Category: Wisdom (Page 10 of 13)

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. His early years were spent Chatham, and Dickens considered his years there as the happiest of his childhood. In 1822, the family moved to London, where his father worked as a clerk in the navy pay office. Dickens’ family was considered middle class, however, his father had a difficult time managing money. His extravagant spending habits brought the family to financial disaster, and in 1824, John Dickens was imprisoned for debt.

Charles was the oldest of the Dickens children, and a result of his father’s imprisonment, he was withdrawn from school and sent to work in a shoe-dye factory. During this period, Dickens lived alone in a lodging house in North London and considered the entire experience the most terrible of his life. Nevertheless, it was this experience that shaped his much of his future writing.

After receiving an inheritance several months later, Dickens’ father was released from prison. Although Dickens’ mother wanted him to stay at work, resulting in bitter resentment towards her, his father allowed him to return to school. His schooling was again interrupted and ultimately ended when Dickens was forced to return to work at age 15. He became a clerk in a law firm, then a shorthand reporter in the courts, and finally a parliamentary and newspaper reporter.

In 1833, Dickens began to contribute short stories and essays to periodicals. He then provided a comic narrative to accompany a series of engravings, which were published as the Pickwick Papers in 1836. Also during 1836, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth. Together, they had nine surviving children, before they separated in 1858.

Dickens’ career continued at an intense pace for the next several years. Oliver Twist was serialized in Bentley’s Miscellany beginning in 1837. Then, with Oliver Twist only half completed, Dickens began to publish monthly installments of Nicholas Nickleby in 1838. Because he had so many projects in the works, Dickens was barely able to stay ahead of his monthly deadlines. After the completion of Twist and Nickleby, Dickens produced weekly installments of The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge.

After a short working vacation in the United States in 1841, began to publish annual Christmas stories, beginning with A Christmas Carol in 1843. Within the community, Dickens actively fought for social issues; such as education reform, sanitary measures, and slum clearance, and he began to directly address social issues in his novels.

In 1850, Dickens established a weekly journal entitled Household Words to which he contributed the serialized works of Child’s History of England (1851-53), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860-61). At the same time, Dickens continued to work on his novels, including David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), Little Dorrit (1855-57), and Our Mutual Friend (1864-65).

In 1858, Dickens began a series of paid readings, which became instantly popular. Through these readings, Dickens was able to combine his love of the stage with an accurate rendition of his writings. In all, Dickens performed more than 400 times. Dickens was required to abandon his reading tours in 1869 after his health began to decline. He died suddenly at home on June 9, 1870. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

“Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.”

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.”

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.”

“Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs.”

“There is a wisdom of the head, and… a wisdom of the heart.”

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

“Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.”

“Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.”

“Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.”

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”

Rene’ Descartes (1596 – 1650) was born in Touraine, France. He was one of the most important and influential thinkers in human history and is sometimes called the founder of modern philosophy. In addition to his accomplishments as a philosopher Descartes was an outstanding mathematician, inventing analytic geometry and attempting to devise the simple universal laws that governed all physical change.

Descartes published his major philosophical work, “Meditations on First Philosophy” in 1641, the year before Galileo died and Isaac Newton was born. Because he lived at a time when traditional ideas were being questioned, he sought to devise a method for reaching the truth. This concern and his method of systematic doubt had an enormous impact on the subsequent development of philosophy. Descartes introduced the now famous Latin phrase “cogito ergo sum,” or in English “I think, therefore I am.”

In Descartes’ view, the universe was created by God on whose power everything depends. He thought of God as resembling the human mind in that both the mind and God think, but have no physical being. But he believed that God is unlike the human mind in that God is infinite and does not depend on a creator for His existence.

“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”

“Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.”

“It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.”

“Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.”

“To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.”

“I think; therefore I am.”

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

“Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.”

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”

“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”

“When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.”

Democritus (460-360 B.C.) Around 440 BC, Leucippus of Miletus originated the atom concept. He and his pupil, Democritus of Abdera, refined the concept. Almost all of the original writings of Leucippus and Democritus are lost. The only sources we have for their atomistic ideas are found in quotations of other writers. Democritus’ view was that everything, including thinking itself, was made of atoms and their motions.

Democritus is known as the “Laughing Philosopher” because of his joyous spirit. He was a big man (relatively speaking) and enjoyed life tremendously. He also was very widely traveled.

Democritus lived to be 100 years old and overlapped with the young Plato, the latter makes no mention of him in any of his work. Not only does Democritus’ name not appear anywhere, Plato makes no mention of the atomic theory. This is especially odd since Plato’s star pupil and philosophical successor, Aristotle, wrote knowingly about him. One possible clue comes from the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius, who claimed that Plato so despised Democritus that he would have liked to see all his books burned.

What is known with some confidence is that Democritus was as prolific a writer as Plato. He had over fifty books to his credit, all of which were destroyed between the third and fifth centuries A.D.

“Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.”

“Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses.”

“Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold, the felling of happiness dwells in the soul.”

“Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.”

“Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds.”

“The pride of youth is in strength and beauty, the pride of old age is in discretion.”

“Tis hard to fight with anger, but the prudent man keeps it under control.”

“By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.”

“One great difference between a wise man and a fool is, the former only wishes for what he may possibly obtain; the latter desires impossibilities.”

“Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss.”

“If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.”

(1452-1519) Leonardo da Vinci was a Florentine artist, one of the great masters of the High Renaissance, who was also celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavors. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics anticipated many of the developments of modern science.

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” “Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.”

“Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.”

“Just as eating contrary to the inclination is injurious to the health, so study without desire sports the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”

“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.”

“…the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.”

“Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occurred in experience.”

“He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”

“Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.”

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.”

“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”

“The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection.”

“It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”

“You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.”

“Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.”

“Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.”

Dante is one of the greatest poets in the Italian language; with the comic story-teller Boccaccio and the poet Petrarch, he forms the classic trio of Italian s. Dante Alighieri was born in the city-state Florence in 1265. Politics as well as love deeply influenced Dante’s literary and emotional life. His work consisted of writing passionate political and moral epistles and his Divine Comedy, which contains the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. He finally died in Ravenna in 1321.

“A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.”

“In His will is our peace.”

“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”

“The secret to getting things done is to act.”

Marie Curie (1867-1934) was born in Poland as Manya Sklodowska and is famous for her work on radioactivity. In fact, she and her husband, Pierre, first coined that word. She won the Nobel prize twice, first in 1903 (jointly with her husband, and with Henri Becquerel) for the discovery of radium and polonium, and again (by herself) in 1911 for the isolation of pure radium.

Perhaps the most famous of all women scientists, Maria Sklodowska-Curie is notable for her many firsts:

• She was the first to use the term radioactivity for this phenomenon.
• She was the first woman in Europe to receive her doctorate of science.
• In 1903, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. The award, jointly awarded to Curie, her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, was for the discovery of radioactivity.
• She was also the first female lecturer, professor and head of Laboratory at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1906).
• In 1911, she won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize (this time in chemistry) for her discovery and isolation of pure radium and radium components.
• She was the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes.
• She was the first mother-Nobel Prize Laureate of daughter-Nobel Prize Laureate.
• Her oldest daughter Irene Joliot-Curie also won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1935).
• She is the first woman which has been laid to rest under the famous dome of the Pantheon in Paris for her own merits.
• She received 15 gold medals, 19 degrees, and other honors.

Madame Curie ultimately died from leukemia thought to be an effect of her experiments with radiation. Despite receiving two Nobel Prizes, Madame Curie was never admitted to the French Academie des Sciences.

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”

“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) was born in England on April 25, 1599. He was a gentleman farmer. He was also a devout Puritan. When the English Civil War broke out, he raised a cavalry troop. It is his influence as a military commander and politician during the English Civil War that dramatically altered the military and the political landscape of the British Isles. As leader of the Puritan cause, and commander of the a new army which he was instrumental in forming, he defeated Charles I’s forces, and brought to an end the absolute power of the monarchy. He ruled for several years as Lord Protector of the republican Commonwealth of England but declined the kingship when parliament offered it to him in 1657. However within two years of his death on September 3, 1658, the monarchy was restored. In 1661 his body was exhumed and was subjected to the ritual of a posthumous execution.

Cromwell’s suppression of a rebellion in Ireland in 1649 still has strong resonance among the Irish. In particular, his massacre of all men carrying arms in Drogheda after its capture, including the killing of all prisoners as well as Catholic priests and many civilians, is one of the historical memories that has driven Irish-English and Catholic-Protestant strife throughout the centuries.

“Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.”

“Do not trust to the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.”

“What is all our histories, but God showing himself, shaking and trampling on everything that he has not planted.”

“Make the iron hot by striking it.”

“I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else.”

“Necessity hath no law.”

“He who stops being better stops being good.”

“Wisest is he who knows he does not know.”

James Bryant Conant (1893-1978) was born on March 26 in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Conant was a Harvard-educated organic chemist noted for his work on chlorophyll and hemoglobin. He taught at Harvard from 1916 to 1933 and was president there from 1933 to 1953. Conant is recognized for strengthening the professional schools, increasing the geographic and social diversity of students, opening the university to women, and introducing curricular reforms.

Conant chaired the National Defense Research Committee, which developed the atomic bomb, and was instrumental in the targeting of Hiroshima, Japan. He helped found the National Science Foundation in 1950. His diplomatic career in the 1950s included four years as high commissioner and ambassador to West Germany. Finally turning toward the reform of public education, Conant conducted an extensive Carnegie Corporation study of American high schools which resulted in The American High School Today (1959). His many other educational contributions include Slums and Suburbs (1961), The Education of American Teachers (1963, and The Comprehensive High School (1967).

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”

“Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.”

“Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul. And of this no one may know save God.”

“Every vital organization owes its birth and life to an exciting and daring idea.”

“Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on January 3, 106 BC and was murdered on December 7, 43 BC. His life coincided with the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, and he was an important contributor in many of the significant political events of his time. His writings are a valuable source of information about those events.

Cicero was, among other things, an orator, lawyer, politician, and philosopher. Making sense of his writings and understanding his philosophy requires us to keep that in mind. He placed politics above philosophical study; the latter was valuable in its own right but was even more valuable as the means to more effective political action. The only periods of his life in which he wrote philosophical works were the times he was forcibly prevented from taking part in politics.

His writings give us a rich collection of wisdom and insight derived from a time when an affluent society was overcome with moral decay.

“Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which and be pointed out by your finger.”

“If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place.”

“Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”

“Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.”

“Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.”

“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”

“Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.”

“The budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.”

“Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

“Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?”

“The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.”

“If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.”

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

“No one can give you better advice than yourself.”

“If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.”

“While there’s life, there’s hope.”

“The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.”

“That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.”

“In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.”

“A friend is, as it were, a second self.”

“The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.”

“In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.”

“Let the punishment match the offense.”

“It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.”

“Friendship make prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.”

“Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.”

“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.”

“The beginnings of all things are small.”

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), son of Lord Randolph Churchill, first came to public attention as a result of his escape from a prison in Pretoria during the Boer War. He was a war correspondent and had been captured.

His political career began in 1900 with his election to Parliament as a Conservative converting later to the Liberals. He was in the Commons until 1923 and a number of ministerial offices including First Lord of the Admiralty in the Asquith government (1911-15). He served in the trenches of World War I in France in 1915-16, returning to Parliament in 1917 to serve as minister of munitions at the time the tank was being developed. After the war ended he served as secretary for war (1918-21). He was colonial secretary and was a major player in establishing the Irish Free State.

When World War II broke out, Churchill returned to his post at the Admiralty. When Chamberlain resigned he was asked to form a coalition government which he did in May, 1940 as its prime minister. Churchill became the voice of Britain during the war, his emotional speeches inspiring the nation to endure hardship and sacrifice. He had a close friendship with president Roosevelt and is often credited with jointly signing the Atlantic Charter in 1941 proclaiming their strategy for the war. However, Churchill would later admit that the Atlantic Charter was actually a press release that “took on a life of its own.” Created for propaganda reasons, both men never really signed this Charter. Churchill met with Allied leaders in Casablanca, Washington, Cairo, Moscow and Tehran. He met with Stalin and Roosevelt in the Crimea in February, 1945 to plan for the final victory over Germany. He announced the German surrender on May 8th.

Following his historic World War II ministry which secured his place in history, and his second term, Churchill took to writing and painting. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his six volume history of World War II (1948-1954). He also wrote “History of the English-Speaking Peoples” in four volumes (1956-58).

“Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is.”

“A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind, and won’t change the subject.”

“Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”

“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!”

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

“There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.”

“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.”

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.”

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use the pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time; a tremendous whack.”

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”

“If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.”

“Never, never, never, never give up.”

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”