Best 481 quotes in «insightful quotes» category

But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practise and exercise. We are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us. Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice, and influences the mind and character not by a mere imitation which we look at, but by the statement of the fact creates a moral purpose which we form.

Calm is the best revenge

CEOs will gladly overpay for a company if the acquisition enables them to keep their jobs.

Change happens internally. That's where books go too. Therein lies the power.

Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves mentioned, and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, opportunity always knocks more than once whereas a false step can never be retraced.

Deep within every blind, absolute love grows a hatred toward the beloved, who now holds the only existing key to happiness

Data has no ego and makes an excellent co-pilot.

Data may disappoint, but it never lies.

Deep down I think I may be just like everyone else. And do you know what, Harry?" "No sir." "That bothers me.

Denial does not change reality for everyone else. Only for the one denying and those who are foolish enough to believe the fantasy.

Didn’t you know that it’s not until after enjoying its delights that Love can stop being blind.

Effective decision-making can be seen as an optimal link between memory of the past, ground-realities of the present and insights of the future.

Disruption isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to what happens to you.

Don't be afraid. Change is such a beautiful thing", said the Butterfly.

Dreams are what keep you going when real life lets you down.

Everyone’s perception is different; we all see different things. I personally think you see what you want to see.

[...] e que se faça como os arqueiros sensatos, os quais, diante de um alvo demasiado distante, e conhecendo até onde vai a potência de seu arco, alçam a mira muito mais alta que o ponto de destino, não para alcançar com suas flechas tanta altura, mas para poder, com o auxílio de tão alta mira, atingir sua meta.

Even if you are not evil, pretend to be. It will put off some abuse

Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception [men] hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception

Everything in your mental life proceeds in proper neurological order. If you could have sufficient insight into all the inner and outer parts of your mental life, along with remembrance and intelligence enough to consider all the circumstances and take them into account, you would be a true prophet and visualize the future in the present as in a mirror.

For a sane person to sincerely be happy that someone has succeeded, they have to either be profiting or likely to profit from that person’s success, or be that person.

Everything's impossible until somebody does it.

Famine sometimes increases the number of people who are overweight.

Experience is hard to acquire. Only the wise acquire it

Experiences teaches us that to love is not to gaze at one another but to gaze together in the same direction.

Forget about the great astounding victory. Focus on winning small victories every day, the final victory will come by itself

Funny how you can forget that every family isn't like yours.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions, their reasons are always different.

from the beginning, through the middle years and up to the end: too bad, too bad, too bad.

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary.

Fugit irreparabile tempus.

Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible.

God lures us into marriage through love and sex and loneliness, or simply the fact that someone finally paid attention - all those reasons that you got married in the first place. It doesn't really matter, he'll do whatever it takes. He lures us into marriage and then he uses it to transform us.

Good can sit in the distance, just beyond your view, waiting, until you go toward it.

Greed and corruption isn't in the world.It's in the people".

Greed, however it manifests itself, is always ugly.

Honor is kind of what you get when you weaponize manners ...

He realized that he agonized over everything all the time, and he admitted that part of the problem in the Carter game had been his own lack of belief in his abilities. He knew the reason why he was like this, that it was the price he paid for carefully watching out for himself ever since he had been a little boy. 'I've never taken a chance in life,' he said. 'I need to run in front of traffic bucknacked and get arrested.

He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken. Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway. It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.

He tried to be a good man, to do the right things, to make the world a little better than it had been before he had put his stamp upon it. You could be generous with the love you gave, with the care you took with others. You could follow all the command- ments that made sense to you and still the world could sideswipe you. There was no cause and effect. There was no karma. The truth was that he wasn't so sure he understood how the world worked anymore.

How can he not share his newfound joy with his fellow man? And it is joy. There’s a pure kind of joy in the certainty of belief. The certainty that your life has purpose and meaning.

I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful. It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan

i am nothing but a mosaic of the people i’ve met & the things they’ve carried.

I am not interested in what is pleasant. I'm interested in what's useful.

I care little for titles assigned to men, rather I care about the spirit of men.

I’d often wondered, absorbed in piles of research, if the magic of history would be lost if we could go back and live it. Did we varnish the past and make heroes of average men and imagine beauty and valor where there was only dirge and desperation? Or like the old man looking back on his youth, remembering only the things he’d seen, did the angle of our gaze sometimes cause us to miss the bigger picture? I didn’t think time offered clarity so much as time stripped away the emotion that colored memories. The Irish Civil War had happened eighty years before I’d traveled to Ireland. Not so far that the people had forgotten it, but enough time had passed that more—or maybe less—cynical eyes could pull the details apart and look at them for what they were.

I fail to remember, the mind has fuses.

I don't write to be understood; I write to understand.

If I were a bird,I could wish a flight unrestrained, and without bothering my sadness.