Attainments Quotes & Sayings

The presence of many interacting influences, including the attainments of others, create further leeway in how one's performances and outcomes are cognitively appraised — Albert Bandura

No dependence can be placed upon our natural qualities, or our spiritual attainments; but God abideth faithful. He is faithful in His love; He knows no variableness, neither shadow of turning. He is faithful to His purpose; He doth not begin a work and then leave it undone. He is faithful to His relationships; as a Father He will not renounce His children, as a friend He will not deny His people, as a Creator He will not forsake the work of His own hands. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The church is ever in peril-and never more so than now-of the disaster which must follow when she allows men of distinction in the sphere of human attainments, who are unregenerate or unspiritual, to dictate as to what her beliefs shall be. — Lewis Sperry Chafer

Let all teachers of holiness, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, and all seekers after holiness, whether in the closet or the convention, take warning: There is no pride so dangerous, so subtle and insidious, as the pride of holiness. It is not that a man ever says, or even thinks, "Stay away. I am too sacred for you!" The thought would be considered ludicrous. But unconsciously there can develop a private habit of soul that feels complacency in its attainments and cannot help but see how far it is ahead of others. — Andrew Murray

To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Always bear in mind that boys are naturally wiser than you. Regard them as intellectual beings, who have access to certain sources of knowledge of which you are deprived, and seek to derive all the benefit you can from their peculiar attainments and experience. — John Farrar

To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance of others, by expressing in the world of forms- truth, love, purity and beauty - this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance. — Meher Baba

I emphasize this because some of my colleagues, for whose academic attainments I have great respect, argue 'You assume too much; this is not proved; this is not strictly scientific. We disagree with your neurology and your psychiatry is misleading, therefore you must be wrong.' My reply has been, with all humility: 'Yes, of course,' and I have returned to the labor ward to be greeted by happy women with their newborn babies in their arms: 'How right you are, Doctor, it is so much easier that way.' That is what really matters to the clinician. He should use the method that gives the best and safest result from all points of view until something better is discovered. — Grantly Dick-Read

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness. — Alex Haley

To that movement, consecrated by religious principle, sustained by an awful sense of justice, and cheered by the brightest hopes of future good, all our powers, talents, and attainments are devoted. — George Ripley

Our attainments [in space] are a major element in the competition between the Soviet system and our own ... in this sense, [they] are part of the battle along the fluid front of the cold war. — James E. Webb

There stood one, in physical proportion and stature commanding and exact - in intellect richly endowed - in natural eloquence a prodigy - in soul manifestly "created but a little lower than the angels" - yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave, - trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an intellectual and moral being - needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to his race - by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless! — Anonymous

Horror grows impatient, rhetorically, with the Stoic fatalism of Ecclesiastes. That we are all going to die, that death mocks and cancels every one of our acts and attainments and every moment of our life histories, this knowledge is to storytelling what rust is to oxidation; the writer of horror holds with those who favor fire. The horror writer is not content to report on death as the universal system of human weather; he or she chases tornadoes. Horror is Stoicism with a taste for spectacle. — Michael Chabon

Ignorance is the root of everything that stands in the way of these attainments. Ignorance binds us to suffering; therefore ignorance has to be clearly identified. — Dalai Lama XIV

He is a musical man, an Amateur, but might've been a Professional. He is an Artist, too; an Amateur, but might've been a Professional. He is a man of attainments and of captivating manners. — Charles Dickens

When Ling was communicating to any person the signs by which messengers might find him, he was compelled to add, "the neighbourhood in which this contemptible person resides is that officially known as 'the mean quarter favoured by the lower class of those who murder by treachery'," and for this reason he was not always treated with the regard to which his attainments entitled him, or which he would have unquestionably received had he been able to describe himself as of "the partly-drained and uninfected area reserved to Mandarins and their friends. — Ernest Bramah

See what monkeys we are! Look, such is man! and at once all renown, all intelligence, all the attainments of the spirit, all progress towards the sublime, the great and the enduring in man fell away and became a monkey's trick! — Hermann Hesse

When the mind becomes so completely absorbed in perfect health that all sickness is forgotten, all the powers of mind will proceed to create health, and every trace of sickness will soon disappear. When the mind becomes so completely absorbed in higher attainments and in greater achievements that all thought of failure is forgotten, all the forces of mind will begin to work for the promotion of those attainments and achievements. The person will be gaining ground every day, and greater success will positively follow. — Christian D. Larson

You cannot do without one specialty. You must have some base-line to measure the work and attainments of others. For a general view of the subject, study the history of the sciences. Broad knowledge of all Nature has been the possession of no naturalist except Humboldt, and general relations constituted his specialty. — Louis Agassiz

One of the things that I have learned, one of the attainments of the long travails and tribulations, has been, I think, coming to a simpler sense of myself that I think correlates to a simpler sense of others. Something closer to what I now call the simple sense of being human, a sort of Wallace Stevens-esque formulation. I know that I can reach this in the audience, because when they start hearing a story, they wake up in this very clear, simple way. Almost like children. It's the same thing: a child asks, "What's going to happen next?" When they sense that a story is being told to them, they wake up. When they sense that it's not being told anymore, they lose interest. I take this very seriously, because the sacred trust that allows openness is the precondition of the kind of exchange I want to have, the kind of relationship that I want to have. I don't want to test that simple sense of being human. I don't want to transform it. — Ayad Akhtar

This was among Johnson's most early attainments, for his was not that mere "lip-wisdom which wants experience." He was not the recluse scholar, unacquainted with the world and its ways, but he could from actual survey describe, with equal fidelity, those who sparkled in the highest order of society, and those who struggled with distress in the lower walks of life. His study was peculiarly man: and his comprehensive and generalizing mind led him to analyze the primary elements of human nature, rather than nicely to pourtray the shades of mixed character. — Samuel Johnson

Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments, but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original; she used to repeat sounding phrases from books; she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment, but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her — Charlotte Bronte

There are positively no mental, physical or moral attainments too lofty for the Negro to accomplish if granted a fair and equal opportunity. — Major Taylor

You live in days when a lingering, Lot-like religion abounds. The stream of profession is far broader than it once was, but far less deep in many places. A certain kind of Christianity is almost fashionable now. To belong to some party in the Church of England, and show a zeal for its interests
to talk about the leading controversies of the day
to buy popular religious books as fast as they come out, and lay them on your table
to attend meetings
to subscribe to Societies
to discuss the merits of preachers
to be enthusiastic and excited about every new form of sensational religion which crops up
all these are now comparatively easy and common attainments. They no longer make a person singular. They require little or no sacrifice. They entail no cross. — J.C. Ryle

To some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it. — George Henry Lewes

There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ's sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be trust as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His "blood and righteousness" alone that we can rest. — Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless. — F Scott Fitzgerald

True humility is a Christian grace and one of the fruits of the Spirit, originating in a deep consciousness of sin past and present, and leading us to discover our nothingness in the view of God, our insufficiency for any thing that is good, and prompting us, as we feel our infirmities, to strive after higher and yet higher attainments. — James McCosh

Intellectuals tend to be arrogant. Intelligence, like money, is a good servant but a bad master. When practicing pranayama, the yogi [makes] himself humble and without pride in his intellectual attainments. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced. — Joseph Hall

When? At this time, while you have all the opportunities, if you do not do your best to achieve the pure, stainless path to enlightenment when will you do it? If you don't meditate, don't practise the graduated path to enlightenment, especially bodhicitta, in this life, then when? When will you practise? When will you have this realization? If, in this life, you don't achieve renunciation, bodhicitta and sunyata, as well as the two stages of tantra, when will you? When will you have these attainments? When will you become enlightened? When will you perform perfect work for sentient beings? — Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritualized vision. — Kelly Miller

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. — Elizabeth West

The adequacy of performance attainments depends upon the personal standards against which they are judged — Albert Bandura

Slowly ... the truth is dawning upon women, and still more slowly upon men, that woman is no stepchild of nature, no Cinderella of fate to be dowered only by fairies and the Prince; but that for her and in her, as truly as for and in man, life has wrought its great experiences, its master attainments, its supreme human revelations of the stuff of which worlds are made. — Anna Garlin Spencer

He who lives up to a little light shall have more light; he who lives up to a little knowledge shall have more knowledge; he who lives up to a little faith shall have more faith, and he who lives up to a little love shall have more love. Verily the main reason why men are such babes and shrubs in grace is because they do not live up their attainments. — Thomas Brooks

It is in general more profitable to reckon up our defeats than to boast of our attainments. — Thomas Carlyle

Even noteworthy performance attainments do not necessarily boost perceived self-efficacy — Albert Bandura

Make no display of your talents or attainments; for every one will clearly see, admire, and acknowledge them, so long as you cover them with the beautiful veil of modesty — Nathanael Emmons

A scientist is happy, not in resting on his attainments but in the steady acquisition of fresh knowledge. — Max Planck

The more sick I am, the more need I have to apply to such a great, compassionate, infallible physician. I cannot heal myself, and why should I wish I could, when he has undertaken my case. Depend upon it, our hearts are all alike. To know that they are deceitful and desperately wicked, and to look to Jesus for mercy, help, and salvation, are, I think, the greatest attainments we can rise to in this imperfect state.63 — Tony Reinke

At the outstart of discussions of women's intellectual attainments, it is well to remember how few are the men of the first rank. — Anna Garlin Spencer

The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind. — James F. Cooper

If we pant after higher improvement and higher attainments, it is not sufficient to view ourselves as we suppose that we are viewed by others ... Because each by-stander may have his own prejudices, beside the prejudices of his age or country. We should rather endeavor to view ourselves as we suppose that Being views [us]. — Mary Wollstonecraft

This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties-for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler-men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated. — H.L. Mencken

We have found that when men and women are left free to find the places for which they are best fitted, some few of them will indeed attain less exalted stations than under a regime of privilege; but the vast multitude will rise to a higher level, to wider horizons, to worthier attainments. — Calvin Coolidge

I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will eat away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Such knowledge is probably gained in several ways. One process undoubtedly operates through social comparison of success and failure experiences. Children repeatedly observe their own behavior and the attainments of others — Albert Bandura

The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The all-or-nothing quality of Poonja-ji's teaching obliged him to acknowledge the full enlightenment of any person who was grandiose or manic enough to claim it. Thus, I repeatedly witnessed fellow students declare their complete and undying freedom, all the while appearing quite ordinary - or worse. In certain cases, these people had clearly had some sort of breakthrough, but Poonja-ji's insistence upon the finality of every legitimate insight led many of them to delude themselves about their spiritual attainments. Some left India and became gurus. From what I could tell, Poonja-ji gave everyone his blessing to spread his teachings in this way. — Sam Harris

Success and failure are largely self-defined in terms of personal standards. The higher the self-standards, the more likely will given attainments be viewed as failures, regardless of what others might think — Albert Bandura

Well, she asked him questions about his age and his attainments. The fact that he was a Catholic gave her pause, but when I explained to her that the present Pope was a well-meaning sort of chap, she said she was prepared to meet him halfway. — Elizabeth Cadell

executives. View this report, titled A Comparison of the Career Attainments of Men and Women Healthcare Executives, December 2006, at — Nancy Borkowski

Few - very few - of our attainments are so profound that they are valid for always; even if they are so, they need adjustment, a straightening here, a loosening there, like an old garment to be fitted to the body ... — Freya Stark

The secret of spiritual success is a hunger that persists ... It is an awful condition to be satisfied with one's spiritual attainments ... God was and is looking for hungry, thirsty people. — Smith Wigglesworth

During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable. — Isaac Asimov

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments. — Thomas Merton

(I)t was by Cicero's attainments that that he'd gained special witness to the liberals' adjustment to a brush with actual equality. — Jonathan Lethem

I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master. — John Newton

I am not convinced that either the position, rewards or achievements have been worth the cost. My personal and married life and child raising have surely suffered from the professional attainments I have achieved. — Joanne Simpson

Not to Learn Irish is to miss the opportunity of understanding what life in this country has meant and could mean in a better future. It is to cut oneself off from ways of being at home. If we regard self-understanding, mutual understanding, imaginative enhancement, cultural diversity and a tolerant political atmosphereas a desirable attainments, we should remember that a knowledge of the Irish language is an essential element in their realisation. — Seamus Heaney

All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us. — Samuel Johnson

At length weariness succeeds to labor, and the mind lies at ease in the contemplation of her own attainments without any desire of new conquests or excursions. This is the age of recollection and narrative; the opinions are settled, and the avenues of apprehension shut against any new intelligence; the days that are to follow must pass in the inculcation of precepts already collected, and assertion of tenets already received; nothing is henceforward so odious as opposition, so insolent as doubt, or so dangerous as novelty. — Samuel Johnson

Many people are very intelligent in accomplishing worldly attainments. This intelligence is not wisdom because worldly attainments such as a high position, reputation, wealth and success in business are deceptive. If we die tomorrow they will disappear tomorrow, and nothing will be left for our future. Wisdom, however, will never deceive us. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

It is not uncommon for those who at their first entrance into the world were distinguished for attainments or abilities, to disappoint the hopes which they had raised, and to end in neglect and obscurity that life which they began in honour. To the long catalogue of the inconveniences of old age, which moral and satirical writers have so copiously displayed, may be often added the loss of fame. — Lyndon B. Johnson