Maxim Quotes

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.

It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential

Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion....if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me.

In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.

When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid.

Each day is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to Him.

These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

I like maxims that don't encourage behavior modification. -Calvin

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.

Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.

One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger.

All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.

A good traveller is one who knows how to travel with the mind.

A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.

Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.

What I'd like is to meet a man I could take off my hat to and say: "Thank you for having got born, and the longer you live the better.

Always ask yourself: "What will happen if I say nothing?

When work is a pleasure, life is a joy. When work is a duty, life is slavery!

Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.

The first was that if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.

The maxim, "Nothing prevails but perfection," may be spelled PARALYSIS.

I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting quite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die, the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched. Here we sat together, Maxim and I, hand-in-hand, and the past and the future mattered not at all. This was secure, this funny little fragment of time he would never remember, never think about again…For them it was just after lunch, quarter-past-three on a haphazard afternoon, like any hour, like any day. They did not want to hold it close, imprisoned and secure, as I did. They were not afraid.

Passion often makes fools of the wisest men and gives the silliest wisdom.

There is no such thing as a happy ending. Every culture has a maxim that makes this point, while nowhere in the Universe is there a single gravestone that reads 'He Loved Everything About His Life, Especially the Dying Bit at the End'.

I don't know who Maxime thinks she's kidding. If Hagrid's half-giant, she definitely is. Big bones... the only thing that's got bigger bones than her is a dinosaur.

When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, there arises the recognition of ugliness. When they all know the good as good, there arises the recognition of evil.

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.

Max-I'm not going to die today.

Some of us were brought into this troubled world primarily or only to increase our fathers’ chances of not being left by our mothers, or vice versa.

What you choose also chooses you.

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say: “By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She’s married, with two children.” And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me. Not even Maxim. If Maxim had been there I should not be lying as I was now, chewing a piece of grass, my eyes shut. I should have been watching him, watching his eyes, his expression. Wondering if he liked it, if he was bored. Wondering what he was thinking. Now I could relax, none of these things mattered. Maxim was in London. How lovely it was to be alone again.

The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.

In the simple moral maxim the Marine Corps teaches — do the right thing, for the right reason — no exception exists that says: unless there's criticism or risk. Damn the consequences.

Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt at being told that it is a fragment awaiting perfection.

A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.

Amy's basically exploiting the sociopath's most reliable maxim. The bigger the lie, the more they believe it.

You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!" It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended.

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!

We forgive so long as we love.

The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.

If you think I'm one of those people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong. I'm invariably ill-tempered in the early morning.

The most upsetting thing about Society’s attitude towards disabled people is that many millions of disabled people became disabled while trying to please Society, the very same bitch that secretly regards them as subhuman.

A relationship is likely to last way longer, if each partner convinces or has convinced themselves that they do not deserve their partner, even if that is not true.

Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

I’ve been thinking about five intersecting problems: first, how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

People would never fall in love if they hadn't heard love talked about.

Before machine learning, multivariate regression provided an efficient way to condition on multiple things, without the need to calculate dozens, hundreds, or thousands of conditional averages. Regression takes the data and tries to find the result that minimizes prediction mistakes, maximizing what is called “goodness of fit.

First, individual rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good, and second, the principles of justice that specify these rights cannot be premised on any particular vision of the good life. What justifies the rights is not that they maximize the general welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they comprise a fair framework within which individuals and groups can choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.

Extreme boredom provides its own antidote.

Writers build castles in the air, the reader lives inside, and the publisher inns the rent.

Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future

إن الكنائس في المدن الكبيرة مليئة بالفضة والذهب اللذين لا حاجة لله بهما ، في حين يرتجف على ابواب الكنائس عدد لا يحصى من الفقراء ينتظرون بفارغ الصبر هبات نحيلة تُلقى في أيديهم المفتوحة.

Kings need not raise their voices to be heard.

Only courageous hearts can endure the bitterness of truth.

لا يكفي أن تعرف, لابد أن تفهم

Incredibly intelligent people always seem odd to those who are not as sharp.

357.—Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all and are not even hurt.

I could fight with the living but I could not fight the dead. If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved, someone he wrote to, visited, dined with, slept with, I could fight her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered. One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her anymore. But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And she and I could not fight. She was too strong for me.

Life sometimes reminds us that it is sometimes heartless by giving something or someone we really need to someone who does not need or even want them or it.

You will not drown the truth in seas of blood

When the life is monotonous , even grief is a welcome event...

Apologizing is like spring cleaning.

Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring.

THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE Before you examine the body of a patient, Be patient to learn his story. For once you learn his story, You will also come to know His body. Before you diagnose any sickness, Make sure there is no sickness in the mind or heart. For the emotions in a man’s moon or sun, Can point to the sickness in Any one of his other parts. Before you treat a man with a condition, Know that not all cures can heal all people. For the chemistry that works on one patient, May not work for the next, Because even medicine has its own Conditions. Before asserting a prognosis on any patient, Always be objective and never subjective. For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life, But then later discovering that he will lose, Will harm him more than by telling him That he may lose, But then he wins. THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE by Suzy Kassem

Humans have a saying that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", which basically means that if you think it's beautiful, then it is beautiful. The elfin version of this saying was composed by the great poet B.O Selecta, who said "Even the plainest of the plain shall deign to reign", which critics have always thought was a bit rhymey. The dwarf version of this maxim is "If it don't stink, marry it", which is slightly less romantic, but the general gist is the same.

Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is enlightened self-interest.

Kara! Be thankful you are allowed to roam about inside the house, but let me warn you, if you ever put any of my people in danger by attempting to escape again, I’ll lock you in your room and throw away the key.

Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems.

The illness of a doctor is always worse than the illnesses of his patients.The patients only feel, but the doctor, as well as feeling, has a pretty good idea of the destructive effect of the disease on his constitution.This is a case in which knowledge brings death nearer.

I closed my eyes, put my right hand on top of the book, and passed it lightly across the cover. It was cool and smooth like a stone from the bottom of the brook, and it stilled me. A whole other world is inside there, I thought to myself, and that's where I want to be.

So you got fired?” “I quit.” “When I quit the Order, you told me I was besmirched.” “That’s because you quit in a huff over some silliness like trying to save people’s lives. I quit to maximize my earning potential. Don’t you know being a hero is a losing bet? The pay is shit and people hate you for it.” Luther looked at Curran. “Who is the male specimen?” Curran offered Luther his hand. “Lennart.” Luther grabbed Curran’s hand and smelled it. “Shapeshifter, feline, probably a lion, but not the run-of-the-mill African Simba. You’ve got an odd scent about you.” He glanced at me. “Why do you always hang out with weirdos?

Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose Your idea of happiness ... To fight Your idea of misery ... Submission The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility The vice you detest most ... Servility Your aversion ... Martin Tupper Favourite occupation ... Book-worming Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust] Favourite flower ... Daphne Favourite colour ... Red Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny Favourite dish ... Fish Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me] Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted].

They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they had never fitted. Frank's odd manner when I spoke about Rebecca. Beatrice and her rather diffident negative attitude. The silence that I had always taken for sympathy and regret was a silence born of shame and embarrassment. It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great wall in front of them that hid the truth. This was what I had done. I had built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth. Had I made one step forward out of my own shyness Maxim would have told these things four months, five months ago.

Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by "over-production"; it's not caused by drink or laziness; and it's not caused by "over-population". It's caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's Their Land," "It's Their Water," "It's Their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?" And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of th gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you'll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice" in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.