I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colours are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content.
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Once Confucius was walking on the mountains and he came across a woman weeping by a grave. He asked the woman what here sorrow was, and she replied, We are a family of hunters. My father was eaten by a tiger. My husband was bitten by a tiger and died. And now my only son! Why don't you move down and live in the valley? Why do you continue to live up here? asked Confucius. And the woman replied, But sir, there are no tax collectors here! Confucius added to his disciples, You see, a bad government is more to be feared than tigers.
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Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undoneThe wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
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The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.
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A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.
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Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.
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The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach.
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This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
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This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor to change the character of our thought.
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Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.
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Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone…The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
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Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.
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'I have done my best.' That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.
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Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly as he thinks.
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Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick.
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Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.
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If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
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