W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“When once we engage in secret and guilty practices we are nearer other and greater crimes than we at all suspect.”
Source: In a Glass Darkly
“When once we have discovered how pain and suffering diminish the personality and how joy alone increases it, then the morbid attraction which is felt for evil, pain and abnormality will have lost its power. Why do we reward our men of genius, our suicides, our madmen and the generally maladjusted with the melancholy honours of a posthumous curiosity? Because we know that it is our society which has condemned these men to death and which is guilty because, out of its own ignorance and malformation, it has persecuted those who were potential saviours; smiters of the rock who might have touched the spring of healing and brought us back into harmony with ourselves. Somehow, then, and without going mad, we must learn from these madmen to reconcile fanaticism with serenity. Either one, taken alone, is disastrous, yet except through the integration of these two opposites there can be no great art and no profound happiness--and what else is worth having? For nothing can be accomplished without fanaticism and without serenity nothing can be enjoyed.”
Source: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus
“When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.
{Letter to John Adams, from Monticello, 15 August 1820}”
Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson
“When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.”
Source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
“When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.”
“When once you realize all that it cost God to forgive you, you will be held as in a vice, constrained by the love of God.”
Source: The Oswald Chambers Devotional Reader: 52 Weekly Themes
“When once you realize your own Self, and that there is nothing other than this Self, you will come to look upon the whole universe as the Self.”
Source: Ramana Maharshi: Teachings of Self-Realization
“When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.”
Source: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
“When one 'we' gets to determine standards for all 'we's' then some 'we's' are in trouble.”
“When one accepts all viewpoints, that is known as the religion of the absolutely Enlightened Ones (Vitaraag dharma).”
Source: Who am I?
“When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.”
Source: Atlas Shrugged
“When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.”
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian
“When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.”
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian
“When one analyzes the pre-conscious step to concepts, one always finds ideas which consist of 'symbolic images.' The first step to thinking is a painted vision of these inner pictures whose origin cannot be reduced only and firstly to the sensual perception but which are produced by an 'instinct to imagining' and which are re-produced by different individuals independently, i.e. collectively... But the archaic image is also the necessary predisposition and the source of a scientific attitude. To a total recognition belong also those images out of which have grown the rational concepts.”
“When one approach is not working to reach the desired goal, that's not a reason to abandon the goal. Instead, it is time to devise another approach.”
“When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they’re doing so for purely selfish reasons. It’s the human equivalent of a puppy dog’s face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, 'please lower my taxes.'”
“When one becomes conscious of his great humility, he has already lost it. When one begins boasting of his humility, it has already become pride-the antithesis of humility.”
Source: The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, Twelfth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
“When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time past, one's sensibility, being no longer dulled by habit, receives from the slightest stimulus vivid impressions which make everything that has preceded them fade into insignificance, impressions to which, because of their intensity, we attach ourselves with the momentary enthusiasm of a drunkard.”
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)
“When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and young people., he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is sweetest and purest in human existence.”
Source: Concord Days
“When one becomes self-aware, all mental delusions fade away like darkness in the sky, banished by the movement of the sun.”
Source: Twenty + One - 21 Short Stories
“When one begins the transformative process, death and birth are imminent: the death of custom as authority, the birth of the self.”
Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s
“When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.”
“When one begins to notice that this world has reflections of the Real and contemplates on that idea or uses that reality map often, it seems to create an attraction where the sacred becomes more apparent. Noticing the Sacred makes the Sacred more noticeable as it were. It even influences the content of the other dream world.”
“When one begins to purposefully perform acts of kindness, the spirit changes and soon doing good deeds becomes a focal point for our life; doing good begins to be the same as feeling good. The periods of emptiness when we search for the "meaning of it all" begin to fill with acts of kindness.”
“When one begins to really feel into the spiritual dimension of their beings, they bump into love. They bump into compassion. They bump into beauty.”
“When one begins to reflect on philosophy—then philosophy seems to us to be everything, like God, and love. It is a mystical, highly potent, penetrating idea—which ceaselessly drives us inward in all directions. The decision to do philosophy—to seek philosophy is the act of self-liberation—the thrust toward ourselves.”
Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
“When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.”
Source: The Feminine Mystique
“When one begins to think of oneself as growing old, one is already old.”
Source: After all
“When one begins to turn in bed, it is time to get up.”
“When one being gets into the mood of life he can bring millions to life. When one fellow gets into the suicidal mood, he can kill thousands along with him.”
“When one believes, ‘I know it’, a veil of ignorance arises and it breaks one’s inclination towards spiritual inquiry.”
Source: Spirituality in Speech
“When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”
“When one by force subdues men, they do not submit to him in heart. They submit because their strength is not adequate to resist.”
Source: The Chinese Classics
“When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; when man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die!”
“When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.”
“When one can hear people moving, one does not so much mind, about one's fears.”
Source: The Mysteries of Udolpho
“When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.”
Source: The complete prose of Marianne Moore
“When one cannot be sure that there are many days left, each single day becomes as important as a year, and one does not waste an hour in wishing that that hour were longer, but simply fills it, like a smaller cup, as high as it will go without spilling over.”
“When one cannot control their thoughts, they can become the most destructive force in their life. Our thoughts make us happy, content, irritable, and distraught. Control them and define each moment.”
“When one cannot depart from the present or the past, the future shall be beyond their reach; they meander a path inattentive and without destination.”
“When one cautions you, he is a 'lighthouse' and if one find faults with the lighthouse, when will that ship reach safely [to its destination]?.”
“When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him.”
Source: Life and the Student: Roadside Notes on Human Nature, Society, and Letters
“When one chants the holy name of Krishna, Krishna dances on the tongue and one wishes one had thousands of ears and thousands of mouths with which to better appreciate the holy names of God.”
“When one child says to another, "I can do this, I bet you can't"; "My dad has a bigger car than yours"; or, "My dad is stronger than yours." Children identify with this or that, trying to build up a sense of self - a mentally defined sense of self.”
“When one chooses to be a writer, psychologically there's a reason for that because you like the isolation and you like to be by yourself and you are by nature timid.”
“When one comes out to speak, it's NOT because they want to be pitied and told everything will be fine. We know everything will be fine but our tears and our words, and hidden messages on posts, our statuses is to let you know that we are still in search of happiness. To tell you we are trying to be strong, to remind you that there will always be time when even in the morning weeping still endures. Where our nights of tears are no different from the sun that was supposed to bring laughter. Everyone of us have a way of attaining relief. Our outcry is a way of hope.”
“When one comes out to speak, it's NOT because they want to be pitied and told everything will be fine. We know everything will be fine, but our tears, our words, and the hidden messages on our posts and statuses are to let you know that we are still searching for happiness. To tell you we are trying to be strong, to remind you that there will always be times when, even in the morning, weeping still endures. Where our nights of tears are no different from the sun that was supposed to bring laughter - hot and burning. Everyone has a way of finding relief. Our outcry is a way of hope.”
“When one comes to know God and His Son Jesus Christ through the scriptures, the Spirit, and personal revelation, it is impossible to feel anything other than overwhelmed by the attributes so perfectly developed in them and so tentatively and superficially developed in oneself. Even so, we are told to strive to become like them.”
“When one commits one's self to an airborne craft and the door is fastened against earth and home, there is no escape even by running away. The result is a strange sense of peace - desperate, perhaps, but peace.”
Source: A Bridge for Passing
“When one commits to a spiritual teacher, one automatically benefits from the energetic field of that teacher. All one has to do is to sincerely say to oneself that one is a student of a certain person and it is so. One is then entitled to that teacher’s energetic field. Likewise, if one wishes to extricate oneself from a particular teacher, all one has to do is to sincerely say so to oneself and it is so. The energetic bond is then broken. It does not matter if the teacher is living or deceased. It does not matter if one physically sees the teacher or not. Such things are invisible, beyond space and time, and are nonmaterial.”
Source: The Love of Devotion