Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true. ...
by Francis Bacon

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
- Francis Bacon

Related topics: Life Human-Nature Psychology Cynical

This communicating of a man's self to his friend
works two contrary effects;
for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.
- Francis Bacon

Little do men perceive what solitude is,
and how far it extendeth.
For a crowd is not company,
and faces are but a gallery of pictures,
and talk but a tinkling cymbal,
where there is no love.
- Francis Bacon

A man cannot speak to his son, but as a father;
to his wife, but as a husband;
to his enemy, but upon terms:
whereas a friend may speak, as the case requires,
and not as it sorteth with the person.
- Francis Bacon

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
- Francis Bacon

Those that want friends to open themselves unto
are cannibals of their own hearts.
- Francis Bacon

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

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

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

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot

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

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

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

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.

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

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

Intent is what can make a man succeed
when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
- Carlos Castaneda

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

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

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

There are other measures of self-respect for a man,
than the number of clean shirts he puts on every day.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man can do only what he can do.
But if he does that each day he can sleep at night
and do it again the next day.
- Albert Schweitzer

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

Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen

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

One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe,
that lures him to evil ways.
- The Buddha

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only
by the man who is as well organized
in his individuality as the mass itself.
- Carl Jung

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

A man is a success if he gets up in
the morning and gets to bed at night,
and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for,
he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
- Henry David Thoreau

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 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

How could man rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
- Lao Tzu

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

As long as a man stands in his own way,
everything seems to be in his way.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.
- Epicurus

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every man dies. Not every man truly lives.
- the movie Braveheart

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

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
- John Morley

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

Non-violence means avoiding not only external physical violence
but also internal violence of spirit.
You not only refuse to shoot a man,
but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys
the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist,
and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.
- Albert Schweitzer

Man plans, God laughs
- Yiddish Proverb

Before you criticize a man,
walk a mile in his shoes.
- Anonymous

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson

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

A great secret of success is to go through life
as a man who never gets used up.
- Albert Schweitzer

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
- Albert Schweitzer

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin

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

The ultimate test of a man's conscience
may be his willingness to sacrifice something today
for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
- Gaylord Nelson

Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
- Mark Twain

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

A man in debt is so far a slave.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man
are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.
- Albert Pike

If there is anything that a man can do well,
I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
- Abraham Lincoln

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives
and not in what he is able to receive.
- Albert Einstein

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

I cannot trust a man to control others
who cannot control himself.
- Robert E. Lee

If a man loses 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

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand,
the spines of others are often stiffened.
- Billy Graham

Try not to become a man of success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be,
at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

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

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie