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Welcome to these Excusing Quotes of the Day from my large collection of positive, romantic, and funny quotes.
Many people excuse their own faults
but judge other persons harshly.
We should reverse this attitude
by excusing others' shortcomings
and by harshly examining our own.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
Related topics: Wisdom Criticism Critical Blame
If I seem to boast more than is becoming,
my excuse is that I brag
for humanity rather than for myself.
- Henry David Thoreau
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
- Edward R. Murrow
Well excuse me - we've got something
a little unusual going on here -
time travel, parallel universes,
or just a little common ordinary insanity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Personally, I have fond memories of playing
on slippery rocks on the banks of a rushing river
as a child and hitchhiking in college.
To those who say, "But times are different now,"
I reply that statistically life is much safer now
than in the 1950s, with regard to both crime and accidents.
What has changed is our attitudes.
In those years, a broken leg from falling off a swing
or the back of a tractor was just part of childhood -
an excuse for gathering autographs.
Today that broken leg would be a source
of outrage and probably lawsuits.
I long for a simpler time when life was taken less seriously.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
What has happened at Guantanamo Bay...
does not represent the will of the American people.
I'm embarrassed about it, I think its wrong.
I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse
to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.
- Jimmy Carter
Ninety-nine percent of the failures
come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
- George Washington Carver
What are you committed to?
Have you started, or are you still thinking about it -
and making excuses?
Do you work toward your goal each day?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay
and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.
I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism,
but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists
to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.
- Jimmy Carter
I am the owner of my choices.
I am the source for the perspectives I choose to hold...
regardless of how aware I am of why or how I come to possess
that particular perspective.
It takes courage to look into the mirror of our souls, absent excuses.
I will look into that mirror little bits at a time.
SEE and ACT. SEE what I can bear to see and ACT upon what I am able.
This is the heart of a gentle invitation to personal responsibility.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
Genius is one percent inspiration
and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
- Thomas Edison
Ninety-nine percent of who you are
is invisible and untouchable.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Life is ten percent what happens to you
and ninety percent how you respond to it.
- Lou Holtz
I think and think for months and years.
Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false.
The hundredth time I am right.
- Albert Einstein
Men of lofty genius,
when they are doing the least work,
are most active.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius is the power to labor better and more availably.
Deserve thy genius: exalt it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everyone is born a genius,
but the process of living de-geniuses them.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
If you wish to succeed in life,
make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor,
caution your elder brother,
and hope your guardian genius.
- Joseph Addison
To see things in the seed, that is genius.
- Lao Tzu
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage
to move in the opposite direction.
- Albert Einstein
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, Begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it, Begin it now.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I'm not a genius.
I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge
What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The man of genius inspires us with
a boundless confidence in our own powers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not all Heroes wear capes.
- On an Apple Inc. "Genius Bar" T-shirt
When nature has work to be done,
she creates a genius to do it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you have shut your doors, and darkened your room,
remember, never to say that you are alone,
for you are not alone, but God is within,
and your genius is within.
- Epictetus
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation
of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
- Winston Churchill
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius
and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous
than absolutely boring.
- Marilyn Monroe
Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung
Important ideas can come from unexpected places.
We tend to label people - Genius, Idiot,
Socialist, Regressive, Wingnut, Revolutionary, Terrorist.
But it is helpful to remind ourselves to be open
to good ideas - whatever their source.
It is equally important to avoid accepting any idea
merely because we respect that person's
other ideas or accomplishments.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Everyone is a genius at least once a year;
a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
- Georg Lichtenberg
Everybody is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
Towering genius disdains a beaten path.
It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
- Abraham Lincoln
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity;
so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
- Henry David Thoreau
The difference between stupidity and genius
is that genius has its limits.
- Albert Einstein
There's a fine line between genius and insanity.
I have erased this line.
- Oscar Levant
Genius may have its limitations,
but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
- Elbert Hubbard
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord,
for I was not anchored to a house or farm,
but could follow the bent of my genius,
which is a very crooked one, every moment.
- Henry David Thoreau
The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law
from observation of the works of Genius,
whether of man or Nature.
The Artisan is he who merely applies
the rules which others have detected.
- Henry David Thoreau
When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
- Henry David Thoreau
The problems of the world cannot possibly
be solved by skeptics or cynics
whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.
We need men who can dream of things that never were.
- John F. Kennedy
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wise men put their trust in ideas
and not in circumstances
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau
The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock
How could man rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
- Lao Tzu
Women must try to do things as men have tried.
When they fail their failure must be
but a challenge to others.
- Amelia Earhart
Who never walks save where he sees
men's tracks, makes no discoveries.
- J. G. Holland
There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau
Men and women are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
- Henry David Thoreau
Shallow men believe in luck.
Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
The majority of men meet with failure
because of their lack of persistence
in creating new plans to take
the place of those which fail.
- Napoleon Hill
Great men or men of great gifts
you shall easily find,
but symmetrical men never.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Men are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood
between sincere men of all denominations.
- Helen Keller
Achievement seems to be connected with action.
Successful men and women keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton
Men are disturbed not by things,
but by the view which they take of them.
- Epictetus
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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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