Quotes by Statesmen - Page 11

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex this world arises from words.
Edmund Burke
The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked.
Thomas More
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund Burke
What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing-to live in accord with his own nature.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies—with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.
Seneca
Some men may be snared by beauty alone, but none can be held except by virtue and compliance.
Thomas More
Man is a social animal.
Seneca
If children grew up according to early indications we should have nothing but geniuses.
Goethe
Knowledge is power.
Francis Bacon
There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.
Goethe
It is not God that is worshipped but the authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Every day look at a beautiful picture read a beautiful poem listen to some beautiful music and if possible say some reasonable thing.
Goethe
They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal. That a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal...
Thomas More
Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,things standing shall fall,but the moving ever shall stay.
Basava
The Church has an excellent appetite. She has swallowed whole countries and the questionHas never risen of indigestion. Only the Church . . . can take Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The right man is the one that seizes the moment.
Goethe
The folly of one man is the fortune of another.
Sir Francis Bacon
...if pride, that plague of human nature, that source of so much misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the misery of others; and would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth they may feel their poverty the more sensibly.
Thomas More
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Oh, what darkness does great prosperity cast over our minds!
Seneca
Reading makes a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man.
Sir Francis Bacon
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of the troubled and frothy surface.[Alluding to Joseph Priestley's Observations on Air]
Edmund Burke
Glib tongues frill up their hash of knowledgefor mankind in polished speechesthat are no more than vaporous windsrustling the fallen leaves in autumn.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a courageous wisdom there is also a false reptile prudence the result not of caution but of fear.
Edmund Burke
A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.
Seneca
They laboriously do nothing.
Seneca
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
When a human awakens to a great dream and throws the full force of his soul over it, all the universe conspires in your favor.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men I will find something in them which will hang him.
Richelieu
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him.
Seneca
Modern poets mix too much water with their ink.
Goethe
The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
I was born an American I live an American I shall die an American.
Daniel Webster
Gracious Providence, to whom I owe all my powers, why didst thou not withhold some of those blessings I possess, and substitute in their place a feeling of self-confidence and contentment?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best.
Thomas More
All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.
Francis Bacon
What must be shall be and that which is a necessity to him that struggles is little more than choice to him that is willing.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Fire is the test of gold adversity of strong men.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Most good lawyers live well work hard and die poor.
Daniel Webster
What is at a peak is certain to decline. He who shows his hand will certainly be defeated. He who can prevail in battle by taking advantage of his enemy's doubts is invincible.
Cao Cao
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
Seneca
What is the proper limit for wealth? It is first to have what is necessary and second to have what is enough.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
This is the true measure of love: when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.
Goethe
Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts but if he will content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Seneca
I could be living the best and happiest of lives if only I were not a fool.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Man needs only a small patch of earth for his pleasures, and a smaller one still to rest beneath.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Francis Bacon
I will say nothing... against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Seize time by the forelock.
Pittacus
Speech is the index of the mind.
Seneca
All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.
Seneca