Category: Wisdom (Page 12 of 13)

Henry Ward Beecher was born June 24, 1813 at Litchfield, CT He was one of the most outstanding public figures of American life and a brilliant persuasive preacher. He was regarded, in his youth, as unusually stupid by his parents, teachers, and playmates. He decided to study navigation and became a sailor, for he felt unsuited for other occupations.

A great change took place in him during his time at Mount Pleasant Classical Institute, Amherst, Massachusetts; his extraordinary vitality broke through. He became active in sports, reading omnivorously, and resolved to become a preacher. He subsequently continued his studies at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. Here, he revolted against Calvinism and professed independent Presbyterianism in the name of life and the beauty of nature.

Beecher was not a man of original thought; he started no movement, but he succeeded in attracting and educating Church people, and helped them to develop the power of withstanding life’s tests and conflicts. He used his sermon to advocate social reforms; he was strongly opposed to slavery despite his dislike for radical abolitionists. He taught a disbelief in hell; defended evolution, and advocated that of which he was terribly fond, the outdoor life. Beecher’s sermons often took the side of unpopular causes, and his power of persuasion were such that his sermons gained nationwide hearing and swayed popular opinion.

“Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.”

“The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going that way.”

“If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.”

“Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.”

“Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.”

“God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.”

“Keep a fair-sized cemetery in your back yard, in which to bury the faults of your friends.”

“What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.”

“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”

“Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”

Theologian, religious writer, and broadcaster, born in Wick, Highland, N Scotland, UK. He studied at the universities of Glasgow and Marburg, and was ordained in the Church of Scotland in 1933. In 1963 he was appointed to the chair of divinity and biblical criticism at Glasgow, from which he retired in 1974. He is remembered for his many popular writings and broadcasts, such as A New Testament Wordbook (1955). His Daily Study Bible won international acclaim, and in 1968 he published his own translation of the New Testament. To those interested in understanding the reformed Christian theology, William Barclay’s writings have become a cornerstone of reference.

“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”

“There are two great days in a person’s life – the day we are born and the day we discover why.”

“Joy has nothing to do with material things, or with man’s outward circumstance…A man living in the lap of luxury can be wretched, and a man in the depths of poverty can overflow with joy.”

“If a man fights his way through his doubts to the conviction that Jesus Christ is Lord, he has attained to a certainty that the man who unthinkingly accepts things can never reach.”

“Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross….”

“We may not understand how the Spirit works; but the effect of the Spirit on the lives of men is there for all to see; and the only unanswerable argument for Christianity is a Christian life. No man can disregard a religion and a faith and a power which is able to make bad men good…”

“God does not so much need people to do extraordinary things as he needs people who do ordinary things extraordinarily well.”

A man’s spirit is the highest part . . . the part which lasts when the physical part . . . has vanished. It is the spirit of a man which is the source and origin of his highest dreams and thoughts and ideals and desires. The true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.

“If we are to accept the teaching of Jesus at all, then the only test of the reality of a man’s religion is his attitude to his fellow men. The only possible proof that a man loves God is the demonstrated fact that he loves his fellow men.”

“The Christian life could be described as getting to know God better every day. A friendship which does not grow closer with the years tends to vanish with the years. And it is so with us and God.”

“In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.”

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the son of Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Seal of Elisabeth I. He entered Trinity College Cambridge at age 12. His father died when he was 18, and being the youngest son this left him virtually penniless. He turned to the law and at 23 he was already in the House of Commons. Bacon rose to become Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans and Lord Chancellor of England. His fall came about in the course of a struggle between King and Parliament where he was accused of having taken a bribe while a judge, tried and found guilty. He thus lost his personal honor, his fortune and his place at court.

Bacon saw himself as the inventor of a method which would kindle a light in nature – “a light that would eventually disclose and bring into sight all that is most hidden and secret in the universe.” This method involved the collection of data, their judicious interpretation, the carrying out of experiments to learn the secrets of nature by organized observation of its regularities. Bacon’s proposals had a powerful influence on the development of science in seventeenth century Europe.

“A little philosophy inclines man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy brings men’s minds about to religion.”

“If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.”

“If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.”

“It is an immense ocean that surrounds the island of Truth.”

“Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”

“Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them; and wise men use them.”

“That men ought to know that in the theatre of human life it only for Gods and angels to be spectators.”

“If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.”

“The entrance into the Kingdom of man, founded on the sciences, being not much other than the entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, where into none may enter except as a little child.”

“It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships lost upon the sea: A pleasure to stand in the window of a Castle, and to see a Battaile, and the Adventures thereof, below: But no pleasure is comparable, to the standing , upon the vantage ground of Truth……”

“The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it.”

“Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study.”

“Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with mediocrity of success.”

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”

“As the births of living creatures, at first, are ill-shapen: so are the Innovations, which are the births of time.”

“Knowledge and human power are synonymous.”

“Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue.”

“A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.”

“Silence is the virtue of fools.”

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”

“Money is like muck, best when it is spread out.”

“All colors will agree in the dark.”

“Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.”

“Beggars should not be choosers.”

“Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”

“A man is but what he knows.”

“In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.”

“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”

“The mold of our fortunes is in our own hands.”

The last of the five “good” emperors (A.D. 161-180), Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (born Marcus Annius Verus) followed Antoninus Pius and was followed by his own son Commodus. Known for the Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius not only wrote his Meditations, but also waged wars. Stoicism was a philosophy named after the Stoa Poikile, a hall in Athens where it was first formulated around 300 BC by Zeno of Citium. The Stoics were the first thoroughgoing pantheists: God is the universe, the universe is God. The wise and virtuous learns one’s place in the scheme. According to Stoic Ethics, the goal of human existence is to live consistently with Nature, which means “consistently with Reason”.

Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome. He was appointed by the Emperor to a priesthood in 129, and his education was supervised by Hadrian who entrusted him to the best professors of literature, rhetoric and philosophy of the time. From his early twenties he deserted his other studies for philosophy. The Emperor Antoninus, who succeeded Hadrian, adopted Marcus Aurelius as his son in 138. He treated Aurelius as a confidant and helper throughout his reign. Aurelius was admitted to the Senate, and then twice the consulship. In 147 he shared tribunician power with Antoninus. During this time he began composition of his Meditations. In 161 Marcus Aurelius ascended the throne and shared his imperial power with his adopted brother Lucius Aurelius Verus. Useless and lazy, Verus was regarded as a kind of junior emperor, but he died in 169. After Verus’s death he ruled alone, until he admitted his own son, Commodus, to full participation in the government in 177.

As an emperor Marcus Aurelius was conservative and just by Roman standards. Toward the end of his reign, in 175, he was faced with a revolt by Avidius Cassius, whom he praised and attempted to accommodate. Year after year Aurelius tried to push barbarians back but witnessed the gradual crumbling of the Roman frontiers. In these times of disasters, he turned more and more to study of Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius’s melancholic writings reveal that the public duties depressed him and he wanted to retire to live a simple country life. After his death in Vindobona (now Vienna, Austria) on March 17, 180 the emperor’s only son Commodus became Emperor and turned out to be the worst of bad rulers.

Marcus Aurelius’s reputation is shadowed by his persecution of Christians, whom he considered superstitious and immoral. The fierce cruelty, with which the persecution was carried out in Gaul, was not consistent with his writings. However, Stoics had a profound influence upon both Neoplatonism and Christianity.

“You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.”

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.”

“By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.”

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

“Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.”

“One universe made up all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, Daw is a noted contemporary political leader. She was born in Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Rangoon, Burma), the daughter of the assassinated General Aung San, who was hailed as the father of Burmese independence. Aung San Suu Kyi studied in India and at Oxford, and came to be committed to the cause of democracy in her country. Social unrest forced dictator General Ne Win (1911– ) to resign in 1988, and the military took power. In response, she co-founded the National League for Democracy (NLD), but was later arrested along with many NLD members (1989). The NLD won a resounding victory in the ensuing elections, but she was to remain under house arrest. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, she was released in July 1995.

“The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution in spirit, the forces which had produced inequities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance, and fear.”

Saint Augustine was brought up by his mother as a Christian, but he gave up his religion when he went to school at Carthage. In his Confessions he repents of his wild youth in Carthage, during which time he fathered an illegitimate son. His years at Milan were the critical period of his life where he came to renounce his early beliefs after a deep study of Neoplatonism and skepticism. Augustine, troubled in spirit, was greatly drawn by the eloquent fervor of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan. After two years of great doubt and mental disquietude, Augustine suddenly decided to embrace Christianity.

St. Augustine’s influence on Christianity is thought by many to be second only to that of St. Paul, and theologians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, look upon him as one of the founders of Western theology. His Confessions is considered a classic of Christian autobiography. This work, the prime source for St. Augustine’s life, is a beautifully written apology for the Christian convert. Next to it his best-known work is the City of God, a mammoth defense of Christianity against its pagan critics, and famous especially for the uniquely Christian view of history.

“Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained.”

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”

“Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.”

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”

“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

“Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”

“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”

Thomas Aquinas 1225-1254) was born to a rich, influential military family in Naples, Italy. His brothers were all successful in the military or in politics, and everyone expected Thomas to follow in their footsteps. Thomas, however, had his heart set on being a Dominican monk. Thomas’ mother wrote letters to the Pope, asking that he “rescue her son from his madness.” His older brothers kidnapped him and held him in the family castle to change his mind. When this didn’t work, they sent in a prostitute to try to take his mind off of his heavenly calling. Thomas was so infuriated that he chased the woman from the room and burned the mark of a cross on the door behind her. Finally, Thomas’ sister, respecting his devotion, arranged for Thomas’ escape, and study in Paris.

Thomas lived in poverty and was a devoted student. He combined St. Francis’ humility with St. Augustine’s scholarship. When he was 33, he became the professor of religion at the University of Paris, and during twenty years as an active teacher he was incredibly prolific. Thomas was concerned with the relationship between faith and reason. He taught that there were some truths, which reason alone, could reveal, some which revelation alone could reveal and some truths that were revealed but also, which were provable by reason. In December 1273, Thomas had a profound mystical experience. After that time he wrote no more, saying “all I have written seems like straw to me.” Thomas died in the following year, when he became ill on a trip to attend a church council.

“Wonder is the desire for knowledge.”

“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”

“Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.”

“Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.”

“A small error in the beginning is a great one in the end.”

“Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.”

“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”

“A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.”

“Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.”

“Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.”

Isaac Asimov is one of the most prolific writers in American history; with over 500 titles, Asimov has covered almost every major division of the library Dewey decimal system with topics including anatomy, physiology, astronomy, the Bible, biology, chemistry, etymology, geography, Greek mythology, history, humor, mathematics, and physics. Asimov is most well known, however, for his work in science fiction, and also for being a professed and proud atheist.

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that is troublesome.”

Aristotle’s father, Nicomachus, was a noted physician. Aristotle studied (367-347 B.C.) under Plato at the Academy and there wrote many dialogues that were praised for their eloquence. He tutored Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court and lived in Stagira until his return to Athens. After Alexander’s death, Aristotle fled in 323 B.C. to Chalcis, where he died.

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

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

“Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.”
“In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.”

“Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

“The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.”

“Anyone can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not within everyone’s power and that is not easy.”

“We cannot learn without pain.”

“It seems that ambition makes most people wish to be loved rather than to love others.”

“All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.”

Antisthenes (444 BC to 371 BC) was a Greek philosopher, an Athenian and founder of the Cynic sect. During his youth he was engaged in military exploits, and acquired fame by the valor which he displayed in the battle of Tanagra. Most of his paradoxical views stemmed from his first studies, under the direction of the sophist Gorgias, who instructed him in rhetoric. He later became one of Socrates’ most ardent followers. Like Socrates, he regarded virtue as necessary — indeed, alone sufficient — for happiness, and to be a branch of knowledge that could be taught, and that once acquired could not be lost. Its essence consists in freedom from wants by the avoidance of evil (by evil meaning pleasure and desire).

Regarding his religious views, Antisthenes maintained that, in the universe, everything is regulated by a divine intelligence, from design, so to benefit the good person who is the friend of God. This doctrine was connected with his ethical views, by indicating the physical conditions of a happy life. However, it led him to declare that there is but one natural God, but many popular deities; that God cannot be known or recognized in any form or figure, since he is like nothing on earth.

Antisthenes also taught by example. He wore no other garment than a coarse cloak, did not cut his beard, and carried a sack and staff like a wandering beggar. This was meant as an expression of opposition to the gradually increasing luxury of the age, intending to bring men back to their original simplicity in life and manners. His contention with the tendency of his age and drive toward simplicity brought negative reaction from his contemporaries. Antisthenes school met with so little encouragement that he drove away the few scholars he had. Diogenes of Sinope, who resembled him in character, is said to have been the only one that remained with him to his death.

“As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion.”

“The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.”

“We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.”

“Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.”

“It is better to fall among crows than flatterers; for those devour only the dead — these the living.”