Alton Greene Quotes

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

What is true belongs to me!

To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.

If you judge, investigate.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

If you wished to be loved, love.

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.

A person`s fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.

Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.

A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

He who is brave is free.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.

The wish for healing has always been half of health.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

It is another`s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

If you would judge, understand.

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man... It is more powerful than external circumstances.

Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself.

God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

No man was ever wise by chance.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

One must steer, not talk.

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

Life`s like a play: it`s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

For greed all nature is too little.

What nature requires is obtainable, and within easy reach. It is for the superfluous we sweat.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

Every reign must submit to a greater reign.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short... if one follows patterns.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can`t find.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

Believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

It`s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It`s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.

Time discovers truth.

The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered to-day? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

The heart is great which shows moderation in the midst of prosperity.

The first step in a person`s salvation is knowledge of their sin.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

A great mind becomes a great fortune.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

Those who boast of their decent, brag on what they owe to others.

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

Every guilty person is his own hangman.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

A man`s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Life is warfare.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer`s hand.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

I don`t consider myself bald, I`m just taller than my hair.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

I don`t trust liberals, I trust conservatives.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

All art is but imitation of nature.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

Life, if well lived, is long enough.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.