Choicest Quotes & Sayings

If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow - in some parts a very paradise on earth - I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most full developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant - I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life - again I should point to India. — Friedrich Max Muller

ON PROBLEMS
Our choicest plans
have fallen through,
our airiest castles
tumbled over,
because of lines
we neatly drew
and later neatly
stumbled over. — Piet Hein

There is nothing like books - of all things sold incomparably the cheapest, of all pleasure the least palling, they take up little room, keep quiet when they are not wanted, and, when taken up, bring us face to face with the choicest men who ever lived, at their choicest moments. — Samuel Palmer

Beware of capitalism's politicians and preachers! They are the lineal descendants of the hypocrites of old who all down the ages have guarded the flock in the name of patriotism and religion and secured the choicest provender and the snuggest booths for themselves by turning the sheep over to the ravages of the wolves. — Eugene V. Debs

The impious man, who sells his country's freedom
Makes all the guilt of tyranny his own.
His are her slaughters, her oppressions his;
Just heav'n! reserve your choicest plagues for him,
And blast the venal wretch. — Henry Martyn

I often wonder if my imagination is one of God's choicest gifts bestowed upon me to deliberately break me free from the frequent doldrums of my humanity. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure - that is the choicest of all. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The written word is the choicest of relics. — Henry David Thoreau

Up, up, my soul, the long-spent time redeeming;
Sow thou the seeds of better deeds and thought;
Light other lamps while yet thy lamp is beaming
The time is short.
Think of the good thou might'st have done when brightly
The suns to thee life's choicest season brought;
Hours lost to God in pleasure passing lightly
The time is short.
If thou hast friends, give them thy best endeavor,
Thy warmest impulse, and thy purest thought,
Keeping in mind and words and action ever
The time is short. — Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Hester," said he, "hast thou found peace?" She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom. "Hast thou?" she asked. "None - nothing but despair!" he answered. "What else could I look for, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were I an atheist - a man devoid of conscience - a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts - I might have found peace long ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it. But, as matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest have become the ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most miserable!" "The people reverence thee," said Hester. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

My sons served excellent missions, and returned to participate in college athletics. In their letters home, and even now that they have been back for some time, they frequently mention that the experiences in the mission field were the choicest and most gratifying of their lives. You young men, begin to prepare yourselves now for this marvelous experience. — LaVell Edwards

We are recipients of God's choicest blessings. We enjoy an abundance of material things beyond that enjoyed by any other nation in the history of the world; but unless we keep alive a realization that all these blessings come from God and are a part of our great spiritual heritage, they may crumble as ashes in our hands. "In nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things and obey not his commandments." — Ezra Taft Benson

Where a love of natural beauty has been cultivated, all nature becomes a stupendous gallery, as much superior in form and in coloring to the choicest collections of human art, as the heavens are broader and loftier than the Louvre or the Vatican. — Horace Mann

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods. — Arthur Conan Doyle

By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The enjoyment of the choicest natural scenes in the country and the means of recreation connected with them is thus a monopoly, in a very peculiar manner, of a very few very rich people. The great mass of society, including those to whom it would be of the greatest benefit, is excluded from it. In the nature of the case private parks can never be used by the mass of the people in any country nor by any considerable number even of the rich, except by the favor of a few, and in dependence on them. — Frederick Law Olmsted

It is a little thing to speak a phrase of common comfort, which by daily use has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear of him who thought to die unmourned it will fall like choicest music. — Thomas Noon Talfourd

The eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any title-deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions. — Amos Bronson Alcott

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India. — Max Muller

I note that some whom I greatly love and esteem, who are, in my judgment, among the very choicest of God's people, nevertheless, travel most of the way to heaven by night. — Charles Spurgeon

He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope
dream, if you will
in which the choicest happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. In such case nothing intermediate will carry off the passion
the quarrel is with Fate. — Lew Wallace

My dear young friends, I speak to you as one who stands on the edge of eternity. From that perspective, I see you as the choicest spirits ever placed on the earth. The promises in your generation's patriarchal blessings, if you are faithful, seem to exceed the promises in Sister Faust's blessing and in mine ... I want you to know that I believe in you. I believe you can be in the world but not of the world. — James E. Faust

Looking for a job is one of Hell's choicest samples on earth. — Helen Woodward

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation. — Benjamin Disraeli

So extraordinary is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees ... — John Muir

[I]t is not hasty reading
but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee's touching of the flower, which gathers honey
but her abiding for a time upon the flower, which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most
but he who meditates most, who will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian. — Thomas Brooks

Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, they make their mark. — Joseph Joubert

He stared at her steadily. If we were eating Gypsy-style, sitting before a fire, I would offer you the choicest bites of meat. The soft inside of the bread. The sweetest sections of fruit. — Lisa Kleypas

Stella, the only planet of my light,
Light of my life, and life of my desire,
Chief good, whereto my hope doth only aspire,
World of my wealth, and heav'n of my delight:
Why dost thou spend the treasure of thy sprite,
With voice more fit to wed Amphion's lyre,
Seeking to quench in me the noble fire
Fed by thy worth, and kindled by thy sight?
And all in vain, for while thy breath most sweet,
With choicest words, thy words with reasons rare,
Thy reasons firmly set on Virtue's feet,
Labor to kill in me this killing care:
Oh, think I then, what paradise of joy
It is, so fair a Virtue to enjoy. — Philip Sidney

The noblest calling in the world is motherhood. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece, or who can write a book that will influence millions, deserve the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will exert influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have decayed or been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God. — David O. McKay

I use no figure of speech when I say that we may now buy our books in bulk. I saw, only this morning, the advertisement of a large dry goods "emporium" ('tis laces and literature now) wherein is announced for sale the bound volumes of a popular magazine. "Over eight pounds of the choicest reading, bound in the usual style - olive green. — Adeline Knapp

But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life ... as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures ... — John Muir

And now the sun with more effectual beams Had cheered the face of earth, and dried the wet From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds, Who all things now behold more fresh and green, After a night of storm so ruinous, Cleared up their choicest notes in bush and spray, To gratulate the sweet return of morn. — John Milton

What is
the right tool,
the best option,
the choicest gift,
the winning hand,
the greatest relief,
the finest revenge,
the sweetest drink,
the perfect response,
the working solution,
the strongest medicine?
The correct answer is kindness. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We are all God's children.
But world-peace-dreamers,
world-peace-lovers
and world-peace-servers
are undoubtedly
God's choicest children. — Sri Chinmoy

Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom, have been deemed by Americans not only as their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive possessions. — James Bryce

God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries His choicest wines to the lips of humanity to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to strengthen their faith, and if we had stood by when two little nations (Belgium and Serbia) were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarians, our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages. — David Lloyd George

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power. ... But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. ("A National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer." Proclamation March 30, 1863) — Abraham Lincoln

The Lord has told me that the last generation before His final coming will consist of His choicest children since the creation of the earth. But you will face a world filled with much pain and evil. Men ... will gain great power over God's children. Youth such as yourselves will have a great responsibility to build up a pure and undefiled people in the midst of all this pain. — Chris Heimerdinger

The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreebly to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights. — George Washington

I have faith that the Constitution will be saved as prophesied by Joseph Smith. It will be saved by the righteous citizens of this nation who love and cherish freedom. It will be saved by enlightened members of this Church-among others-men and women who understand and abide the principles of the Constitution ... I testify that the God of heaven sent some of His choicest spirits to lay the foundation of this government, and He has now sent other choice spirits to help preserve it. — Ezra Taft Benson

I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow. — Washington Irving

My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought. — Henry David Thoreau

Perseverance gives power to weakness, and opens to poverty the world's wealth. It spreads fertility over the barren landscape, and buds the choicest flowers and fruits spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briars. — Samuel Griswold Goodrich

Even the choicest literature should be taken as the condiment, and not as the sustenance of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders. — Horace Mann

A knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, and seen things not much otherwise than we have seen them, will continue to the end to be one of life's choicest blessings. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure
Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word
My choicest hours
Are the hours I spend with You -
O God, I can't live in this world
Without remembering You — Rabia Basri

The God of heaven sent some of His choicest spirits to lay the foundation of this government. And he has sent other choice spirits to preserve it. — Ezra Taft Benson

Matthew: Shall I remind you of some of the choicest remarks you made about me when I arrived here? Because they live in my memory as fresh as the day they were spoken. Mary: Oh, Matthew. What am I always telling you? You must pay no attention to the things I say. When they kiss, it is a long kiss, all the more passionate for being delayed far longer than it should have been. — Jessica Fellowes

The most delightful and choicest pleasure is that which is hinted at, but never told. — Chretien De Troyes

By prolonged and continued fellowship, the sheep who follow nearby enjoy the shepherd's presence and become his familiar companions. To those closest to him, he shares the choicest portions of the food he's gathered. These happy and content sheep are never in danger. Why? Because they are near the shepherd! — Elizabeth George

She who can paint a masterpiece or write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind. But she who would willingly and anxiously rear successfully a family of beautiful healthy sons and daughters whose lives reflect the teachings of the gospel, deserves the highest honors that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God. In fact, in her high duty and service to humanity, endowing with mortality eternal spirits, she is a co-partner with the Great Creator Himself. — David O. McKay

The cross is like a walnut whose outer rind is bitter, but the inner kernel is pleasant and invigorating. So the cross does not offer any charm of outward appearance, but to the cross-bearer its true character is revealed, and he finds in it the choicest sweets of spiritual peace. — Sadhu Sundar Singh

Down through the middle of the Valley flows the crystal Merced, River of Mercy, peacefully quiet, reflecting lilies and trees and the onlooking rocks; things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meeting here and blending in countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her. — John Muir

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines. — Samuel Rutherford

We should manage our thoughts as shepherds do their flowers in making a garland: first, select the choicest, and then dispose them in the most proper places, that every one may reflect a part of its color and brightness on the next. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The choicest gift of God [is] the gift of reason. — Thomas Paine

Love! the surviving gift of Heaven, The choicest sweet of Paradise, In life's else bitter cup distilled. — Thomas Campbell

The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure she was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. — Zelda Fitzgerald

I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

And so we have this Oklahoma City, set upon a foundation so strong that it cannot be shaken. What shall you, the inheritors, do with this city? We hope that you shall make it more and more the city beautiful, more and more the city intellectual, more and more the city spiritual. For these three, beauty, mind, and spirit are the choicest diadems of life.

"Morituri vos salutamus!" Which, in this case, may be translated, "We, the Pioneers, salute you! — Angelo C. Scott

A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone. It was the choicest gift of Heaven; and Anne viewed her friend as one of those instances in which, by a merciful appointment, it seems designed to counterbalance almost every other want. — Jane Austen

Battles against Rome have been lost and won before, but hope was never abandoned, since we were always here in reserve. We, the choicest flower of Britain's manhood, were hidden away in her most secret places. Out of sight of subject shores, we kept even our eyes free from the defilement of tyranny. We, the most distant dwellers upon earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by our very remoteness and by the obscurity in which it has shrouded our name. Now, the farthest bounds of Britain lie open to our enemies; and what men know nothing about they always assume to be a valuable prize ...
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them. They are the only people on earth to whose covetousness both riches and poverty are equally tempting. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of 'government'; they create a desolation and call it peace ... — Tacitus

It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian. — Joseph Hall

It is mercy that our lives are not left for us to plan, but that our Father chooses for us; else might we sometimes turn away from our best blessings, and put from us the choicest loveliest gifts of his providence. — Susannah Spurgeon

I know that my companions from the moment of birth were heaven's choicest souls. I grew side by side with them, in fact all the education and inspiration came over them. — Victoria Woodhull

God takes the most eminent and choicest of His servants for the choicest and most eminent afflictions. They who have received most grace from God are able to bear most afflictions from God. Affliction does not hit the saint by chance, but by direction. God does not draw His bow at a venture. Every one of His arrows goes upon a special errand and touches no breast but his against whom it is sent. It is not only the grace, but the glory of a believer when we can stand and take affliction quietly — Joseph Caryl

As in the rankest soil the most beautiful flowers are grown, so in the dark soil of poverty the choicest flowers of humanity have developed and bloomed. — James Allen

The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin. — John Owen

Through pictures, we cut reality in pieces. We selected only the choicest moments, discarding the rest as if they'd never happened. — Sarah Ockler

God pours out his choicest blessings on those who are anxious that nothing shall stick to their hands. Individuals who value the rainy day above the present agony of the world will get no blessing from God. — William MacDonald

THE CROWN OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS IS THE DOCTRINE OF forgiveness. In it the whole genius of prophetic religion is expressed. Love as forgiveness is the most difficult and impossible of moral achievements. Yet it is a possibility if the impossibility of love is recognized and the sin in the self is acknowledged. Therefore an ethic culminating in an impossible possibility produces its choicest fruit in terms of the doctrine of forgiveness, the demand that the evil in the other shall be borne without vindictiveness because the evil in the self is known. — Reinhold Niebuhr

Let those be thy choicest companions who have made Christ their chief companion. — Thomas Brooks

You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.
Unto the world in grossly loving zest,
With clinging tendrils, one adheres;
The other rises forcibly in quest
Of rarefied ancestral spheres.
If there be spirits in the air
That hold their sway between the earth and sky,
Descend out of the golden vapors there
And sweep me into iridescent life.
Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands
To carry me to distant lands,
I should not trade it for the choicest gown,
Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;
not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. — Henry David Thoreau

The choicest thing this world has for a man is affection. — Josiah Gilbert Holland

The world is the devil's hunting-ground, and children are his choicest game. — Anthony Comstock

Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward their choicest treasures to the eyes of passing strangers; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed from public view, lie cherished gardens, full of the beauty of life. — Alice Morse Earle

Strawberries in June are ordinary. Still, they are luscious and sweet, all the same. But I was just that: a June strawberry, one of many in a fragrant basket. Not the choicest Chilean import which would grace the cake of a December wedding, or a particularly succulent one, singled out to sweeten a fruity cocktail drink in a swanky bar. — Jocelyne Lebon

To cultivate a garden is to walk with God, to go hand in hand with nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere. — C.N. Bovee

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt. — Mark Twain

Some of the choicest blessings of my life have been the close friendships I have experienced over the years. Often, these friendships have been forged in the fires of shared experience. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

O my child, bethink you that just as the bee, having gathered heaven's dew and earth's sweetest juices from amid the flowers, carries it to her hive; so the Priest, having taken the Saviour, God's Own Son, Who came down from Heaven, the Son of Mary, Who sprang up as earth's choicest flower, from the Altar, feeds you with that Bread of Sweetness and of all delight. — Saint Francis De Sales

For another thing, the devil uses special diligence to destroy the souls of young men, and they seem not to know it. Satan knows well that you will make up the next generation, and therefore he employs every art betimes to make you his own. I would not have you ignorant of his devices. You are those on whom he plays off all his choicest temptations. He spreads his net with the most watchful carefulness, to entangle your hearts. He baits his traps with the sweetest morsels, to get you into his power. He displays his wares before your eyes with his utmost ingenuity, in order to make you buy his sugared poisons, and eat his accursed dainties. You are the grand object of his attack. — J.C. Ryle