Excuse Quotes

Many people excuse their own faults
but judge other persons harshly.
We should reverse this attitude
by excusing others' shortcomings
and by harshly examining our own.
- Paramahansa Yogananda

Related topics: Wisdom Criticism Critical Blame

If I seem to boast more than is becoming,
my excuse is that I brag
for humanity rather than for myself.
- Henry David Thoreau

Well excuse me - we've got something
a little unusual going on here -
time travel, parallel universes,
or just a little common ordinary insanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
- Edward R. Murrow

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

Personally, I have fond memories of playing
on slippery rocks on the banks of a rushing river
as a child and hitchhiking in college.
To those who say, "But times are different now,"
I reply that statistically life is much safer now
than in the 1950s, with regard to both crime and accidents.
What has changed is our attitudes.
In those years, a broken leg from falling off a swing
or the back of a tractor was just part of childhood -
an excuse for gathering autographs.
Today that broken leg would be a source
of outrage and probably lawsuits.
I long for a simpler time when life was taken less seriously.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay...
does not represent the will of the American people.
I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong.
I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse
to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.
- Jimmy Carter

Ninety-nine percent of the failures
come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
- George Washington Carver

What are you committed to?
Have you started, or are you still thinking about it -
and making excuses?
Do you work toward your goal each day?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay
and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.
I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism,
but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists
to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.
- Jimmy Carter

I am the owner of my choices.
I am the source for the perspectives I choose to hold...
regardless of how aware I am of why or how I come to possess
that particular perspective.
It takes courage to look into the mirror of our souls, absent excuses.
I will look into that mirror little bits at a time.
SEE and ACT. SEE what I can bear to see and ACT upon what I am able.
This is the heart of a gentle invitation to personal responsibility.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Genius is one percent inspiration
and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
- Thomas Edison

Ninety-nine percent of who you are
is invisible and untouchable.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Life is ten percent what happens to you
and ninety percent how you respond to it.
- Lou Holtz

I think and think for months and years.
Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false.
The hundredth time I am right.
- Albert Einstein

To see things in the seed, that is genius.
- Lao Tzu

Everyone is born a genius,
but the process of living de-geniuses them.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Men of lofty genius,
when they are doing the least work,
are most active.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage
to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius is the power to labor better and more availably.
Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, Begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it, Begin it now.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you wish to succeed in life,
make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor,
caution your elder brother,
and hope your guardian genius.
- Joseph Addison

I'm not a genius.
I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Not all Heroes wear capes.
- On an Apple Inc. "Genius Bar" T-shirt

Genius always finds itself a century too early.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge

The man of genius inspires us with
a boundless confidence in our own powers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius
and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous
than absolutely boring.
- Marilyn Monroe

There's a fine line between genius and insanity.
I have erased this line.
- Oscar Levant

When nature has work to be done,
she creates a genius to do it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity;
so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
- Henry David Thoreau

Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
- Abraham Lincoln

Important ideas can come from unexpected places.
We tend to label people - Genius, Idiot,
Socialist, Regressive, Wingnut, Revolutionary, Terrorist.
But it is helpful to remind ourselves to be open
to good ideas - whatever their source.
It is equally important to avoid accepting any idea
merely because we respect that person's
other ideas or accomplishments.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you have shut your doors, and darkened your room,
remember, never to say that you are alone,
for you are not alone, but God is within,
and your genius is within.
- Epictetus

Everybody is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation
of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
- Winston Churchill

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung

The difference between stupidity and genius
is that genius has its limits.
- Albert Einstein

Everyone is a genius at least once a year;
a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
- Georg Lichtenberg

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord,
for I was not anchored to a house or farm,
but could follow the bent of my genius,
which is a very crooked one, every moment.
- Henry David Thoreau

Genius may have its limitations,
but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
- Elbert Hubbard

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law
from observation of the works of Genius,
whether of man or Nature.
The Artisan is he who merely applies
the rules which others have detected.
- Henry David Thoreau

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow,
you gotta put up with the rain.
- Dolly Parton

People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must become the change we wish to see in the world.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
- John Lubbock

The traveler sees what he sees,
the tourist sees what he has come to see.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
- Helen Keller

Choose the World You See,
and See the World You Choose.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Faith is taking the first step,
even when you don't see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

To the people who love you,
you are beautiful already.
This is not because they're
blind to your shortcomings
but because they so clearly see your soul.
- Victoria Moran

We don't see things as they are,
we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends,
of most of the people you see every day,
is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
- Theodore H. White

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau

When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.
- Japanese pictorial maxim (the Three Wise Monkeys)

Change what you see,
by changing how you see.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Do not blame the thistle that you see no beauty.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am a Passionate Observer of Life.
I See the events, feel the emotions,
and recognize the difference.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.
I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty,
believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
- Louisa May Alcott

There is beauty and adventure in the commonplace
for those with eyes to see beyond.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Obstacles are like wild animals.
They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can.
If they see you are afraid of them...
they are liable to spring upon you;
but if you look them squarely in the eye,
they will slink out of sight.
- Orison Swett Marden

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work,
and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.
- Thomas Carlyle

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The more you see the less you know.
- Bono

Gardening is all about optimism.
I put a seed in the ground.
I consistently tend it,
confident I will see the results, in time,
of the nurture I have provided.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Choose the World You See.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Celebrate what you want to see more of.
- Tom Peters

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