The Glowing Opinion We Hold of Ourselves

Quotations collected by Andy Hanson

The following quotes have made me more thoughtful, and, it is hoped, a little wiser.

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning.  The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.   Eugene S. Wilson

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.   Quentin Crisp

The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others.  This is the basic architecture of life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.   Grayson Kirk

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.   Albert Einstein

Good people are good because they have come to wisdom through failure.   William Saroyan

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without loosing your temper or your self-confidence.   Robert Frost

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.   Duke Ellington

Perhaps the valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.   Thomas Huxley

With increasing intensity, Christians have been asked the question, "Is there really a spiritual vacuum, a God-shaped void in every human being, the real filling of which is essential to the full development of human nature:  And does Christianity make an inward, real, measurable change in a person, or is Christianity just one of several sets of metaphors?"   Donald John

I just want to do God's will.  And He's allowed me to go to the mountain.  And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land.  So I'm not worried about anything.  I'm not fearing any man.   Martin Luther King, Jr.  (the night before his death)

from A Christmas Carol

"But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round - apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, 'God bless it!'"

Charles Dickens

Only the Curious

The following quotes have made me more thoughtful, and, it is hoped, a little wiser.  
Andy Hanson


Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient.  
Eugene S. Wilson 

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