Grandest Quotes & Sayings

The grandest and simplest things contain worlds within worlds. Seeing them is a matter of the right point of view, and your painter's eye is the special portal to such sights. — Richard Schmid

For I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into half halves - to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as mention Him on a weekday. Do you think he cares to see only kneeling figures, and to hear only tones of prayer - and that He does not also love to see the lambs leaping in the sunlight, and to hear the merry voices of the children as they roll among the hay? Surely their innocent laughter is as sweet in His ears as the grandest anthem that ever rolled up from the 'dim religious light' of some solemn cathedral? — Lewis Carroll

But the fact is that the Bible itself is the grandest of grand stories, yet it prizes truth and reason without being modernist, and it prizes countless stories within its overall story without being postmodern either. In short, the Bible is both rational and experiential, propositional as well as relational, so that genuinely biblical arguments work in any age and with any person. — Os Guinness

Surely there is a fitness in the institution of the Lord's Supper as a standing memorial by which the church at large may commemorate the grandest act, and by which the heart of each individual believer may be reminded of his dearest friend. You, who have learned to love the Saviour, will prize His ordinance for the Saviour's sake. You who rejoice in the salvation purchased by His dying, will not fail with gratitude and faith to show the Lord's death until He come. — William Morley Punshon

When you have a thought that is not in alignment with your highest vision change to a new thought! Then and there. When you say a thing that is our of alignment with your grandest idea, make a note not to say something like that again. When you do a thing that is misaligned with your best intention, decide to make that the last time. And make it right with whomever was involved if you can. — Marlo Morgan

You're letting such a fragile side of yourself out when you're creating or writing music. To do that with people who are almost strangers would seem very strange to me. I think that we're very lucky that we're quite close. To us, it's almost like the band is the grandest possible adventure you can go on with your friends. It's really really exciting. — Alex Kapranos

One of the grandest figures that ever frequented Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the distinguished Father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee-breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waistcoat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff-of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiselled nostril-and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory. — William Crawford Williamson

The best thing the universe ever gave us is that we'll all be forgotten. [...] I kinda like the idea. That when we die, despite any pain or fear or embarrassment we experienced during our lives, despite any heartbreak or grief, we get to be dispersed back into nothingness. It makes me feel brave, knowing I'll get a blank slate at the end. You get a brief glimmer of consciousness to do with what you will and then it's given back to the universe again. I'm not religious, but even I can appreciate that that's redemption, on the grandest scale. Oblivion isn't scary; it's the closest thing to genuine absolution of sin that I can imagine. — Krystal Sutherland

Is he crying? I lean forward for a better look and find him staring right at me.
Oh,no.Oh no oh no oh NO.
He stops. "Anna?"
"Um.Hi." My face is on fire. I want to rewind this reel,shut it off, destroy it.
His expression runs from confusion to anger. "Were you listening to that?"
"I'm sorry-"
"I can't believe you were eavesdropping!"
"It was an accident.I was passing by,and ... you were there. And I've heard so much about your father,and I was curious.I'm sorry."
"Well," he says, "I hope what you saw met your grandest expectations." He stalks past me,but I grab his arm.
"Wait! I don't even speak French, remember?"
"Do you proise," he says slowly, "that you didn't understand a single word of our conversation?"
I let go of him. "No.I heard you. I heard the whole thing. — Stephanie Perkins

I had in my life looked at a number of beautiful starry nights, where with just two colours and the simplest of styles nature draws the grandest of pictures, and I felt the feelings of wonder and smallness that we all feel, and I got a clear sense of direction from the spectacle, most definitely, but I mean that in a spiritual sense, not in a geographic one. — Yann Martel

Reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose
electronic or printed or audio
is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in the human conversation. — Will Schwalbe

Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones. — Chris Hadfield

Christ was either the grandest, guiltiest of impostors, by a marvelous and most subtle refinement of wickedness, or He was God manifest in the flesh. — Herrick Johnson

Mankind is the grandest and surest artist of all, and history as it clarifies is, in pure fact, an artistic process, a creation in its fullness of the beautiful soul. — George Edward Woodberry

Virtue in its grandest aspect is neither more nor less than following reason. — Laozi

Now, having seen the differences between where you are and where you want to be, begin to change-consciously change-your thoughts, words, and actions to match your grandest vision. — Neale Donald Walsch

In every moment God expresses Himself in, as, and through you. Built into you is an internal guidance system that shows you the way home. This is the voice that speaks to you always of your highest choice, that places before you your grandest vision. — Neale Donald Walsch

Change is something that happens to you.
Change is something that you make.
Which statement seems to be true?
You are the one who can make one of these true.
You have the power to choose.
You have potential beyond your wildest imagination.
Now is time for change, a time to become the greatest version of yourself.
And a time to make your grandest vision of the world.
Open up to discover a new world.
Be inspired to make the changes you truly desire.
Il chi Lee — Ilchi Lee

We profess to think Jesus the grandest and most glorious of men, yet hardly care to be like him. When we are offered his Spirit, that is, his very nature within us, for the asking, we will hardly take the trouble to ask for it. — George MacDonald

A government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents. It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors have made to give unlimited extent to their domain. — Jefferson Davis

Character: the grandest thing in the world. — Orison Swett Marden

When you find that your life is out of alignment with your grandest idea of yourself, seek to change it. — Neale Donald Walsch

They were tales of commonplace courage and optimism, for I knew from my own experience that everyday virtues endure best, and that quiet courage is worth more than the grandest derring-do. — Nancy Atherton

The church has been brought into the same value system as the world: fame, success, materialism and celebrity. We watch the leading churches and the leading Christians for our cues. We want to emulate the best known preachers with the biggest sanctuaries and the grandest edifices. Preoccupation with these values has perverted the church's message. — Charles Colson

Knowing the sin in this world's grandest depravity. — Sorin Cerin

The grandest seduction of all is the myth that DOING EVERYTHING BETTER gets us where we want to be. It gets us somewhere, certainly, but not anywhere worth being. — Shauna Niequist

Caring for your body, mind, and spirit is your greatest and grandest responsibility. It's about listening to the needs of your soul and then honoring them. — Kristi Ling

Let's all pull together and make these United States the grandest place in this whole country. I see a vision. A glorious vision. A united people, marching forward shoulder to shoulder, giving their all for the common good, working while I whistle. — Gracie Allen

He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!" — Joaquin Miller

The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Life is the grandest adventure one can go on, isn't it?' said the giant kindly (he seemed to be a very friendly giant). 'What else could a person ask for than just to be alive?'

Will knew exactly what else a person could ask for. 'Monsters,' he said. 'And cake. — Lisa Graff

Every mother should be a true artist, who knows how to weave into her child's life images of grace and beauty, the true poet capable of writing on the soul of childhood the harmony of love and truth, and teaching it how to produce the grandest of all poems - the poetry of a true and noble life. — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Certainly, in the story of my life, the walk between the Twin Towers was one of the grandest, one of the most memorable, but not solely the grandest and the most memorable. — Philippe Petit

At its grandest, political correctness is an attempt to accelerate evolution. — Martin Amis

The great teachers of your Christian religion understand this. They know that Jesus was not perturbed by the crucifixion, but expected it. He could have walked away, but he did not. He could have stopped the process at any point. He had that power. Yet he did not. He allowed himself to be crucified in order that he might stand as man's eternal salvation. Look, he said, at what I can do. Look at what is true. And know that these things, and more, shall you also do. For have I not said, ye are gods? Yet you do not believe. If you cannot, then, believe in yourself, believe in me. Such was Jesus' compassion that he begged for a way - and created it - to so impact the world that all might come to heaven (Self realization) - if in no other way, then through him. For he defeated misery and death. And so might you. The grandest teaching of Christ was not that you shall have everlasting life - — Neale Donald Walsch

When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other's throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known — Eugene V. Debs

We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. — Charlotte Bronte

Baseball isn't just a game. It's life being played out on a field - a field of dreams - on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all - where men become boys and boys become men, all speaking one universal language without uttering a single word. — Tom Tatum

As we lay huddled together under the tent, which leaked considerably about the sides, with our baggage at our feet, we listened to some of the grandest thunder which I ever heard, -rapid peals, round and plump, bang, bang, bang in succession, like artillery from some fortress in the sky; and the lightning was proportionally brilliant. The Indian said, 'It must be good powder.' All for the benefit of the moose and us, echoing far over the concealed lakes. — Henry David Thoreau

Duty is the grandest of ideas, because it implies the idea of God, of the soul, of liberty, of responsibility, of immortality. — Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

Do not tolerate for a minute the idea that you are prohibited from any achievement by the absence of in-born talent or ability. This is a lie of the grandest order, an excuse of the saddest kind. — Maxwell Maltz

We should credit [the sky] for what it is: for sheer size and perfection of function, it is far and away the grandest product of collaboration in all of nature.

It breathes for us, and it does another thing for our pleasure. Each day, millions of meteorites fall against the outer limits of the membrane and are burned to nothing by the friction. Without this shelter, our surface would long since have become the pounded powder of the moon. Even though our receptors are not sensitive enough to hear it, there is comfort in knowing that the sound is there overhead, like the random noise of rain on the roof at night. — Lewis Thomas

There is no reason why the Louvre should be your favourite gallery just because it has the grandest collections in France, any more than Kew should necessarily be a favourite garden because it has the largest assemblage of plants, or Tesco your chosen shop because it has the widest variety of canned beans. — Jim Crace

Home is the grandest of all institutions. — Charles Spurgeon

I felt I could turn the earth upside down with my littlest finger. I wanted to dance, to fly in the air and kiss the sun and stars with my singing heart. I, alone with myself, was enjoying myself for the first time as with grandest company. — Anzia Yezierska

In every job I've taken and every city in which I've lived, I have known that it's time to move on when I've grown as much as I can. Sometimes moving on terrified me. But always it taught me that the true meaning of courage is to be afraid, and then, with your knees knocking, to step out anyway. Making a bold move is the only way to advance toward the grandest vision the universe has for you. If you allow it, fear will completely immobilize you. And once it has you in its grip, it will fight to keep you from ever becoming your best self. — Oprah Winfrey

Spring is the time when God's magic is at its grandest. — Toni Sorenson

The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain
The grandest death, to die in vain
for love Greater than sways the forces of the world! — George Eliot

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Language, be it remembered, is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete, having most to do with actual land and sea. It permeates us all, the past as well as the present, and is the grandest triumph of the human intellect. - Walt Whitman — John Pollack

Mourn not for the vanished ages with their grand, heroic men, who dwell in history's pages and live in the poets pen for the grandest times are before us and the world is yet to see the noblest work of this old earth in the men that are to be. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The die is cast. The people have passed the river and cut away the bridge. Last night three cargoes of tea were emptied into the harbor. This is the grandest event which has ever yet happened since the controversy with Britain opened. — John Adams

To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius. — Alexander Herzen

Man may not be the colossus some secular spirits would have him be, armed with the strength and wisdom of the gods, but he has partaken of ambrosia. He has squinted trough the veil and seen just enough of divinity to measure himself by it. The Humanist knows both the strengths and the frailties of man. He strives. But he knows the bounds of his striving.......

Visions and ideals need a path, a way, a roadmap people can use as to arrive at those better, more permanent things that the wise are always seeing dimly whenever they strained their eyes. So man turned a mirror on himself, looked soberly, and-one day-began to write accounts of the discoveries made on the grandest odyssey of them all: the journey to the core of the human mind and soul. The grateful among us read them. — Tracy Lee Simmons

When we come to the place of impossibilities, it is the grandest place for us to see the possibilities of God. — Smith Wigglesworth

The grandest form of delusion is misconstruing the obvious. Persons with an open, inquisitive, and intuitive mind can detect hidden clues that aggressive, narrow-minded, and impatient rationalist fail to perceive. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The great Pacific Railway is commenced ... Immigration will soon pour into these valleys. Ten millions of emigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years ... This is the grandest enterprise under God! — George Francis Train

I was in my late thirties and decided my intention in life had nothing to do with the acquiring of material things, but rather it was now my intention to experience the evolution of my own soul and to grow spiritually. I wanted to come to know the highest truths of life and to express those truths in action, through myself. I wanted to become the grandest version of the greatest idea I ever held about who I am in regards to my relationship with God. — Neale Donald Walsch

Out of politics comes more uproar than progress. It is indeed surprising how little, comparatively, this noisy department of human affairs contributes to the world's prosperity. Political commotions upon the grandest scale, political events of astounding suddenness, political characters of the greatest ability, abound, but still, permanent results are rare, and we look in vain for a measure of public good corresponding in extent to the hideous rout which ushers it in. Progress but turns upon its pillow, and goes to sleep again. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love. — Neale Donald Walsch

The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path. — George Eliot

He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

For a soul to come to Jesus, is the grandest event in its history. — Joseph Alleine

You can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones. Ultimately, the real question is whether you want to be happy. — Chris Hadfield

So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronets and ciphers. The feasts there were of the grandest in London, but there was not overmuch content therewith, except among the guests who sat at my lord's table. Had he not been so great a Prince very few possibly would have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of very great personages are looked at indulgently. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Now is a time for change, a time to become the greatest version of yourself. And a time to to make your grandest vision of the world . — Ilchi Lee

The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess. — Lord Acton

Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. — Thomas De Quincey

The grandest discourse ever delivered is an ostentatious failure if the doctrine of the grace of God be absent from it. — Charles Spurgeon

She had turned thought and feeling into life, into reality, into creation. They speak of the _creations_ of the human intellect, of the human imagination! there is nothing man can do comes half so near the making of the Maker as the ordering of his way--except one thing: the highest creation of which man is capable, is to will the will of the Father. That _has_ in it an element of the purely creative, and then is man likest God. But simply to do what we ought, is an altogether higher, diviner, more potent, more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the most worshiping temple, dream out the most enchanting commotion of melody and harmony. — George MacDonald

To win over your bad self is the grandest and foremost of victories. — Plato

There are two great tragedies in life: one is to fail to achieve one's grandest ambitions, and the other one is to succeed. — Graham T. Allison

The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things. — Thomas Hardy

Even the grandest lives come down to a few people and places. Loved ones, your daily work, your neighborhood. I don't mean that in a belittling way. I've been realizing how complete our lives can be with just the few people and activities you most love. — Daphne Kalotay

The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles. — Michel De Montaigne

Chernobyl haunts us with the reminder that all of man's ambitions are ephemeral. Our grandest designs and sturdiest monuments, — Josh Gates

This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary - from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river - at least our parents would not let us. — Mark Twain

This next is my grandest sorrow, this grief I brought my own to carry, the weight of which threatened to crush all I had.
It's followed, fittingly enough, by him. While I was at my darkest, he came for me. — T.J. Klune

If two angels were to receive at the same moment a commission from God, one to go down and rule earth's grandest empire, the other to go and sweep the streets of its meanest village, it would be a matter of entire indifference to each which service fell to his lot, the post of ruler or the post of scavenger; for the joy of the angels lies only in obedience to God's will, and with equal joy they would lift a Lazarus in his rags to Abraham's bosom, or be a chariot of fire to carry an Elijah home. — John Newton

Don't lie to a liar, and Maven is the grandest liar of all. — Victoria Aveyard

It seemed to me at an early age that all human communication - whether it's TV, movies, or books - begins with somebody wanting to tell a story. That need to tell, to plug into a universal socket, is probably one of our grandest desires. And the need to hear stories, to live lives other than our own for even the briefest moment, is the key to the magic that was born in our bones. — Robert R. McCammon

Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source. — Neale Donald Walsch

Shine on, then, O Illuminati! Shine on! That the moment of your greatest darkness may yet become your grandest gift. And even as you are gifted, so, too, will you gift others, giving to them the unspeakable treasure: Themselves. Let this be your task, let this be your greatest joy: to give people back to themselves. Even in their darkest hour. Especially in that hour. The world waits for you. Heal it. Now. In the place where you are. There is much you can do. For My sheep are lost and must now be found. Be ye, therefore, as good shepherds, and lead them back to Me. — Neale Donald Walsch

The greatest thing a man can possibly do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other. It is not a question of what someone else can do or become which every youth should ask himself, but what can I do? How can I develop myself into the grandest possible manhood? — Orison Swett Marden

We worship numberless gods or idols, but we all need to be the grandest possible versions of ourselves, we need to walk across the face of the earth with as much grace and beauty as we can muster before we're wrapped in our winding sheets, and returned. — Michael Cunningham

We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness. It produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes. — Bill Bryson

The chorus-ending from Aristophanes, raised every night from every ditch that drains into the Mediterranean, hoarse and primeval as the raven's croak, is one of the grandest tunes to walk by. Or on a night in May, one can walk through the too rare Italian forests for an hour on end and never be out of hearing of the nightingale's song. — G. M. Trevelyan

Living your grandest dream will require you to be your grandest you. — Catrice M. Jackson

God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; — Charlotte Bronte

We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the underdog pressing onward against seemingly insurmountable odds. We all, in one form or another, are trying to make sense of the world around us. And all of these elements lie at the core of modern physics. The story is among the grandest
the unfolding of the entire universe; the mystery is among the toughest
finding out how the cosmos came to be; the odds are among the most daunting
bipeds, newly arrived by cosmic time scales trying to reveal the secrets of the ages; and the quest is among the deepest
the search for fundamental laws to explain all we see and beyond, from the tiniest particles to the most distant galaxies. — Brian Greene

You can choose to live your lives as demonstrations of your highest and grandest beliefs, rather than as denials of them. — Neale Donald Walsch

The knights of the theater represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held. To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me. — Patrick Stewart

Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. — Russell Conwell

The grandest virtue seems deficient. — Laozi

Sometimes the grandest of all events are described in the poverty of a few simple words. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Taken together the Internet reads like the grandest character-driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot though. — Victor LaValle

Anything that is secret and mysterious in this system of Yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In spirituality, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you. Have nothing to do with it. Mystery-mongering weakens the human brain. It has well-nigh destroyed Yoga, one of the grandest of sciences — Swami Vivekananda

Books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in human conversation. — Will Schwalbe

And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are. — Colson Whitehead