Practicality Quotes

The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.

I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in a long engagement.

I wish that friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence. It must plant itself on the ground, before it vaults overthe moon. I wish it to be a little of a citizen, before it is quite a cherub.

If the shoe fits, buy another one just like it.

We want men who will fix their eyes on the stars, but who will not forget that their feet must walk on the ground.

As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

Handle your tools without mittens.

Even though I'm a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I'm looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it.

But however happy you are feeling, you can't talk with your mouth full of snow.

Marry your son when you will, but you daughter when you can.

We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.

Bird in hand makes it harder to blow nose.

There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.

The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary.

From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value.

Away, you trifler! Love! I love thee not,I care not for thee, Kate: this is no worldTo play with mammets and to tilt with lips:We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns.

An educated person, I think, is one who not only knows a lot, but knows how to do a lot of things.

What difference does the uniform make? You don't hit with it.

Science should be on tap, not on top.

What signifies Philosophy that does not apply to some Use? May we not learn from hence, that black Clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot Sunny Climate or Season, as white ones; because in such Cloaths the Body is more heated by the Sun when we walk abroad, and are at the same time heated by the Exercise, which double Heat is apt to bring on putrid dangerous Fevers? The Soldiers and Seamen, who must march and labour in the Sun, should in the East or West Indies have an Uniform of white?

One gains at least two to three times more experience grabbing the tiger by the tail than reading about it in a book.

All our philosophy is as dry as dust if it is not immediately translated into some act of living service.

Miracles are ceased; and therefore we must needs admit the means, how things are perfected.

The shortest route is not the most direct one, but rather the one where the most favorable winds swell our sails:Mthat is the lesson that seafarers teach. Not to abide by this lesson is to be obstinate: here, firmness of character is tainted with stupidity.

A good action is preferable to an argument.

I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

You should prefer a good scientist without literary abilities than a literate one without scientific skills

I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.

Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism.

I've never considered musical equipment very sacred.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

To say it is not practical, one has to also admit that integration is not practical.

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.

Not to waste time on nonsense. Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it. Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.

Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.

They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.

If book knowledge made great investors, than the librarians would all be rich.

It has always seemed to me that the best symbol of common sense was a bridge.

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.

You turn the handle the way it goes, not the way it ought to go

The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For...things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.

Some guy invented Vitamin A out of a carrot. I'll bet he can't invent a good meal out of one.

Don't tell us about dreams – dream dinners aren't any good and we can't share them.

Strictly speaking, no activity and no industry is possible without a certain amount of violence, no matter how little. Even the very process of living is impossible without a certain amount of violence. What we have to do is to minimize it to the greatest extent possible.

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.

Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.

Portable property is happiness in a pocketbook.

If you need to bring in a business partner, make sure your partner brings along some money.

What need the bridge much broader than the flood?

Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

If you have a bald head don't walk out in the sun because you will get burned.