Understanding – Union – Value – Vanity – Want – War (Art of War) – Waste – Weakness – Wealth – Work – Youth – Zeal – Zen

U

Understanding

No one is going to turn down a good meal because he does not understand the digestive mechanism. (V. I. Klassen)

All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture. (William Hazlitt)

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it can't understand, and what those things are. (Søren Kierkegaard)

We can become slaves to things we don't understand. (Cf. Vernon Howard)

Man know much more than he understands. (Alfred Adler)

Where I am not understood, maybe something very useful and profound is couched underneath. (With Jonathan Swift)

Union

The labor movement's basic purpose is to achieve a better life for its members. (New York Times)

V

Value

A great part of the miseries of mankind are brought on them by false estimates they have made of the value of things. (With Benjamin Franklin)

Vanity

Virtue wouldn't go far if vanity did not keep it company. (François de La Rochefoucauld)

Vain-glorious men are the scorn of the wise, the admiration of fools, the idols of paradise, and the slaves of their own vaunts. (Francis Bacon)

W

Want

The keener the want the lustier the growth. (Wendell Phillips)

War (Art of War)

War challenges virtually every other institution of society [the justice and equity of its economy, the adequacy of its political systems, the energy of its productive plant, the bases, wisdom and purposes of its foreign policy. (Walter Millis)

Soldiers win battles and generals get the credit for them. (Cf. Napoleon Bonaparte)

Waste

Make the best use of both time and money. Add industry and frugal dealings if they pay very well and if you’re free to it. (Cf. Benjamin Franklin)

Regular waste can be worse than loss. Every sound person would do well to keep the topic of waste before him rather often. The scope of thrift is limitless. (Cf. Thomas A. Edison)

The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling. (Orison S. Marden)

Weakness

The weakest soul, within itself unblest, leans for all pleasure on another's breast. (Oliver Goldsmith)

Going for character: why not now, and where you stand? (Cf. Robert Louis Stevenson)

Wealth

He does not possess wealth that allows it to possess him. (Benjamin Franklin)

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it. (Socrates)

Work

Entering an unsound business can be worse that overwork. (TK)

I like work; It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. (Jerome K. Jerome)

Y

Youth

Don't let young people tell you their aspirations; when they drop them they might drop you for it. (With Logan Pearsall Smith)

Youth is life as yet unblemished by much tragedy, but hardly by TV. (Cf. Alfred North Whitehead)

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over. (George MacDonald)

Not yet hardened, many young die good. (With Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Herford)

The American ideal is youth - handsome, empty youth. (Henry Miller)

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. (Quentin Crisp)

Young and happy ones are news. If they aren't up to something, that might be called news too. (With Kenneth Rexroth)

Old people can get tremendously nervous from it, and frauds. (With Wallace Stevens)

When older men declare war, youths are trained to fight and die. (With Herbert Hoover)

An old man with something of the youth in him, may feel young in mind and heart only. (With Marcus T. Cicero)

If youth but knew and age but could - but what? [With Henri Estienne)

Youth is not merely a question of years. (Natalie Clifford Barney)

The child accepts child life is real life. (With George Orwell)

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour. (Samuel Johnson)

Youth of assumed personalities and disguises may be called the time of the sincerely insincere. (With V. S. Pritchett)

Z

Zeal

Zeal has to be very blind or badly regulated where it encroaches on the rights of others. (With Quesnel)

Zen

Great Zen is an artistic endeavour for those that reach up to it. (Cf. Samuel Butler)

If you let go over a cliff and die completely, and then come back to life - after that you can't be described full well any more. (With Zen Saying)

In studying the Zen way, realising it can be hard; once you have realised it, preserving it can be hard. When you can preserve it, cutting it into practice can be hard. (Cf. Zen Saying)