Sufficing Quotes & Sayings

A drop of anger can lead to an ocean of troubles. — Matshona Dhliwayo

All achievement, no matter what may be its nature, or its purpose, must begin with an intense, burning desire for something definite. — Napoleon Hill

I was between 14 and 15, when I went through my angsty period. I was never very rebellious. I never did things to rebel against society, or against my parents, but I did think I knew everything. Then, one day, I woke up and realized I was a dot in this universe, and that quickly dissipated. — Shailene Woodley

By the clock of St Jean Baptiste, that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes
a brief space, but sufficing to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a nameless experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very tone of a visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night a cup was forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no well, but filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering, brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips, tastes not as this suffering tasted. — Charlotte Bronte

One day I saw a flower and began to contemplate its fragrance and beauty. As I thought more deeply, I recognized the creator of such wonders- not with my mortal eyes but with my spiritual eyes. This filled my heart with joy, but my joy was still greater when I recognized that same creator at work within my own soul. How wonderful is God, separate from creation yet ever filling it with his glorious presence. — Sadhu Sundar Singh

No, thou art come too late, Empedocles!
And the world hath the day, and must break thee,
Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live,
Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine;
And being lonely thou art miserable,
For something has impair'd they spirit's strength,
And dried its self-sufficing font of joy. — Matthew Arnold

To love or have loved is all-sufficing. We must not ask for more. No other pearl is to be found in the shadowfolds of life. To love is an accomplishment. — Victor Hugo

It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest. — William O. Douglas

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge. — Thomas Love Peacock

How grudging memory is, and how bitterly she clutches the raw material of her daily work. — Lawrence Durrell

He didn't mind it in the beginning, this slowness. It left him alone with himself while he fished and listened to the call of the herons, and taught Anthony to row a boat and to play baseball and soccer, while Anthony read to him from his children's books as Alexander held the fishing line. The soul was repairing itself little by little. And it was on Bethel Island, with his mother and father twenty-four hours by his side, watching over him, talking to him, playing with him, that Anthony stopped waking up with nightmares in the middle of the night and settled down to silence inside himself. And it was on Bethel Island that Alexander stopped needing ice cold baths at three in the morning - the hot sudsy dimly lit baths with her soapy hands and soapy body in the late evening sufficing. — Paullina Simons

The Devil would not have begun by an open and obvious sin to tempt man into doing something which God had forbidden, had not man already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and, consequently, to take pleasure in the words: 'You shall be as Gods.' The promise of these words, however, would much more truly have come to pass if, by obedience, Adam and Eve had kept close to the ultimate and true Source of their being and had not, by pride imagined that they were themselves the source of their being. For, created gods are gods not in virtue of their own being but by a participation in the being of the true God. For, whoever seeks to be more than he is becomes less, and while he aspires to be self-sufficing he retires from Him who is truly sufficient for him. — Augustine Of Hippo

When experiencing a work of art, a curious exchange takes place; the work projects its aura, and we project our own emotions and precepts on the work. The melancholy in Michelangelo's architecture is fundamentally the viewer's sense of his/her own melancholy enticed by the authority of the work. Enigmatically, we encounter ourselves in the work. — Juhani Pallasmaa

The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. — Aristotle.

embodied in the remark that dear far-away Ruth's intentions were doubtless good. She and Kent are even yet looking for another prop, but no one presents a true sphere of usefulness. They complain that people are self-sufficing. With Saltram the fine type of the child of adoption was scattered, the grander, the elder style. They've got their carriage back, but what's an empty carriage? In short I think we were all happier as well as poorer before; even including George Gravener, who by the deaths of his brother and his nephew has lately become Lord Maddock. His wife, whose fortune clears the property, is criminally dull; he hates being in the Upper — Henry James

The nearer we are to God, the less we will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from God, the more will long faces come. The more we know God, the more misery vanishes. — Swami Vivekananda

If you don't show up today, I'll be there next year. And the next. Every November 9th I'll wait for you, hoping one day you'll be able to find enough forgiveness to love me again. But if that doesn't happen and you never show, I'll still be grateful to you until the day that I die. You saved me the day we met. — Colleen Hoover

Frog said, 'I wrote 'Dear Toad, I am glad that you are my best friend. Your best friend, Frog.' 'Oh,' said Toad, 'that makes a very good letter.'Then Frog and Toad went out onto the front porch to wait for the mail. They sat there, feeling happy together. — Arnold Lobel

And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the [completed] nature is the end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best. — Aristotle.

Oh, but nonsense, she thought; William must marry Lily. They have so many things in common. Lily is so fond of flowers. They are both cold and aloof and rather self-sufficing. She must arrange for them to take a long walk together. — Virginia Woolf

If the gooseberry said: 'I haven't the heart to be a real proper gooseberry because if everyone were a gooseberry the world wouldn't continue to exist' this would be a stupid argument and the world would be deprived of a useful fruit.
If you are called upon to be a 'gooseberry' in all the senses
pleasant or ludicrous
of the word, you should be one with all your heart and soul, without a backward glance. — Pierre Ceresole

Everything you're trying to reach - by taking the long way round - you could have right now, this moment. If you'd only stop thwarting your own attempts. If you'd only let go of the past, entrust the future to Providence, and guide the present toward reverence and justice. Reverence: so you'll accept what you're allotted. Nature intended it for you, and you for it. Justice: so that you'll speak the truth, frankly and without evasions, and act as you should - and as other people deserve. — Marcus Aurelius

However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some 'Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.' — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The poise of a plant, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to its trivial passages is the various record of this power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. — Aristotle.

And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of solitude. — William Wordsworth

Tho' the world could turn from you, This, at least, I learn from you: Beauty and Truth, tho' never found, are worthy to be sought, The singer, upward-springing, Is grander than his singing, And tranquil self-sufficing joy illumes the dark of thought. This, at least, you teach me, In a revelation: That gods still snatch, as worthy death, the soul in its aspiration. — Robert Williams Buchanan

A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. — Plato

Achieving true sobriety goes beyond abstinence. it's also about healing your soul, apologizing for damage you did to other, and seeking forgiveness. — Lou Gramm

Did the poet know how lucky he was, to have such beautiful words and a place to put them and keep them? — Ally Condie

Power is, in nature, the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying soul. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

How do you get free of the damnable books of Romance when everybody else is still living in them? — Robert Anton Wilson

Will "trigger warnings" simply be a way of establishing a new secular index, a cautionary list of books and other works dangerous not for religious reasons but because they may offend or upset certain groups or individuals or that contain material which can be viewed as insensitive or inappropriate? Would Grapes of Wrath be upsetting to someone with bad memories of rural poverty? Will the near future necessitate warning labels in front of all published material? Will future editions of The Best American Essays, for example, include a trigger warning in front of each selection so readers can avoid material that might upset them? And will trigger warnings in themselves eventually cause upsetting reactions, just the words and images sufficing to evoke unpleasant memories or anxious responses? — John Jeremiah Sullivan

If there ever was a pursuit which stultified itself by its very conditions, it is the pursuit of pleasure as the all-sufficing end of life. Happiness cannot come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done. To do that duty you need to have more than one trait. From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens. — Theodore Roosevelt