Finest Quotes

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools,
but the gentle touches of air and water
working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
- Henry David Thoreau

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

I think one of the finest gifts I can give
my friends in the holiday season is to pause
with a long enough quality to actually SEE them.
My calm, unhurried presence communicates
this gift of a message, "I see you. I recognize you.
I remember our times of together
and am contributing right now to another quality memory.
I value you and honor and take the time,
right this moment to pause long enough to truly notice you."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

It is a fine thing to be honest,
but it is also very important to be right.
- Winston Churchill

There is a fine line between
the perseverance of the courageous tortoise
and the habit of the stubborn donkey.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Could you risk believing that everything
will unfold just fine if you completely let go
of all concern about everything else,
and simply are here, now - if only for a moment?
- Dmitri Bilgere

The key to success, and to happiness,
is being fully engaged in life -
leading yourself with inspiration and committed action -
setting your own fine and honorable example.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Don't take rejection personally.
Don't let someone else's bad day spoil your day.
As long as you never reject yourself, you'll be fine.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It's fine to celebrate success
but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
- Bill Gates

Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend,
but it requires a very fine nature
to sympathize with a friend's success.
- Oscar Wilde

The best effort of a fine person
is felt after we have left their presence.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I once had a rose named after me
and I was very flattered.
But I was not pleased to read
the description in the catalogue:
no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person
walks in the woods and listens carefully,
he can learn more than what is in books,
for they speak with the voice of God.
- George Washington Carver

There is a fine line between perseverance and insanity.
At what point have you tried your best,
and it's time to do something different?
It's a balance - a paradox.
If you get in the habit of giving up
as soon as something gets difficult,
your life won't work,
but if you keep tilting at windmills -
madly trying the same thing again and again,
your life also won't work.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Spirit is always waiting to rush into us,
but we are too full of worldly things.
It is like trying to pour fine wine into a cup filled with mud -
the wine is waiting, but the mud must be removed first.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life repeats itself mindlessly -
unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel.
That's why Buddhists call it the wheel of life and death,
the wheel of time.
It moves like a wheel: birth is followed by death,
death is followed by birth;
love is followed by hate, hate is followed by love;
success is followed by failure,
failure is followed by success. Just see!
If you can watch just for a few days,
you will see a pattern emerging, a wheel pattern.
One day, a fine morning, you are feeling so good and so happy,
and another day you are so dull,
so dead that you start thinking of committing suicide.
And just the other day you were so full of life,
so blissful that you were feeling thankful to God,
that you were in a mood of deep gratefulness,
and today there is great complaint
and you don't see the point why one should go on living...
And it goes on and on, but you don't see the pattern.
Once you see the pattern, you can get out of it.
- Osho

Marriage is a fine institution -
but I'm not ready for an institution yet.
- Mae West

All fine architectural values are human values, else not valuable.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

I am the Wizard. This world is mine.
I speak. It's done. My realm is fine.
My wand, my tongue. My sword, my voice.
It's good. It's bad. I speak my choice.
I say happy, or I say mad.
I say angry, or I say glad.
I name that drawing on the wall.
It's not graffiti after all.
The past has been broken. The prison's not real.
My word holds the magic - the power to heal.
Intent is my weapon - a sword from above.
Cruel hate, fear, and anger transmute into love.
This world's my joy. This mouth's my toy.
Reborn -I'm a brand new girl or boy.
I choose. I speak. My will is done.
Come join. Come play. This can be fun.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got
a tolerable planet to put it on?
- Henry David Thoreau

There are certain pursuits which,
if not wholly poetic and true,
do at least suggest a nobler and finer
relation to nature than we know.
The keeping of bees, for instance.
- Henry David Thoreau

Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use
and a finer sense of comfort,
expressed in organic simplicity.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

The final delusion is the belief
that one has lost all delusions.
- Maurice Chapelain

Success is not final, failure is not fatal.
It is the courage to continue that counts.
- Winston Churchill

Happiness is the final and perfect fruit
of obedience to the laws of life.
- Helen Keller

Life is a game - a game you can never win.
You already know the final score: Life 1, You 0.
Doesn't mean you can't have fun playing.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths,
but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.
- Anne Frank

How true Daddy's words were when he said:
all children must look after their own upbringing.
Parents can only give good advice
or put them on the right paths,
but the final forming of a person's character
lies in their own hands.
- Anne Frank

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love
will have the final word in reality.
That is why right, temporarily defeated,
is stronger than evil triumphant.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life is a continuity always and always.
There is no final destination it is going towards.
Just the pilgrimage, just the journey in itself is life,
not reaching to some point,
no goal - just dancing and being in pilgrimage,
moving joyously, without bothering about any destination.
- Osho

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle
than the courage of a final moment;
but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.
- John F. Kennedy

"Mother Teresa Prayer"
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
... Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives;
... Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
... Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
... Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
... Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
... Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
... Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
... Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
We can do no great things - only small things with great love.
- although commonly attributed to Mother Teresa,
who kept a copy of this prayer on
the wall of her Calcutta orphanage,
this prayer was actually written by Kent Keith.

I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year
for cheating on my metaphysics final ...
I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall

The final lesson a writer learns is that
everything can nourish the writer.
The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter,
a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.
- Anais Nin

In the final choice, a soldier's pack
is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound
to the starless midnight of racism and war
that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood
can never become a reality...
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love
will have the final word.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is amazing how complete is the delusion
that beauty is goodness.
- Leo Tolstoy

A person experiences life as
something separated from the rest -
a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.
Our task must be to free ourselves
from this self-imposed prison,
and through compassion,
to find the reality of Oneness.
- Albert Einstein

I think you're the opposite of a paranoid.
I think you go around with the insane delusion that people like you.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry

Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.
- Thomas Szasz

It is amazing how much you can accomplish
when it doesn't matter who gets the credit.
- Anonymous

The human spirit ranges across a truly amazing
diversity of experiences and emotions -
the highest peaks and the lowest valleys.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Humans do have an amazing capacity
for believing what they choose,
and excluding that which is painful.
- Spock (character in Star Trek television series)

I thank you God for this most amazing day,
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and for the blue dream of sky
and for everything which is natural,
which is infinite, which is yes.
- e. e. cummings

Seeing my glass of life as mostly full
triggers an amazing cycle of transformation
Appreciation for the abundance of life incites gratitude -
which brings on that warm comfortable
feeling of joy and satisfaction with life.
Gratitude for abundance also creates increasing abundance.
Being truly grateful for the abundance that
is now in my life causes an ever greater abundance
to flow in my direction.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What is a miracle? To some, it is an act of God.
To others, something amazing, extraordinary, or unexpected.
To me, Life is a miracle.
Everything that happens is a miracle.
There is no reason for me to exist as I do -
no reason for humanity, the universe, or the laws of Nature.
Energy, mass, gravity and the rest of existence
are all so improbable.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I recognize this in my writing process.
A consistent writing structure opens the door to amazing insights.
I recognize the truth of this in my daily habits.
When I set my keys in the place
I, with practice, always set my keys...
I do not lose them.
In many instances an ordered external structure
can be an invitation for an extraordinarily unfettered,
creative and unbounded inner structure.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

I have a very pessimistic view of life.
You should know this about me if we're gonna go out.
You know, I - I feel that life is -
is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.
Those are the two categories, you know.
The - the horrible would be like, um,
I don't know, terminal cases, you know,
and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life.
It's amazing to me. You know, and the miserable is everyone else.
That's - that's - so - so - when you go through life -
you should be thankful that you're miserable
because you're very lucky to be miserable.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall

Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession
as they torment us with their loss.
- Epicurus

Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Whether we allow external events to
shape our lives at a core level
is very much within our own control.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

I am an optimist.
It does not seem too much use being anything else.
- Winston Churchill

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Much in life can be seen as ugly or beautiful - it's our choice.
Why would we choose to see any part of life as ugly?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do...
but how much love we put in that action.
- Mother Teresa

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe,
deserves your love and affection.
- The Buddha

This day I see that pretty much all
my correspondences are love letters.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to leave the world a better place,
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it.
It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
- Grace Hopper

By not caring too much about what people think,
I'm able to think for myself
and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular.
And I succeed.
- Albert Ellis

Often it does not matter so much what we choose,
but that we do choose.
- Alan Cohen

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

Jonathan Huie jlh(at)jlhuie(dot)com - About & Disclosure

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