Wishes Quotes

Wishing the constant hectic of the fool.

Young.

The apparently irreconcilable dissimilarity between our wishes and our means, between our hearts and this world, remains a riddle.

Richter.

In respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part pf all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

Goethe.

Wishes run over in loquacious impotence; will presses on with laconic energy.

Lavater.

Every wish is like a prayer with God.

E.B.Browning.

It is a fearful mistake to believe that because our wishes are not accomplished they can do no harm.

Gertrude.

Wishes are, at least, the easy pleasures of the poor.

To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing it becomes impossible.

It is probable that God punishes the wrong wish as truly as he does the actual performance; for what is performance but a wish perfected with power; and what is a wish but a desire wanting opportunity of action; a desire sticking in the birth, and miscarrying for lack of strength and favorable circumstances to bring it into the world.

South.

There is nothing more properly the language of the heart than a wish. It is the thirst and egress of it, after some wanted, but desired object.

South.

I could write down twenty cases wherein I wished that God had done otherwise than he did, but which I now see, if I had my own way, would have led to extensive mischief.

Cecil.

Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers!.

Geothe.

Wishes are the parents of large families, but the children are generally inefficient and useless. They are the source of idle and vain dreams, and of air castles which have no solid foundation. The idle wish sends one on a vain journey from which he gains nothing but mental emptiness and discontent with his lot, and it may be, some rebukes of conscience, if it is sharp enough to see his folly.

Anon.

What we ardently wish we soon believe.

Young.

Men’s thoughts are much according to their inclination.

Bacon.

Why wish for more? Wishing of all employments is the worst.

Young.

Our wishes are the true touchstone of our estate; such as we wish to be we are. Worldly hearts affect earthly things; spiritual, divine. We cannot better know what we are than by what we would be.

Bp.Hall.

Wisdom Quotes

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
Coleridge.

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

H.W.Beecher.

Wisdom is the name God gives to religion, so telling the world what it will hardly believe, that the two great things which so engross the desire and designs of both the nobler and ignobler sort of mankind, are to be found in religion, viz; wisdom and pleasure, and that the former is the direct way to the latter, as religion is to both.

South.

The Delphic oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because that I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.

Socrates.

He is wise who knows the sources of knowledge who knows who has written and where it is to be found.

A.A.Hodge.

There is one person that is wiser than anybody, and that is everybody.

Talleyrand.

Wisdom for a man’s self is, in many branches thereof, a depraved thing; it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to leave a house some time before it fall; it is the wisdom of the fox, that thrusts out the badger who digged and made room for him; it is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.

Bacon.

Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching; for he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master.

Ben Jonson.

You read of but one wise man, and all that he knew was that he knew nothing.

Congreve.

What is it to be wise? Tis but to know how little can be known to see all others faults and feel our own.

Pope.

Much wisdom often goes with fewest words.

Sophocles.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

Spurgeon.

The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.

Carlyle.

It may be said almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter, it is deceptive.

Whately.

Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.

Rochefoucauld.

In an active life is sown the seed of wisdom; but he who reflects not, never reaps; has no harvest from it, but carries the burden of age without the wages of experience; nor knows himself old, but from his infirmities, the parish register, and the contempt of mankind. And age, if it has not esteem, has nothing.

Young.

Our chief wisdom consists in knowing our follies and faults, that we may correct them.

True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it; and nest to them, not the many that think they have it, but the few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections ,and know that they have it not.

Tillotson.

It is as great a point of wisdom to hide ignorance as to discover knowledge, to know what we do not know, as what we do.

God gives men wisdom as he gives them gold; his treasure house is not the mint, but the mine.

A wise man’s day is worth a fool’s life.

Arobic.

The wise man has his foibles, as well as the fool. But the difference between them is ,that the foibles of the one are known to himself and concealed from the world; and the foibles of the other are known to the world and concealed from himself.

J.Mason.

It is too often seen, that the wiser men are about the things of this world, the less wise they are about the things of the next.

Gibson.

Will Quotes

He wants wit who want resolved will.

Shakespeare.

Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes.

Chinese Proverb.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

Gratian.

The highest obedience in the spiritual life is to be able always, and in all things, to say, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

Tryon Edwards.

Remember that your will is likely to be closed every day, and be prepared for it by asking only for God’s will.

Prescribe no positive laws to thy will; for thou mayest be forced tomorrow to drink the same water thou despisest to day.

Fuller.

No action will be considered blameless, unless the will was so, for by the will the act was dictated.

Seneca.

In the schools of the wrestling master, when a boy falls he is bidden to get up again, and to go on wrestling day by day till he has acquired strength; and we must do the same and not after one failure suffer ourselves to be swept along as by a torrent. You need but will, and it is done; but it you relax your efforts you will be ruined; for ruin and recovery are both from within.

Epictetus.

The will of man is by his reason swayed.

Shakespeare.

God made thee perfect, not immutable! And good he made thee, but to persevere he left it in thy power; ordained thy will by nature free, not overruled by fare inextricable, or strict necessity.

Milton.

To commit the execution of a purpose to one who disapproves of the plan of it is to employ but one third of the man; his heart and his head are against you, you have commanded only his hands.

Colton.

We have more power than will; and it is only to exculpate ourselves that w often say that things are impracticable.

Rochefoucuald.

Whatever the will commands the whole man must do; the empire of the will over all the faculties being absolutely over ruling and despotic.

South.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

Epictetus.

In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a through will to do it man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others.

W.Humblodt.

He who has a firm will models the world to himself.

Goethe.

Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur. The vulgar, far from hiding their will, blab their wishes. A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passion into a thousand crackers of desire.

Lavater.

The saddest failures in life are those that come from not putting forth the power and will to succeed.

E.P.Whipple.

The general of a large army may be defeated, but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant.

Confucius.

It is the will that makes the action good or bad.

Herrick.

We cannot be held to what is beyond our strength and means; for at times the accomplishment and execution may not be in our power, and indeed there is nothing really in our own power except the will : on this are necessarily based and founded all the principles that regulate the duty of man.

Montaigne.

Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us by others. Man is made great or little by his own will.

Schiller.

Study the singular benefits and advantages of a will resigned and melted into the will of God. Such a spirit hath a continual Sabbath within itself, and the thoughts are established and at rest.

Flavel.

Wife Quotes

A good wife is heaven’s last, best gift to man, his fem of many virtues, his casket of jewels; her voice is sweet music, her smiles his brightest day, her kiss the guardian of his innocence, her arms the pale of his safety, her industry his surest wealth, her economy his safest steward, her lips his faithful counselors, her bosom the softest pillow of his cares.

Jeremy Taylor.

There is one name which I can never utter without a reverence due to the religion which binds earth to heaven a name cheered, beautified, exalted and hallowed and that is the name of wife.

Bulwer.

Sole partner, and sole part of all my joys, dearer thyself than all.

Milton.

A faithful wife becomes the truest and tenderest friend, the balm of comfort, and the source of joy; through every various turn of life the same.

Savage.

There is nothing upon this earth that can be compared with the faithful attachment  of a wife; no creature who, for the object of hr love, is so indomitable, so persevering, so ready to suffer and die. Under the most depressing circumstances, woman’s weaknesses become a mighty power; her timidity becomes fearless courage; all her shrinking and sinking passes away; and her spirit acquires the firmness of marble adamantine firmness when circumstances drive her to put forth all her energy and the inspiration of her affections.

Daniel Webster.

A wife’s a man’s best piece; who till he marries, wants making up: she is the shrine to which nature doth send us forth on pilgrimage; she is the good man’s paradise, and the bad’s first step to heaven, a treasure which, who wants, cannot be trusted to posterity, nor pay his own debts; she’s a golden sentence writ by our Maker, which the angels may discourse of, only men know how to use, and none but devils violate.

Shirley.

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.

Shakespeare.

It very seldom happens that a man is slow enough in assuming the character of a husband, or a woman quick enough in condescending to that of a wife.

Addison.

When a young woman behaves to her parents in a manner particularly tender and respectful, from principle as well as nature, there is nothing good and gentle that may not be expected from her in whatever condition she is placed. Of this I am so thoroughly persuaded, that, were I to advise any friend of mine as to his choice of a wife, I know not whether my first counsel would be, “Look out for one distinguished by her attention and sweetness to her parents.”

Fordyce.

She is adorned amply, that in her husband’s eye looks lovely the truest mirror that an honest wife can see her beauty in.

J.Tobin.

First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife.

Fuller.

No man knows what the wife of his bosom is what a ministering angel she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trails of this world.

Washington Irving.

Her pleasures are in the happiness of her family.

Rousseau.

A good wife makes the cares of the world sit easy, and adds a sweetness to its pleasures: She is a man’s best companion in prosperity, and his best if not only friend in adversity; the most careful preserver of his health, and the kindest attendant on his sickness; a faithful adviser in distress, a comforter in affliction, and a discreet manager of all his domestic affairs.

L.M.Stretch.

A wife is essential to great longevity; she is the receptacle of half a man’s cares, and two thirds of his ill humor.

Chas. Reade.

If you would have a good wife marry one ho has been a good daughter.

The good wife is none of our dainty dames, who love to appear in a variety of suits every day new; as if a gown, like a stratagem in war, were to be used but once. But our good wife sets up a sail according to the keel of her husband’s estate; and, if of high parentage, she doth not so remember what she was by birth, that she forgets what she is by match.

Fuller.

Unhappy is the man for whom his own life has not made all other women sacred.

You are my true and honorable wife, as dear to me, as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart.

Shakespeare.

O Woman! When the good man of the house may return, when the heat and burden pf the day is past, do not let him at such time, when he is weary with toil and jaded by discouragement, find upon his coming that the foot which should hasten to  meet him is wandering at a distance, that the soft hand which should wipe the sweat from his brow is knocking at the door of other houses.

Washington Irving.

Wickedness Quotes

The disposition to do an evil deed is, of itself, a terrible punishment of the deed it does.

C.Mildmay.

Wickedness may well be compared to bottomless pit, into which it is easier to keep one’s self from falling, than. Being fallen. To give one’s self any stay from falling infinitely.

Sir P.Sidney.

They are the same beams that shine and enlighten which are apt to scorch too; and it is impossible for a man engaged in any wicked way, to have a clear understanding of it, and a quiet mind in it altogether.

South.

Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, and shame, accompanied with terror, commotion, remorse, and endless perturbation.

Plutarch.

To those persons who have vomited out of their souls all remnants of goodness, there rests a certain pride in evil; and having else no shadow of glory left them, they glory to be constant in iniquity.

Sir. P.Sidney.

Bias, one of the seven wise men, bring in a storm with wicked men, who cried mightily to God, “Hold your tongues,” said he “it were better he knew not you were here.”

The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent.

Racine.

The hatred of the wicked is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.

Rousseau.

It is a man’s own dishonesty, his crimes, his wickedness, and barefaced assurance, that takes away from him soundness of mind; these are the furies, these the flames and firebrands, of the wicked.

Cicero.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

Confucius.

What rein can hold licentious wickedness, when down the hill he holds his fierce career?

Shakespeare.

Well does Heaven take care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Alfieri.

There is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely wicked; but grows so, either as he holds himself up in virtue, or lets himself slide to viciousness.

Sir P.Sidney.

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practiced perfidy grow faithless to each other.

Johnson.

If weakness may excuse, what murdered, what traitor, parricide, incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness; that plea, therefore, with God or man will gain thee no remission.

Milton.

If the wicked flourish, and thou suffer, be not discouraged; they are fatted for destruction, thou art dieted for health.

Fuller.

Was ever any wicked man free from the stings of a guilty conscience from a secret dread of the divine displeasure, and of the vengeance of another world?.

Tillotson.

Wickedness may prosper for a while, but in the long run he that sets all knaves at work will pay them.

L’Estrange.

No wickedness proceeds on any grounds of reason.

Livy.

There is a method in man’s wickedness.

Seneca.

There is wickedness in the intention of wickedness, even though it be not perpetrated in the act.

Cicero.

I will undertake to explain to any one the final condemnation of the wicked, if he will explain to me the existence of the wicked. If he will explain why God does not cause all those to die in the cradle of whom he foresees that, when they grow up, they will lead a sinful life.

Whately.

Woman's Quotes

A beautiful and chaste woman is the perfect workmanship of God, the true glory of angels, the rare mircle of earth, and the sole wonder of the world.

Hermes.

The finest compliment that can be paid to a woman of sense is to address her as such.

Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth having.

Bovee.

Contact with a high minded woman is good for the life of any man.

Henry Vincent.

Woman have more strength in their looks, than we have in our laws; and more power by their tears, than we have by our arguments.

Saville.

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.

Shakespeare.

O woman! In our hours of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please, and variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made; when pain and anguish wring the brow; a ministering angel thou.

Walter Scott.

There is nothing by which I have through life more profited, than by the just observations, the good opinions, and science and gentle encouragement of amiable and sensible women.

Sir S. Romilly.

He is no true man who ever treats woman with anything but the profoundest respect. She is no true woman who cannot inspire and does not take care to enforce this. Any real rivalry of the sexes is the sheerest folly and most unnatural nonsense.

God has placed the genius of women in their hearts; because the works of this genius are always works of love.

Lamartine.

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.

Lamartine.

There is something still more to be dreaded than a Jesuit and that is a Jesuitess.

Eugene Sue.

Women never truly command, till they have given their promise to obey; and they are never in more danger of being made slaves. Than when the men are at their feet.

Farquhar.

Men at most differ as heaven and earth; but women, worst and best, as heaven and hell.

Temnyson.

To the disgrace of men it is seen, that there are women both more wise to judge what evil is expected, and more constant to bear it when it is happened.

Sir. P. Sidney.

The buckling on of the knight’s armor by his lady’s hand was not a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth that the soul’s armor is never well set to the heart unless a woman’s hard has braced it, and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails.

Ruskin.

A good and true woman is said to resemble a Cremona fiddle age but increase its worth and sweetens its tone.

O.W.Holmes.

The single woman’s part in life may be a noble one; she may elevate herself and help others, but her’s must always be a second place. She is never fulfilling the part nature intended her to fulfil; but the wife and mother is the crowned queen.

Mrs. H.R.Haweis.

The most dangerous acquaintance a married woman can make is the female confidante.

Mad Deluzy.

A handsome woman is a jewel; a good woman is a treasure.

Saadi.

Nearly every folly committed by woman is born of the stupidity or evil influence of man.

Michelet.

The dignity of woman consists in being unknown to the world. Her glory is the esteem of her husband; her pleasure the happiness of her family.

Rousseau.

Christianity has lifted woman to a new place in the world. And just in proportion as Christianity has sway, will she rise to a higher dignity in human life. What she has now, and all she shall have of privileges and true horror, she owes to that gospel which took those qualities which had been counted weak and unworthy, and gave them a divine glory in Christ.

Herrick Johnson.

Wealth Quotes

It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old second hand diamonds than none at all.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American author.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the cast to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

John Kenneth Galbraith (b.1908) American economist.

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

What I call loaded I’m not. What other people call loaded I am.

Zsa Zsa Gabor (b.1921) Hungarian film actress.

If you can actually count your money then you are not really a rich man.

The wealth of man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.

Carlyle.

Worldly wealthy is the devil’s bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches, recede in general from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase; as the moon, when she is fullest of light, is farthest from the sun.

Burton.

Seek not proud wealth; but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly, yet have not any abstract or friarly contempt of it.

Bacon.

Wealth is like a viper, which is harmless if a man knows how to take hold of it; but if he does not, it will twine round his hand and bite him.

St. Clement.

The way to wealth is a plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; as with them, everything.

Franklin.

Wealth is not of necessity a curse, nor poverty a blessing. Wholesome and easy abundance is better than either extreme; better for our manhood that we have enough for daily comfort; enough for culture, for hospitality, for Christian charity. More than this may or may not be a blessing. Certainly it can be a blessing only by beong accepted as a trust.

R.D. Hitchcock.

In the age of acorns, a single barleycorn had been of more value to mankind than all the diamonds in the mines of India.

Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others.

Colton.

The million covet wealth, but how few dream of its perils! Few are aware of the extent to which it ministers to the baser passions of our nature; of the selfishness it engenders; the arrogance which it feeds; the self security which it inspires; the damage which it does to all the nobler feelings and holier aspirations of the heart!

Neale.

The greatest humbug in the world is the idea that money can make a man happy. I never had any satisfaction with mine until I began to do good with it.

C.Pratt.

Prefer loss to the wealth of dishonest gain; the former vexes you for a time; the latter will bring you lasting remorse.

Chilo.

Barring some piece of luck I have seen but few men get rich rapidly except by means that would make them writhe to have known in public.

Warner.

Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant, finish by becoming its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.

Colton.

The acquisition of wealth is a work of great labor; its possession a source of continual fear; its loss, of excessive grief.

From the Latin.

Wants Quotes

It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.

Fielding

We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do; therefore, never go abroad in search of your wants: for if they be real wants they will come in search of you. He that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.

Colton.

Hundreds would never have known want if they had not at first known waste.

Spurgeon.

I do not understand those to be poor and in want, who are vagabonds and beggars, but such as are old and cannot travel, such poor widows and fatherless children as are ordered to be relieved, and the poor tenants that travail to pay their rents and are driven to poverty by mischance, and not by riot or careless expenses; on such have thou compassion, and god will bless thee for it.

Sir W.Raleigh.

Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines intellect. The keener the want, the lustier the growth.

Wendell Phillips.

Great wants proceed from great wealth, but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.

Home.

The fewer our wants, the nearer we resemble the gods.

Socrates.

The wants of woman are an unknown quantity.

A.Rhodes.

Of all the enemies of idleness, want is the most formidable. Want always struggles against idleness; but want herself is often overcome, and every hour shows some who had rather live in ease than in plenty.

Johnson.

How few are our real wants! How easy it is to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable.

He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur.

Lavater.

To men pressed by their wants all change is ever welcome.

Ben Jonson.

If any one say that he has seen a just man in want of bread, I answer that it was in some place where there was no other just man.

S Clement.

The relief that is afforded to mere want, as want, tends to increase that want.

Whately.

Choose rather to want less, than to have more.

Human life is a constant want and ought to be a constant prayer.

S.Osgood.

Every one is poorer in proportion as he has more wants, and counts not what he has, but wishes only for what he has not.

Manilius.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Swift.

War Quotes

War’s a brain spattering, wind pipe splitting art

Lord Byron (1788-1824) English Poet.

War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means.

War is the only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) German author, critic.

A long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail our lion now will foreign foes assail.

John Dryden (1631-1700) English poet, dramatist.

We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.

War is the only sport that is genuinely amusing. And it is the only sport that has any intelligible use.

H.L.Mencken (1880-1956) American journalist.

War! That mad game the world so loves to play.

Swift.

Hw who makes war his profession cannot be otherwise than vicious. War makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gallows.

Machiavelli.

There never was a good war, or a bad peace.

Franklin.

When wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who are the sufferers.

U.S.Grant.

A great war leaves the country with three armies an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

German Proverb.

If war has its chivalry and its pageantry, it has also its hideousness and its demoniac woe. Bullets respect not beauty. They tear out the eye, and shatter the jaw, and read the cheek.

J.S.C.Abbott.

The practices of war are so hateful of God, that were not his mercies infinite, it were in vain for whose of that profession to hope for any portion of them.

Sir W.Raleigh.

War is the business of barbarians.

Napoleon.

Men who have nice notions of religion have no business to be soldiers.

Wellington.

War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the solider, if we would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

Machiavelli.

I am of opinion that, unless you could bray Christianity in a mortar, and mould it into a new paste, there is no possibility of a holy war.

Bacon.

All the talk of history is of nothing almost but fighting and killing, and the honor and renown which are bestowed on conquerors, who for the most part, are mere butchers of mankind, mislead growing youth, who, by these means come to think slaughter the most laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.

Locke.

The greatest curse that can be entailed on mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace, all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over this world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war; every principle of Christianity is trampled upon.

Sydney Smith.

War is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost, all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are included.

Robert Hall.

The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and just. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey.

Channing.

Who has ever told the evils and the curses and the crimes of war? Who can describe the horrors of the carnage of battle? Who can portray the fiendish passions which reign there! If there is anything in which earth, more than any other, resembles hell, it is its wars.

Albert Barnes.

We cannot make a more lively representation and emblem to ourselves of hell, than by the view of a kingdom in war.

Clarendom.

Unhappiness Quotes

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.

Don Herold (1889-1966) American humorist, writer, artist.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the finite.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish writer.

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and out expectations.

Edward de Bono (b.1933) British writer.

Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day’s out and the labour done.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) English Poet.

In deep sadness there is no sentimentality.

William S.Burroughs (b.1914) American author.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions.

He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.

Saki (H.H.munro) (1870-1916) Scottish author.

It is better not to be than to be unhappy.

Drydon.

They who have never known prosperity can hardly be said to be unhappy; it is from the remembrances of joys we have lost, that the arrows of affliction are pointed.

Mackenzie.

We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

Bovee.

The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.

Hume.

A perverse temper, and a discontented, fretful disposition, wherever they prevail, render any state of life unhappy.

Cicero.

Man’s unhappiness comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the finite.

Carlyle.

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.

Fitche.

In this world of resemblances, we are content with personating happiness; to feel it is in art beyond us.

Mackenzie.

Oh, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!.

Shakespeare.

As the ivy twines around the oak, so do misery and misfortune encompass the happiness of man. Felicity, pure and unalloyed, is not a plant of earthly growth; her gardens are the skies.

Burton.

Hardly a man, whatever his circumstances and situation, but if you get his confidence, will tell you that he is not happy. It is however certain that all men are not unhappy in the same degree, though be these accounts we might almost be tempted to think so. Is not this to be accounted for, by supposing that all men measure the happiness they possess by the happiness they desire, or think they deserve?

Greville.

What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit.

Colton.

Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot ofo ne of his creatures in the world; but the he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it is what I have steadfastly believed.

Jefferson.

We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate success are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.

Corneille.

Understanding Quotes

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Angli-Irish satirist.

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.

Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) American lawyer, writer.

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933) British author.

Now a days to be intelligible is to be found out.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Anglo-Irish author.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss Psychiatrist.

It is a common fault never to be satisfied with our fortune, nor dissatisfied with out understanding.

Rochefoucauld.

The eye of the understanding is like the eyes of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

Bacon.

True fortitude of understanding consists in not suffering what we do know to be disturbed by what we do not know.

Poley.

The defects of the understanding, like those of the face, grow worse as we grow old.

Rochefoucauld.

It is the same with understanding as with eyes; to a certain size and make just so much light is necessary, and no more. Whatever is beyond, brings darkness and confusion.

Shaftesbury.

The improvement of the understanding is for two ends; first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

Locke.

A man of understanding finds less difficulty submitting to a wrong headed fellow, than in attempting to set him tight.

Rochefoucauld.

It is not the eye that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous occurrence, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.

Jeremy Taylor.

The light of the understanding humility kindleth, and pride covereth.

Quarles.

He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits of a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he units with.

Burke.

I know no evil so great as the abuse of the understanding, and yet there is no one vice more common.

Steele.

I hold myself indebted to any one from whose enlightened understanding another ray of knowledge communicates to mine. Really to inform the mind is to correct and enlarge the heart.

Junius.

No one knows what strength of parts he has till he has tried them. And of the understanding one may most truly say, that its force is generally greater than it thinks till it is put to it. Therefore the proper remedy is, to set the mind to work, and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business, for it holds in the struggles of the mind, as in those of war, that to think we shall conquer is to conquer.

Locke.

Truth Quotes

It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.

Jerome K.Jerome (1859-1927) British author.

It takes two to speak the truth one to speak, and another to hear.

Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting falsehood.

Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863-1933) British author.

A truth that’s told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent.

William Blake (1757-1827) English poet.artist.

To become properly acquainted with a truth we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.

Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) French critic, novelist.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Sir Winston Churhill (1874-1965) British statesman, writer.

In this world, truth can wait; She’s used to it.

The truth would become more popular if it were not always stating ugly facts.

Henry S.Haskins (b.1875) American author.

Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies.

Dryden.

There is no fit search after truth which does not, first of all, begin to live the truth which it knows.

Horace Bushnell.

Statistics I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.

George canning.

The proselyting spirit is inseparable from the love of truth, for it is only the effort to win others to our way of thinking.

G.Forster.

One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.

Bulwer.

What we have in us of the image of God is the love of truth and justice.

Demosthenes.

Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our will; and the understanding can no more be delighted with a lie than the will can choose an apparent evil.

Dryden.

General, abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it man is blind, it is the eye of reason.

Rousseau.

Every one wished to have truth on his side, but it is not every one that sincerely wishes to be on the side of truth.

Whately.

Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge, and the business of the understanding; whatsoever is beside that, however authorized by consent, or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, ot something worse.

Locke.

The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.

Emerson.

Al l truth undone becomes unreal; “ he that doeth his will shall know,” say Jesus.

F.W.Roberston.

Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

Colton.

Truth and love are two of the most powerful things in the world; and when they both go together they cannot easily be withstood.

Cudworth.

Every violation of truth is a stab at the health of human society.

Emerson.

There is no progress in fundamental truth. We may grow in knowledge of its meaning, and in the modes of its application, but its great principles will forever be the same.

W.Radcliffe.

Truth lies in character. Christ did not simply speak the truth; he was truth; truth ,through and through; for truth is a thing not of words, but of life and being.

Robertson.

Time Quotes

Time, the avenger!
Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet.

Time, you old gipsy man, will you not stay, put up your caravan Just for one day?
Ralph Hodgson (1871-1962) British poet.

Time and I against any two.
Spanish proverb.

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) English philosopher.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1903) American writer.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wises; And marriage and death division Make barren our lives.
A.C.Swinburne (1837-1909) English Poet.

The surest poison is time.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.
John F..Kennedy (1917-1963) American president.

I recommend you to take care of the minutes. For hours will take care of themselves.

Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American journalist.

Time goes, you say? Ah, no! Alas, Time says; we go.
Austin Dobson (1840-1921) British author.

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every moment of time.
J.Mason.

Time is the chrysalis of eternity .
Richter.

To choose time is to save time.
Bacon.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest, prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.
Franklin.

The great rule of moral conduct is, next to God, to respect time.
Lavater.

Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quirt conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.
Baxter.

No preacher is listened to but time; which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads.
Swift.

Youth is not rich in time, it may be poor; part with it as with money, sparing; pay no moment, but in purchase of its worth; and what it’s worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
Young.

Time! The corrector where our judgment err; the test of truth, and love; the sole philosopher, for all beside are sophists.
Byron.

Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will conceal and cover up what is now shining with the greatest splendor.
Horace.

Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
Euripides.

Make use of time if thou lovest eternity; yesterday cannot be recalled; tomorrow cannot be assured; only today is thine ,which if thou procrastinate, thou losest; and which lost is lost forever. One today is worth two tomorrows.
Quarles.

Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock, for when it is one passed there is no recalling it.
Swift.

Science Quotes

We vivisect the nightingale to probe the secret of his note.

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960) British author.

I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother peddle or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truthlay all undiscovered before me.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) English mathematician, physicist.

The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said “Let Newton be!” and all was light.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English Poet.

It did not last; the Devil, howling “Ho Let Einstein be!” restored the status quo.

John Squire (1884-1958) British author.

I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador an adventurer.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Austrian psychiatrist in everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopedia behind the rest of the world.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) English essayist, critic.

When I am in the company of scientists I fell like a curate who has strayed into a drawing room full of dukes.

W.H. Auden (1907-1973) Anglo – American poet.

We are much beholden to Ma-chiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, essayist.

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

Thomas H.Huxley (1825-1895) English biologist.

Science knows only one commandment contribute to science.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German dramatist, poet.

Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five.

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) British author.

Science is the topography of ignorance.

O.W. Holmes.

I have come to have very profound and deep rooted doubts whether Science, as practiced at present by the human race, will ever do anything to make the world a better and happier place to live in, or will ever stop contributing to our general misery.

Hendrik Van Loon.

A single mind can acquire a fair knowledge of the whole field of science, and find plenty of time to spare for ordinary human affairs. Not many people take the trouble to do so. But without a knowledge of science one cannot understand current events. That is why our modern literature and are mostly so unreal.

J.B.S. Haldane.

Physical science reads through its sense of touch like a blind man, and the supply of books in Braille type on the spiritual life is very small.

Austin O’ Malley.

Those who speak of the incompatibility of science and religion either make science say that which it never said or make religion say that which it never taught.

Pope Pius XI.

Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a born to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard.

Bertrand Russell.

The science are beneficent. They prevent men from thinking.

Anatole France.

If a man hasn’t got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.

O.W.Holmes.

The intellectual content of religions has always finally adapted itself to scientific and social conditions after they have become clear… for this reason I do not think that those who are concerned about the future of a religious attitude should trouble themselves about the conflict of science with traditional doctrines.

John Dewey.

In the scientific world I find just that disinterested devotion to great ends that I hope will spread at last through the entire range of human activity.

H.G. Wells.

If rational men cooperated and used their scientific knowledge to the full, they could now secure the economic welfare of all.

Bertrand Russell.

Retirement Quotes

Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.

Americans hardly ever retire from business; they are either carried out feet first or they jump from a window.

When a man retires and time is no longer a matter of urgent importance, his colleagues generally present him with a clock.

Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don’t choose to have it known.

To judge rightly of our own worth we should retire from the world so as to see both its pleasures and pains in their proper light and dimensions thus taking the heart from off this world and its allurements, which so dishonor the understanding as to turn the wisest of men into fools and children.
Sterne.

He whom God hath gifted with the love of retirement, possesses, as it were, an extra sense.
Bulwer.

Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Shakespeare.

Let me often to these solitudes retire, and in their presence reassure my feeble virtue.
Bryant.

A man who can retire from the world to seek entertainment in his closet, has a thousand advantages of which other people have no idea. He is master of his own company and pleasures, and can command either the one or the other according to his circumstances or temper. All nature is ready for his view, and all ages appear at his call. He can transport himself to the most and politest company that ever the world afforded.
Hibernicu’s Letters.

Depart from the highway, and transplant thyself in some enclosed ground, for it is hard for a tree that stands by the wayside to keep its fruit until it be ripe.
Chrysostom.

Nature I will court in her sequestered haunts, by mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove, or cell; where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, and health, and peace, and contemplation dwell.
Smollett.

Before you think of retiring from the world, be sure you are fit for retirement; in order to which it is necessary that you have a mind so composed by prudence, reason, and religion, that it may bear being looked into; a turn to rural life, and a love for study.
Burgh.

Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
Johnson.

a foundation of good sense, and a cultivation of learning, are required to give a seasoning to retirement, and makes us taste its blessings.
Dryden.

How use doth breed a habit in a mind! This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.
Shakespeare.

Religion Quotes

Times consecrates; and what is grey with age becomes religion.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English Poet.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore!.

All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them.

The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality but morality touched by emotion.

The truth of religion is in its ritual and the truth of dogma is in its poetry.

Whatever definitions men have given of religion, I find none so accurately descriptive of it as this: that it is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart and life.

Cecil.

Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self and benevolence to men.

Tryon Edwards.

The religion of Christ reaches and changes the heart, which no other religion does.

Howells.

Love God, and he will dwell with you. Obey God, and he will reveal to you the truth of his deepest teachings.

Robertson.

Christianity is the good man’s text; his life is the illustration. How admirable is that religion, which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.

Montesquieu.

Indisputably the believers in the gospel have a great advantage over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment.

Byron.

The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is, that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.

Chalmers.

Take away God and religion, and men live to no purpose, without proposing any worthy and considerable end of life to themselves.

Tillotson.

Those who make religion to consists In the contempt of this world and its enjoyments, are under a very fatal and dangerous mistake. As life is the gift of heaven, it is religion to enjoy it. He, therefore, who can be happy in himself, and who contributes all in his power toward the happiness of others, answers most effectually the ends of his creation, is an honor to his nature, and a pattern to mankind.

Addison.

The joy of religion is an exorcist to the mind; it expels the demons of carnel mirth and madness.

Cecil.

True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind; admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.

Addison.

The contemplation of the Divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are in their nature so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetual sources of it. In a world, the true spirit of religion cheers as well as composes the soul. It banishes, indeed, all levity of behavior, all vicious and dissolute mirth, but in exchange fills the mind with a perpetual serenity, uninterrupted cheerfulness, and an habitual inclination to please others as well as to be pleased in itself.

Spectator.

If we were to be hired to religion, it is able to outbid the corrupted world with all it can offer us, being so much richer of the two in everything where reason is admitted to be a judge of the value.

Halifax.

True religion shows its influence in every part of our conduct; it is like the sap of living tree, which penetrates the most distant boughs.

What Dr.Arnold said about the class of young men who professed their sentimental admiration of virtue, applies well to older persons: “Commend me to those who not only love God, but who also hate the devil.”

All humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion, and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, thought the divers liveries they wear make them strangers.

Penn.

Punishment Quotes

As a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord God chasteneth thee.
Bible, Deuteronomy.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher.

He deserves to be preached to death by wild curates.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845) English clergyman, writer.

Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English historian.

Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) English novelist, dramatist.

The first time a schoolmaster ordered me to take my trousers down I knew it was not from any doubt that he could punish me efficiently enough with them up.
Laurence (Lord) Oliver (1907-1989) British actor, director.

He must have known me if he had seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did but recognize me by my face.
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882).

The whole of life and experience goes to show, that right or wrong doing, whether as to the physical or the spiritual nature, is sure in the end to meet its appropriate reward or punishment. Penalties may be delayed but they are sure to come.
H.W.Beecher.

It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.
Plato.

Punishment is lame, but it comes.
Herbert.

The certainty of punishment, even more than its severity, is the preventive of crime.
Tryon Edwards.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Juvenal.

The work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable.
Goldsmith.

Don’t let us rejoice in punishment, even when the hand of God alone inflicts it. The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck. Can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow passenger swallowed by the waves?
George Eliot.

If punishment makes not the will supple it hardens the offender.
Locke.

Wickedness, when properly punished, is disgraceful only to the offender; unpunished, it is disgraceful to the whole community.
C.Simmons.

The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Cato.

The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
Voltaire.

We do not aim to correct the man we hang we correct and warm others by him.
Montaigne.

The object of punishment is threefold: for just retribution; for the protection of society; for the reformation of the offender.
Tryon Edwards.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more you must have of the former.
Horace Mann.

Punishment is justice for the unjust,
Augustine.

Even legal punishments lose all appearance of justice, when too strictly inflicted on men compelled by the last extremity of distress to incur them.
Junius.

There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions that every man might be put in a method how to live, and so be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
Moore.

Publicity Quotes

Sir, if they should cases to talk of me I must starve.

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.

Brendan Behan (1923-1964) Irish playwright.

I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better.

Fred Allen (1894-1957) American comic.

To have news values is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.

Proverb Quotes

A proverb is the wisdom of many and the with of one.
Lord John Russell (1792-1878) English statesman, prime minister.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) British author.

A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs.
German proverb.

The wisdom of many, and the with of one.
Lord John Russell.

Jewels five words long, that on the stretched forefinger of all time sparkle forever.
Tennyson.

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.
Emerson.

Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription.
Whately.

The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs.
Bacon.

Proverbs are but rules, and rules do not create character. They prescribe conduct, but do not furnish a full and proper motive. They are usually but half truths, and seldom contain the principle of the action they teach.
T.T.Munger.

Short sentences drawn from long experiences.
Cervantes.

Sense, brevity, and point are the elements of a good proverb.
Tryon Edwards.

The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.
Motherwell.

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets, instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousands rules ostentatiously displayed.
Lavater.


We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because for a time they are not remembered; he may, therefore, justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.
Johnson.

Proverbs were anterior to books, and formed the wisdom of the vulgar, and in the earliest ages were the unwritten laws of morality.
Disraeli.

Proverbs are the condensed wisdom of long experience, in brief, epigrammatic form, easily remembered and always ready for use. They are the alphabet of morals and are commonly prudential watchwords and warnings, and so lean toward a selfish view of life.
T.T.Munger.

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.
Penn.

Proverbs may be said to be the abridgments of wisdom.
Joubert.

The proverb condenses the meaning and power of a thousand words into one short and simple sentence, and it is the more effective because it carries so much force in so compact a from.
D.March.

If you hear a wise sentence or an apt phrase, commit it to your memory.
Sir Henry Sidney.

Few maxims are true from every point of view.
Vauvenargues.

Proverbs, it has well been said, should be sold in pairs, a single one being bit half a truth.
W.Mathews.

I am of opinion that there are no proverbial saying which are not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, who is the mother of all sciences.
Cervantes.

Pride Quotes

My family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.
W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) English librettist.

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English Poet.

Pride the first peer and president of hell.
Defoe.

“Tis the most nonsensical thing in the world for a man to be proud, since ‘tis in the meanest wretch’s power to mortify him. How uneasy have I seen my Lord all pride in the park, when the company turned their eyes from him and his gaudy equipage!.
I.B.Brown.

Pride brake the angels in heaven, and spoils all the heads we find cracked here.
Osborn.

Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self; but unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.
Colton.

Pride is to the character, like the attic to the house the highest part, and generally the most empty.

Pride is increased by ignorance; those assume the most who know the least.
Gay.

Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might have been, for aught I know, as much pride under his rage, as in the fine spun garments of the divine Plato.
Swift.

The seat of pride is in the heart, and only there; and if it be not there, it is neither in the look, not in the clothes.
Lord Clarendon.

If a proud man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is that he keeps his at the some time.
Swift.

As thou desirest the love of God and man, beware of pride. It is a tumor in the mind, that breaks and ruins all thine actions; a worm in thy treasury, that eats and ruins thine estate. It loves no man, and is beloved of none; it disparages another’s virtues by detraction, and thine own by vainglory. It is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, the devil of mankind. It hates superiors, scorns inferiors, and owns no equal. In short, till thou hate it, God hates thee.

Pride defects its own end, by bringing the man who seeks esteem and reverence into contempt.
Bolingbroke.

We hear much of a decent pride, a becoming pride, a noble pride, a laudable pride. Can that be decent, of which we ought to be ashamed? Can that be becoming, of which God has set forth the deformity? Can that be noble which God resists and is determined to abase? Can that be laudable, which God calls abominable?
Cecil.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very man advantages.
Johnson.

I have been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that, in general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occasional good; but whenever pride puts in its word, everything goes wrong; and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do proudly.
Ruskin.

Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others.
Frederick Saunders.

Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep us his dignity. In gluttony there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; ‘tis not the eating, and ‘tis not the drinking that must be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.
Selden.

Pride, as it is compounded of the vanity and ill nature that dispose men to admire themselves, and contemn other men, retains its vigor longer than any other vice, and rarely expires but with life itself. Without the sovereign influence of God’s grace, men very rarely put off all the trappings of their pride till they who are about them put on their winding sheet.
Clarendon.

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself.
Johnson.

Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.
Franklin.

Popularity Quotes

Popularity? It’s glory’s small change.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French poet, dramatist, novelist.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they fo not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

Epicurus (341-270 BC) Greek philosopher.

Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue where men have it whether they will or no.

Lord Halifax (1796-1865)

He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas’d he could whistle them back.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) Anglo-Irish author.

Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world.

Carlyle.

Whatever is popular deserves attention.

Mackintosh.

Avoid popularity; it has many snares, and no real benefit.

Penn.

A popular man soon becomes more powerful than power itself.

The great secrets of being courted, are, to shun others and to seem delighted with yourself.

Bulwer.

A generous nation is grateful even for the preservative of its rights, and willingly extends the respect due to the office of a good prince into an affection for his Person.

Junius.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

Kant.

True popularity is not the popularity which is followed after, but the popularity which follows after.

Lord Mansfield.

The vulgar and common esteem is seldom happy in hitting right; and I am much mistaken, if, amongst the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained the popular applause.

Montaigne.

Applause waits on success; the fickle multitude, like the light straw that floats along the stream, glides with the current still, and follows fortune.

Franklin.

Be as far from desiring the popular love as fearful to deserve the popular hate; ruin dwells in both; the one will hug thee to death; the other will crush thee to destruction: to escape the first, be not ambitious; avoid the second, be not seditious.

Quarles.

Those who are commended by everybody must be very extraordinary men, or, which is more probable, very inconsiderable men.

Greville.

I put no account on him who esteems himself just as the popular breath may chance to raise him.

Goethe.

It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.

Colton.

A habitation giddy and unsure hath he that buildeth of the vulgar heart.

Shakespeare.

The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest, but the most fanatical leaders; as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

Lamartine.

The common people are but ill judges of a man’s merits; they are slaves to fame, and their eyes are dazzled with the pomp of titles and large retinue. No wonder, then, that they bestow their honors on those who least deserve them.

Horace.

Glory is safe when it is deserved; it is not so with popularity; one lasts like a mosaic; the other is effaced like a crayon drawing.

Boufflers.

Politics Quotes

Man is by nature a political animal.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Politics is the science of how who gets what, when and why.
Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) American trade unionist.

He who gives food to the people will win.
Lech Walesa (b.1943) Polish Solidarity leader.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Irish philosopher, statesman.

Politics is the diversion f trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) American critic.

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Politics is not an exact science.
Prince Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) Prussian statesman.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Henry B.Adams (1838-1918) American historian.

I am invariably of the politics of people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
George Borrow (1803-1881)

I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
Ronald Reagan (b.1911)

If ever this free people if this government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.
Abraham Lincoln.

There is no gambling like politics.
Disraeli.

People vote their resentment, not their appreciation. The average man does not vote for anything but against something.
William Bennett Munro.

I resent at any time or at any place the attitude that the safety of this country depends on any man holding his job. No man has achieved that strength, and this country has not deteriorated to that weakness.
Owen D.Young.

A politician is like quick-silver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it.
Austin O’Malley.

I wonder if there is anyone in the world who can really direct the affairs of the world, or of his country, with any assurance of the result his actions would have.
Montagu C. Norman.

We shall have to fight the politician, who remembers only that the unborn have no votes and that since posterity has done nothing for us we need do nothing of posterity.
Dean Inge.

Nothing is more deceitful than the statements that what we need in politics is the business man. Politics are a business at least they are a field in which experience tells for usefulness and effectiveness and a man who has devoted his entire life to the successful establishment of a business is generally not the man who will be useful to the public in the administration of public business.
William Howard Taft.

There is among you the man who is not bound by party lines. You vote according to your common sense and your claim judgment after hearing each party set forth its program. To you I say that the strength of this independent thought is the great contribution of the American political system.
Franklin D.Roosevelt.

To let politics become a cesspool, and then avoid it because it is a cesspool, is a double crime.
Howard Crosby.

Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.
Dniel O’Connell.

It is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confederates.
Bulwer.