Cleo > Cleo's Quotes

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis

“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers

“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. (Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.)”
― Ovid

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:34”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“As a vessel is known by its sound whether it be cracked or not, so men are proved by their speeches whether they be wise or foolish.”
― Demosthenes

“It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”
― Aristotle, The Rhetoric & The Poetics of Aristotle

“How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!”
― Homer

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
― Aristotle

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
― Aristotle

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God”
― Blaise Pascal, The Shadowed Valley

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
― Aristotle

“Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Hide not your talents, they for use were made,
What's a sundial in the shade?”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.)”
― Julius Caesar

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas

“Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"

"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night