Surest Quotes & Sayings

Curiosity is, and has been from the creation of the world, a master passion. To awaken it, to gratify it by slight degrees, and yet leave something always in suspense, is to establish the surest hold that can be had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of mankind. — Charles Dickens

It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing - even fugitively - in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. — Mircea Eliade

Something has to get you back to prayer, and in my experience, the surest thing in either case is desperation. — Shauna Niequist

One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down. — Pauline Kael

[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an ingenious web of probabilities - the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth. His — George Eliot

If we have lost faith in our vernaculars, it is a sign of want of faith in ourselves; it is the surest sign of decay. — Mahatma Gandhi

Every time I started going in the direction of thinking how it might turn out, I started to just turn my brain around and not go there, because I think the surest way to guarantee that you won't win is to assume that you will. — Brad Bird

The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak. — Sarah Kendzior

One of the surest ways of making a friend and influencing the opinion of another is to give consideration to his opinion, to let him sustain his feeling of importance. — Dale Carnegie

Wow ... At least I can rest assured that you definitely can't read my mind," I remarked. "Clearly you know nothing about me ... because the surest way to keep me from doing something is to tell me I have no other choice. — M.A. George

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

What avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor which needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serence, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven. — John Armstrong

You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think. She had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us. And she taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it - well, you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her; not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her society. So, as you see, there was more to her than her education. — Mark Twain

The surest way of misunderstanding revelation is to take it literally, to imagine that God spoke to the prophet on a long-distance telephone. Yet most of us succumb to such fancy, forgetting that the cardinal sin in thinking about ultimate issues is literal-mindedness. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

So long as a man remains a gregarious and sociable being, he cannot cut himself off from the gratification of the instinct of imparting what he is learning, of propagating through others the ideas and impressions seething in his own brain, without stunting and atrophying his moral nature and drying up the surest sources of his future intellectual replenishment. — James Joseph Sylvester

The happy State of Matrimony is, undoubtedly, the surest and most lasting Foundation of Comfort and Love ... the Cause of all good Order in the World, and what alone preserves it from the utmost Confusion. — Benjamin Franklin

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher - a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The surest way to wake up and smell the roses every day is to go to sleep face down in the flower bed. — Argus Hamilton

Both agree in repudiating "marriage for love"; but the idealist repudiates it in the name of love, the critic in the name of marriage. Love, for the idealist Ibsen, is a passion which loses its virtue when it reaches its goal, which inspires only while it aspires, and flags bewildered when it attains. Marriage, for the critic Ibsen, is an institution beset with pitfalls into which those are surest to step who enter it blinded with love. — Henrik Ibsen

The surest sign of the estrangement of the opinions of two persons is when they both say something ironical to each other and neither of them feels the irony. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth? Teach him to value thinking alike more than thinking differently. — Friedrich Nietzsche

This invisible and divine goodness, of which I only speak here because of its being one of the surest and nearest signs of the unceasing activity of our soul, this invisible and divine goodness ennobles, in decisive fashion, all that it has unconsciously touched. — Maurice Maeterlinck

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. — George Washington

Once I admitted the arguments of necessity and force majeure put forward by the less eminent, I couldn't reject those of the eminent. To which they retorted that the surest way of playing the game of the red robes was to leave to them the monopoly of the death penalty. My reply to this was that if you gave in once, there was no reason for not continuing to give in. It seems to me that history has borne me out; today there's a sort of competition who will kill the most. They're all mad over murder and they couldn't stop killing men even if they wanted to. — Albert Camus

If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation. — John Acton

Honest unaffected distrust of human abilities under all circumstances is the surest sign of strength of mind. — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

We should educate more women and girls. Because that is the surest route to controllably, manageably reducing the human population. Educated women have fewer kids. And the kids they do have are better cared for and are more successful. As I like to say, it's not one thing that we need to focus on. It's everything all at once. — Bill Nye

Looking at traditional marriages, it seems the surest way for a woman to be alone is to get married. — Gloria Steinem

Pretentious quotations [are] the surest road to tedium. — Henry Watson Fowler

The sweetest poison doth often bring the surest death (645). — Richard Baxter

National injustice is the surest road to national downfall. — William E. Gladstone

For the Humanist, ... head and heart ... must function together ... The constitution of the Phillips Exeter Academy reads: 'Though goodness without knowledge ... is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous ... Both united form the noblest character and lay the surest foundation of usefulness to mankind.' — Corliss Lamont

Personal experience is the surest method by which one can determine the truth of a supposition, no matter how reputable the reporter, since so many experiences are subject to individual proclivities. — Nick Offerman

The surest thing about me is that I will change my mind. — Claire Forlani

Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of the selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision. — Karen Armstrong

Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. - BILL WATTERSON — Michio Kaku

This seems to be advanced as the surest basis for our belief in the existence of gods, that there is no race so uncivilized, no one in the world so barbarous that his mind has no inkling of a belief in gods. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' - this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. — Aldous Huxley

The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest. — Henry David Thoreau

Be the exception to the rule. It's the surest way to become exceptional. — Ron Kaufman

To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly. — Colette

One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error. — Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

The surest thing I took away from my BSW, MSW, and Ph.D. in social work is this: Connection is why we're here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering. I wanted to develop research that explained the anatomy of connection. — Brene Brown

If you want to know when a war might be coming, you just watch the U.S. and see when it starts cutting down on its defenses. It's the surest barometer in the world. — Will Rogers

the best-bred dogs belong in the surest hands. — Amor Towles

Ignoring a child's disrespect is the surest guarantee that it will continue. — Fred G. Gosman

One of the highest and surest signs of civilization is that a people have learned to obey the commands of those who are placed over them. — Booker T. Washington

The surest mark of true conversion is humility. — J.C. Ryle

This unrivalled tutor used as His class-book the best of books. Although able to reveal fresh truth, He preferred to expound the old. He knew by His omniscience what was the most instructive way of teaching, and by turning at once to Moses and the prophets, He showed us that the surest road to wisdom is not speculation, reasoning, or reading human books, but meditation upon the Word of God. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

All really great lovers are articulate, and verbal seduction is the surest road to actual seduction. — Marya Mannes

Our nation is founded on the principal that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny. — John F. Kennedy

General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general ... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property. — Rutherford B. Hayes

I felt that pressure of time that is perhaps the surest indication we have left childhood behind. — Gene Wolfe

Virtue is its own punishment - "nice girls" lose - and one of the surest signs of potential proficiency in witchcraft is an inability to get along with other women. — Anton Szandor LaVey

The surest way to heal an eco-system is to connect it to more of itself. — William McDonough

Never express anger with a friend or a subordinate in public," Vedris always said. "They might forgive a private expression of anger or a deserved scolding, but they never forget a public humiliation. It is the surest way to destroy a friendship and to create enemies. — Tamora Pierce

It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but no one was supposed to get over us. The female body was our worst handicap and our best advantage
the surest means to success, the surest course to failure. (p. 72) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws
hygeine [sic] of the body, and hygeine of the spirit
is the surest warrant for health and happiness. — Harriot Kezia Hunt

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know. — Mark Twain

The surest sign that God is alive in you is joy. — Robert Barron

A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer's block. — Ryan Lilly

The surest way of making a dupe is to let your victim suppose you are his. — Bill Vaughan

Repentance always brings a person to the point of saying, "I have sinned." The surest sign that God is at work in his life is when he says that and means it. Anything less is simply sorrow for having made foolish mistakes-a reflex action caused by self-disgust. — Oswald Chambers

The surest way to be late is to have plenty of time — Leo Kennedy

Humility is the surest sign of strength. — Thomas Merton

I can hardly thinke there was any scared into Heaven; they go the surest way to Heaven who would serve God without a Hell; other Mercenaries, that crouch unto Him in feare of Hell, though they terme themselves servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty. — Thomas Browne

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue. — Frances Wright

The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind one of the surest proofs of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be. — Thomas Ligotti

Children know how to be cruel, and the cruelty of their elders is the surest residue of the malaise the young feel toward things strange, things other, things that reveal our own ignorance or insufficiency — Carlos Fuentes

Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben. (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. — Viktor E. Frankl

The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much. — Benjamin Hoff

All the truly great stand-ups say, 'I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work.' To me, in the end, the surest thing is work. — Patton Oswalt

We have a maxim in the House of Commons, and written on the walls of our houses, that old ways are the safest and surest ways. — Edward Coke

We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities. — George W. Bush

The surest way to find an actively managed fund that will have top-quartile returns is to look for a fund that has bottom-quartile expenses. — Burton Malkiel

The surest sign that you haven't any sense is to argue with one who hasn't. — Laurence J. Peter

The surest way of spoiling a pleasure [is] to start examining your satisfaction. — C.S. Lewis

Many of us humans have a hard time with understanding one simple truth: the surest way to get love is to start giving love to others. Often, when we desperately need some companionship, understanding and warmth from those who are around us, we chose to blame, shout, criticize, accuse, insult and set ultimatums. But in reply, we only encounter with cold walls of estrangement which was diligently built by our own efforts, farcical walls and fences. — Sahara Sanders

A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession or business the surest way of growing rich. — Jean De La Bruyere

Writing to impress others is the surest path to pretentious mediocrity. — Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Alas," said Zee, "this predominance of the few over the many is the surest and most fatal sign of a race incorrigibly savage. See you not that the primary condition of mortal happiness consists in the extinction of that strife and competition between individuals, which, no matter what forms of government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the few, destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be the nominal liberty of the state, and annul that calm of existence, without which, felicity, mental or bodily, cannot be attained? — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The surest way to know our gold, is to look upon it and examine it in God's furnace, where he tries it that we may see what it is. If we have a mind to know whether a building stands strong or not, we must look upon it when the wind blows. If we would know whether a staff be strong, or a rotten, broken reed, we must observe it when it is leaned on and weight is borne upon it. If we would weigh ourselves justly we must weigh ourselves in God's scales that he makes use of to weigh us. — Jonathan Edwards

If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne. — Miguel De Cervantes

The real propaganda is what - if we are genuinely a living member of a nation - we tell ourselves because we have hope, hope being a symbol of a nation's instinct of self-preservation. To remain blind to the unjustness of the cause of the individual "Germany," to recognise at every moment the justness of the cause of the individual "France," the surest way was not for a German to be without judgement, or for a Frenchman to possess it, it was, both for the one and for the other, to be possessed of patriotism. — Marcel Proust

A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male. — Charles Caleb Colton

Now he found out a new thing
namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. — Mark Twain

Mathematics is one of the surest ways for a man to feel the power of thought and the magic of the spirit. Mathematics is one of the eternal truths and, as such, raises the spirit to the same level on which we feel the presence of God. — Julio Cesar De Mello E Souza

The surest way to get a job done is to give it to a busy man. He'll have his secretary do it. — Jacob Braude

While just government protects all in their religious rites, true religion affords government its surest support. — George Washington

The surest antidote for anxiety is to always do your best and have complete trust in God. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Incrementalism: In the first generation, the goal of the movement was wholesale social and cultural transformation. Small, incremental victories were too little given the magnitude of America's moral decay. Since 1988, the new leaders have recognized that incrementalism is the surest path to success in political competition. The current movement is committed to securing small victories now, postponing for the long-term more fundamental changes in society and politics. — Kenneth D. Wald

Insofar as it is possible to divide people in categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity.Every Frenchman is different. But all actors are similar. — Milan Kundera

Sincerity is the surest road to confidence. — David Lloyd George

A Bible reading laity is a nation's surest defence against error. — J.C. Ryle

[W]hen the modern mythmaker, the writer of literary fairy tales, dares to touch the old magic and try to make it work in new ways, it must be done with the surest of touches. It is, perhaps, a kind of artistic thievery, this stealing of old characters, settings, the accoutrements of magic. But then, in a sense, there is an element of theft in all art; even the most imaginative artist borrows and reconstructs the archetypes when delving into the human heart. That is not to say that using a familiar character from folklore in the hopes of shoring up a weak narrative will work. That makes little sense. Unless the image, character, or situation borrowed speaks to the author's condition, as cryptically and oracularly as a dream, folklore is best left untapped. — Jane Yolen

In a swordfight, a man's surest defense is the swift stroke that slays his foe, not cringing behind a shield. — George R R Martin

It should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail that we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist. — Albert Camus

Prayer is the surest remedy against the devil and besetting sins. — J.C. Ryle