Forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! control the present! Live supremely well now! This is the way of the wise.
Wisdom is one of the few things in human life that does not diminish with age.
It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.
The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence...Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually.
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.
Be always resolute with the present hour. Every moment is of infinite value.
There is nothing more ancient than the truth.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistake of our own period. And that means the old books.
The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future.
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.
Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.
In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him.
Our problems and pain are universal and increasing, and the solutions to the problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.
To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better.
Be innocent, wise and ninety-five.
The sage has one advantage: he is immortal. If this is not his century, many others will be.
The past is no longer yours; the future is not yet in your power. You have only the present wherein to do good.
What children we are, even the wisest! When God walks the earth, his steps are often centuries apart.
To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.
A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. ... Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
I sensed that Confucius is an interesting character. This is someone who lived over 2,500 years ago and is still speaking to us. That people are still reading and repeating what he said so long ago is something I find quite fascinating.
All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
