Rarest Quotes & Sayings

Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God. — Oswald Chambers

I've deprived my family in order to buy books. No doubt there is a special punishment in hell for such self-indulgence. Perhaps I shall be struck with blindness among the rarest known to men. — I.J. Parker

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses. By thy might, there return into us treasures that we had abandoned. By thy grace, there are released in us all the dried-up runnels of our heart. Of the riches that exist in the world, thou art the rarest and also the most delicate - thou so pure within the bowels of the earth! A man may die of thirst lying beside a magnesian spring. He may die within reach of a salt lake. He may die though he hold in his hand a jug of dew, if it be inhabited by evil salts. For thou, water, art a proud divinity, allowing no alteration, no foreignness in thy being. And the joy that thou spreadest is an infinitely simple joy. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste. — Logan Pearsall Smith

Self-awareness is one of the rarest of human commodities. I don't mean self-consciousn ess where you're limiting and evaluating yourself. I mean being aware of your own patterns. — Tony Robbins

Poetry ~~ No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requistions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought. — Henry David Thoreau

Black was bestlooking ... Ebony was the best wood, the hardest wood; it was black. Virginia ham was the best ham. It was black on the outside. Tuxedos and tail coats were black and they were a man's finest, most expensive clothes. You had to use pepper to make most meats and vegetables fit to eat. The most flavorsome pepper was black. The best caviar was black. The rarest jewels were black: black opals, black pearls. — Ann Petry

Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn't tell a C major from a sergeant major. Because I, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man - his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music - but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway. Because we listened to nightjars. Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance "beauty," yet here she is, in these soundproof chambers of my heart. — David Mitchell

The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth-the power of love-although I have put it last, is the rarest. — Margot Asquith

Let me absorb this thing. Let me try to understand it without private barriers. When I have understood what you are saying, only then will I subject it to my own scrutiny and my own criticism This is the finest of all critical approaches and the rarest. — John Steinbeck

You have this thing you call . . . boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song - it went "Twinkle twinkle little star. . . ." What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming! Completely — Terry Pratchett

No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. — Henry David Thoreau

Hank, this is great."
"Yes."
He said it simply, openly. There was no flattered pleasure in his voice, and no modesty. This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another: the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is understood. — Ayn Rand

All over the world there are human beings with exceptional powers," Aaron was saying, "but you are one of the rarest because you have found a way to use your power for good. You don't gaze into a crystal ball for dollar bills, Rowan. You heal. Can you bring him into that with you? Or will he take you away from it forever? Will he draw your power off into the creation of some mutant monster that the world does not want and cannot abide? Destroy him, Rowan. For your own sake. Not for mine. Destroy him for what you know is right. — Anne Rice

Human life can be liken to that of a flower, its beautiful when it blooms, though yours may delay but when it blooms, it will be the rarest and the most beautiful of all. — Amenorhu Kwaku

To what gods is sacrificed that rarest and sweetest thing upon earth, friendship? To vanity and to interest. — Guillaume-Chretien De Lamoignon De Malesherbes

The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate. — Charles Horton Cooley

That's the peculiar thing about nature," explained Mr. F., "it guards it's rarest treasures with greatest care. — William Pene Du Bois

Wallace, King and Sanders point out in Biology: The Science of Life (that rarest thing: a readable textbook), — Bill Bryson

I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle. — Edmund Burke

Emotion combined with an artist's discipline is the rarest thing in the world. — Ursula Nordstrom

One sees that dead, vacant look steal over the rarest, finest of women's faces ... in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces ... — Rebecca Harding Davis

The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed. — Anita Loos

Dame Edna is that rarest sighting in our time of the absolute comic, an inspired personification of caprice whose comedy answered the primal call to take the audience for a tumble. — John Lahr

re: the US agriculture industry: " This puts us in the odd position of consuming fossil fuels --geologically one of the rarest and most useful resources ever discovered-- to provide a substitute for dirt --the cheapest and most widely available agricultural input imaginable. — David R. Montgomery

South Delhi is such a rich area in Delhi, you could call it the heart of Delhi or a slice of heaven for the rarest sight of Delhiites served with cherry. — Parul Wadhwa

{Letter from Debbs to Eva Ingersoll, husband of Robert Ingersoll, just after the news of Robert's death}

We were inexpressibly shocked to hear of the sudden death of your dear husband and our best loved friend. Most tenderly do we sympathize with you, and all of yours in your great bereavement... Gifted with the rarest genius, in beautiful alliance with his heroism, his kindness and boundless love, he made the name of Ingersoll immortal.

To me, he was an older brother and as I loved him living, so will I cherish his sweet memory forever. — Eugene V. Debs

Dan looked small in the corner, hunched over and broken. What was bizarre, what had angered her so, was that she had tried to do a story on Dan Mercer and his "good works" about a year before her sting showed his true predilections. Before that, Dan had seemed to be that rarest of beasts - the honest-to-God do-gooder, a man who truly wanted to make a difference and, most shockingly, a man who didn't couple that desire with self-aggrandizement. She — Harlan Coben

The rarest of all human qualities is consistency. — Jeremy Bentham

Isn't it the rarest thing? Never mind the whale migrations, or total eclipses of suns and moons: love that lasts, and is returned in equal measure, is the rarest thing she knows of. — Susan Fletcher

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols of things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde

Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated. — William Hazlitt

Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price. — Virginia Woolf

To exist
is to be at one point in time.

To live
is to experience every passing moment
with your five senses and your mind open

To Thrive
is to think beyond what is best for each of us right now
and to act upon what is best for our world for the future.

And that is the rarest thing of all.

It is our collective selflessness
that can give us a chance to create a forever. — K. Chayne

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

The only sort of pride that may serve a man well on that rarest occasion is his hatred of being wrong. It keeps his mouth shut, his ears open, and his research extensive. And yet this is also the deadliest because when he is in fact proven wrong, he absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. It then keeps his mouth open, his ears shut, and his research inexistent. — Criss Jami

It is true that after they have been reassured and have lost this fear, they are so artless and so free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts. This letter, the first and rarest of all printed Americana, describes the scenery and the natives of Hispaniola. — Christopher Columbus

An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man. — Thomas More

But china is seldom thrown from a great height; it is one of the rarest of human actions. You have to find in conjunction a very high house, and a woman of such reckless impulse and passionate prejudice that she flings her jar or pot straight from the window without thought of who is below. — Virginia Woolf

One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. — Wilkie Collins

The pearl whose possession separates man from beast, the pearl which is the rarest find - the best among virtues - is forgiveness. — Kedar Joshi

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world. — Jean De La Bruyere

Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation. — Walter Lippmann

I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. — Henry David Thoreau

I know well that only the rarest kind of best can be good enough for the young. — Walter De La Mare

Courage is the rarest of all good traits — Dennis Prager

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. — Ernest Hemingway,

Pride is the oldest and most common of sins. Humility is the rarest and most beautiful of graces. — J.C. Ryle

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices. — George Bernard Shaw

A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real. It stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be kept at its early strength only by adding to it either more and more unhappiness (jealousy, separation, doubt, renunciation), or more and more artificiality (drink, technique, stage-illusions). Whoever has missed this has never lived, who lives for it alone is but partly alive. — Cyril Connolly

I believe that creativity is a product of intelligence. I don't believe that creative work can be produced by fools, dullards, or mediocre people, except in the rarest of accidents. Creativity is a product of desire, thought, experience, experimentation and inner conviction. Taken together, these five qualities imply intelligence and commitment. — Bruce Barnbaum

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life. — Jonathan Sacks

The deeds of love are less questionable than any action of an individual can be, for, it being founded on the rarest mutual respect, the parties incessantly stimulate each other to a loftier and purer life, and the act in which they are associated must be pure and noble indeed, for innocence and purity can have no equal. In this relation we deal with one whom we respect more religiously even than we respect our better selves, and we shall necessarily conduct as in the presence of God. What presence can be more awful to the lover than the presence of his beloved? — Henry David Thoreau

Tragically, one of the rarest commodities in our culture is empathy. People are hungry for empathy, They don't know how to ask for it. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

[Victoria Clark] is one of those people who has the rarest combination of gifts. I can put her in any classical play tomorrow because she such an extraordinary actress. — Bartlett Sher

When in doubt, do what they do in books, was one of Gabriel's secret mottos and - that rarest of things - a principle that he actually lived by. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

All the rarest hues of human life take radiance and are rainbowed out in tears. — Gerald Massey

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [ ... ], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did. — Muriel Spark

Because of Christianity the West has missed many things, and one of them is meditation, the rarest flowering of a human being, because they have made it equivalent to contemplation. Contemplation is thinking. Meditation is no-thinking. — Rajneesh

I don't think he was ever happy unless someone was in love with him, responding to him like filings to a magnet, helping him to explain himself, promising him something. What it was I do not know. Perhaps they promised that there would always be women in the world who would spend their brightest, freshest, rarest hours to nurse and protect that superiority he cherished in his heart. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The only times we are consciously aware of the authorship of a photograph, I would argue, are when we contemplate the photographs we ourselves have taken (or those of friends and family) or when we go deliberately to the photographers monograph or exhibition. The signed image - the appropriated, the owned image - is by far the rarest in this pullulating world of pictures. — William Boyd

There is no harder lesson for man to learn than the lesson of humility. It is the rarest of all gifts. It is a very rare thing to find a man or woman that is following closely the footsteps of the Master in meekness and humility. — Dwight L. Moody

Bicycling beyond the Divide did what all great books do: it told me about me. In its tale of a journey made by two different men-both of them Daryl Farmer-this book offers us not only moving vistas and meaningful people, but also hope, that rarest of literary commodities these days. I didn't want this to end. — Bret Lott

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. — Henry David Thoreau

Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we know it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we have not known. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense privilege! I possess it. Do you? — Wilkie Collins

The three-o'-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest. — Henry David Thoreau

We are what our genetics say we are. Melissa Mae Palmer on being born with one of the rarest diseases in history and possessing the only genetic living code. — Melissa Mae Palmer

He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but no he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. [ ... ] Then he saw that normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect of body or of mind [ ... ] The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults. — W. Somerset Maugham

Chastity ... has, even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. — Virginia Woolf

We should not feel pride in our charity, austerity, valour, scriptural knowledge, modestyandmorality for the world is full of the rarest gems. — Chanakya

The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world - it is the courage to be who you are. — Sydney J. Harris

I was the dhampir daughter of the family patriarch, the little known stain on an otherwise immaculate record. Louis-Cesare, on the other hand, was vamp royalty. The only Child of Mircea's younger, and far stranger, brother Radu, he was a first-level master
the highest and rarest vampire rank.
A month ago, the prince and the pariah had crossed paths because we had one thing in common: we were very good at killing things. And Mircea's bug-eyed crazy brother Vlad had needed killing if anyone ever had. The collaboration hadn't exactly been stress free, but to my surprise, we eventually sorted things out and got the job done. By the end, I'd even started to think that it was kind of nice, having someone to watch my back for a change.
Sometimes, I could be really stupid. — Karen Chance

She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; — Edgar Allan Poe

Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors. — James Broughton

Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that's all. I don't know if he's right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live. — Robyn Schneider

He was the rarest of things, a Republican with sex appeal. — David Halberstam

To be one of God's lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive, and yet infinitely active also; passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. It is very hard to explain this so as to be understood But it means that we must lay down all the activity of the creature, as such, and must let only the activities of God work in us, and through us, and by us. Self must step aside, to let God work. — Hannah Whitall Smith

There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionable spirit. — Martin Buber

Both the Hopi and Zuni Indians, who have used the venom in purification rituals, assert that it effectively reduces the human soul to its rarest elements, stripping away all that is false, illusory, or fearful. — Nicholas Christopher

The heart is like an instrument whose strings Steal nobler music from Life's many frets: The golden threads are spun thro' Suffering's fire, Wherewith the marriage-robes for heaven are woven: And all the rarest hues of human life Take radiance, and are rainbow'd out in tears. — Gerald Massey

You make the rarest canvas, love — Madeline Miller

Most people who are successful don't keep their money. One of the rarest things in the world is to maintain success and integrity - the kinds of things that seem so easy just starting out. But that's the human predicament. — Sophie B. Hawkins

The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all. — Thomas Hardy

Through their kisses and caresses they experienced a joy and wonder the equal of which has never been known or heard of. But I shall be silent ... ; for the rarest and most delectable pleasures are those which are hinted at, but never told. — Chretien De Troyes

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents. — Phyllis McGinley

An unprejudiced mind is probably the rarest thing in the world; to nonprejudice I attach the greatest value. — Andre Gide

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do. — Arthur Schopenhauer

God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman! — George Meredith

Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events. — John Drinkwater

The rarest, truest beauty is visible only to the heart. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Eve's goal was to align herself with God at every possible level - to share his heart, imitate his ways, love what he loved, and join him in his work. It is the rarest of privileges, the highest of honors, the most daunting challenge imaginable. A simple list of attributes barely scratches the surface of all it means to bear God's image. — Carolyn Custis James

Really, my artiste, you amaze me. The lengths you will go to in order to accomplish your own destruction. The redundancy of it! In Night City, you had it, in the palm of your hand! The speed to eat your sense away, drink to keep it all so fluid, Linda for a sweeter sorrow, and the street to hold the axe. How far you've come, to do it now, and what grotesque props. . . . Playgrounds hung in space, castles hermetically sealed, the rarest rots of old Europa, dead men sealed in little boxes, magic out of China. . . . — William Gibson

She's on the stairs, ma'am, getting her breath,' said the young servant, who had not been long up from the country, where my mother had the excellent habit of getting all her servants. Often she had seen them born. That's the only way to get really good ones. And they're the rarest of luxuries. — Marcel Proust

What you get at the BMI Workshop is the rarest commodity in New York City: Friendly criticism; people who genuinely root for you; and a chance to rewrite your work, try it again, and hone your craft. — Maury Yeston

Ammon Johns has probably forgotten more things about online marketing and branding than most of us have ever known.
Ammon Johns is unique. He has a remarkably long career in an industry that does not really do long careers. He successfully synthesizes the knowledge and experience of the past with a thorough knowledge and understanding of today.
I have had the pleasure of seeing Ammon's mind at work and it is safe to say that I simply cannot recommend him highly enough. The companies that work with him are the ones that enjoy the rarest of things in today's world: a competitive advantage. — David Amerland

A deep and sober concern to please God is the rarest of rarities. — Vance Havner

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet. — Charles Caleb Colton

It seems so odd to me, an odyssey
How honesty is honestly the rarest thing upon us
Its astonishing. — Asher Roth

A questioning mind is the most cherished resource man has and the rarest. — Sherrilyn Kenyon