarely accompanied by a closed mouth.

Mine the heavens, not the earth.

You may be colorblind, but that doesn't make the world black and white.

To deny the laws of Nature is to deny the mind of God.

I'd rather go to hell than to a heaven as narrow as that which some people imagine.

God reveals himself most plainly in the laws of Nature, which play no favorites and admit no exceptions.

Beat your head against a wall and it will surely crack.