Quotes by Statesmen - Page 12

I love the name of honor more than I fear death.
Gaius Julius Caesar
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Edmund Burke
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them
Seneca
The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When I think over what I have said I envy dumb people.
Seneca
Malice drinks one-half of its own poison.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
Lord Chesterfield
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
Daniel Webster
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
Pocket all your knowledge with your watch and never pull it out in company unless desired.
Lord Chesterfield
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Seneca
Genius develops in quiet places character out in the full current of human life.
Goethe
And so there is no reason for you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles, he has not lived long – he has existed long. For what if you should think that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.
Seneca
What is valuable is not new and what is new is not valuable.
Daniel Webster
I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.
Bernard M. Baruch
No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.
Seneca
We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
Francis Bacon
A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.
Daniel Webster
Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear.
Seneca
The man who trusts other men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.
Camillo Di Cavour
For in music there is no material to be deducted.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.
Thomas More
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
The wisdom of our ancestors.
Edmund Burke
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.
Edmund Burke
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
Seneca
But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.
Edmund Burke
Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.
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
What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The world you see, nature's greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes and wonders at it, and is the most splendid part of it, these are our own everlasting possessions and will remain with us as long as we ourselves remain. So, eager and upright, let us hasten with bold steps wherever circumstances take us, and let us journey through any countries whatever: there can be no place of exile within the world since nothing within the world is alien to men.
Seneca
Look upon good books; they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself...and you shall need no other comfort nor counsel.
Francis Bacon
The great soul surrenders itself to fate.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.
Seneca
Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind.I grasped a lovely masked procession,And caught things from a horror show…I’d gladly settle for a false impression,If it would last a little longer, though.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
f you wish to put off all worry, assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen.
Seneca
Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. - Without haste, but without rest.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
From desire I plunge to its fulfilment where I long once more for desire.
Goethe
The main thing is to make history, not to write it
Otto von Bismarck
A clever man commits no minor blunders.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted ...but to weigh and consider.
Francis Bacon
Fire tries gold misery tries brave men.
Seneca
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.
Francis Bacon
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.
Thomas More
Nothing is ours except time.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Seneca
Fortune makes him fool whom she makes her darling.
Sir Francis Bacon
If you wish to fear nothing consider that everything is to be feared.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Money is a great servant but a bad master.
Francis Bacon
He who decides a case without hearing the other side though he decide justly cannot be considered just.
Seneca
Mere parsimony is not economy . . . expense and great expense may be an essential part of true economy.
Edmund Burke
Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.
Seneca
I am not a ‘wise man,’ nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.
Seneca
There is time enough for everything in the course of the day if you do but one thing once but there is not time enough in the year if you will do two things at a time.
Lord Chesterfield