John Lubbock's Quotes

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.

Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven.

We often hear of people breaking down from overwork, but in nine out of ten they are really suffering from worry or anxiety.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

Your character will be what you yourself choose to make it.

If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.

A wise system of education will at last teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.

It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.

And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.