Sebastian Leonhardt > Sebastian's Quotes

“Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty.”
― Tacitus

“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”
― Confucius

“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
― Confucius

“If what one has to say is not better than silence, then one should keep silent.”
― Confucius

“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”
― Confucius

“True education is a kind of never ending story — a matter of continual beginnings, of habitual fresh starts, of persistent newness.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
― Lao Tzu

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea

“In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends.”
― Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea

“Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea

“But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea

“In the liquid amber within the ivory porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.”
― Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.”
― Herodotus, The Histories

“It is the greatest and the tallest of trees that the gods bring low with bolts and thunder. For the gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves.”
― Herodotus

“I tried to imagine myself a long time ago, in the lands where these stories were first told, during the long winter nights perhaps, under the glow of the northern lights,”
― Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

“They heard a distant rumbling, like thunder on the peaks, or mountains crumbling, or huge waves crashing to shore, and the earth shook with each rumble.
“My husband is coming home,” said the giantess. “I hear his gentle footsteps in the distance.”
― Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

“In Jotunheim, the home of the giants, is Mimir’s well. It bubbles up from deep in the ground, and it feeds Yggdrasil, the world-tree. Mimir, the wise one, the guardian of memory, knows many things. His well is wisdom, and when the world was young he would drink every morning from the well, by dipping the horn known as the Gjallerhorn into the water and draining it.”
― Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Compassion is the radicalism of our time.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”
― Charles Darwin

“Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: -- no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.”
― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

“New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities