Quotes by Statesmen - Page 14

If you are surprised at the number of our maladies count our cooks.
Seneca
When in fear it is safest to force the attack.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
All rising to great places is by a winding stair.
Francis Bacon
Be very, very careful what you put in that head, because you will never, ever get it out.
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.
Seneca
Remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.
Seneca
I hold every man a debtor to his profession from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto.
Sir Francis Bacon
Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
you shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings ofHecato; it is these words: "What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That wasindeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.
Seneca
that you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation
Seneca
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
Seneca
If you would wish another to keep your secret first keep it yourself.
Seneca
I think of you when upon the sea the sun flings her beams. I think of you when the moonlight shines in silvery streams. I see you when upon the distant hills the dust awakes; At night when on a fragile bridge the traveler quakes.I hear you when the blows rise on high, with murmur deep. To tread the silent grove where wander I, When all's asleep.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole
Seneca
The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood
Otto von Bismarck
Architecture is frozen music.
Goethe
As it is our nature to be more moved by hope than fear the example of one we see abundantly rewarded cheers and encourages us far more than the sight of many who have not been well treated disquiets us.
Francesco Guicciardini
Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
Lord Chesterfield
National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Believe me if you consult philosophy she will persuade you not to lit so long at your counting desk
Seneca
What mancan you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he isdying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed,Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.
Seneca
Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of Man.
Francis Bacon
If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics.
Francis Bacon
Those that lack friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.
Francis Bacon
A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And there, next to me, as the east wind blows in early fall, a season open to great migrations, are those lives, threading the air and waters of the sea, that come out of an incomparable darkness, which is also my own.
John Hay
The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy adversary.
Edmund Burke
Moreover I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Consider the whole world reconnoitre individuals j who is there whose life is not taken up with providing for to morrow Do you ask what harm there is in this An infinite deal for such men do not live but are about to live they defer every thing from day to day however circumspect we are life will still outrun us.
Seneca
Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay.
Seneca
This lively health, when entirely free from all mixture of pain, of itself gives an inward pleasure, independent of all external objects of delight; and though this pleasure does not so powerfully affect us, nor act so strongly on the senses as some of the others, yet it may be esteemed as the greatest of all pleasures, and almost all the Utopians reckon it the foundation and basis of all the other joys of life; since this alone makes the state of life easy and desirable; and when this is wanting, a man is really capable of no other pleasure.
Thomas More
Injustice never rules forever.
Seneca
Liberty and Union now and for ever one and inseparable!
Daniel Webster
Wear your learning like your watch in a private pocket and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show that you have one.
Lord Chesterfield
The best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend.
Francis Bacon
Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
Seneca
Now as to politeness... I would venture to call it benevolence in trifles.
Lord Chatham
The less one has to do the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns one procrastinates one can do it when one will and therefore one seldom does it at all whereas those who have a great deal of business must buckle to it and then they always find time enough to do it.
Lord Chesterfield
You are aware of only one unrest;Oh, never learn to know the other!Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,And one is striving to forsake its brother.Unto the world in grossly loving zest,With clinging tendrils, one adheres;The other rises forcibly in questOf rarefied ancestral spheres.If there be spirits in the airThat hold their sway between the earth and sky,Descend out of the golden vapors thereAnd sweep me into iridescent life.Oh, came a magic cloak into my handsTo carry me to distant lands,I should not trade it for the choicest gown,Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As Lucretius says: 'Thus ever from himself doth each man flee.' But what does he gain if he does not escape from himself? He ever follows himself and weighs upon himself as his own most burdensome companion. And so we ought to understand that what we struggle with is the fault, not of the places, but of ourselves
Seneca
Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness seem all the more extraordinary, whose poverty can be tormented and exacerbated by a display of her wealth. This infernal serpent, pervading the human heart, keeps men from reforming their lives, holding them back like a suckfish.
Thomas More
A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.
Seneca
He who is brave is free
Seneca
On Epicurus; He says: "Contended poverty is an honourable estate." Indeed, if it is contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
Seneca
Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.
Francis Bacon
Political judgment is the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history.
Otto von Bismarck
One who has passed the thirtieth yearalready is as good as dead--it would be best to kill you off by then.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I wonder why it is that the countries with the most nobles also have the most misery?
Francis Bacon
The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.
Seneca
Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.
Seneca
Those who have never seen themselves surrounded on all sides by the sea can never possess an idea of the world, and of their relation to it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Dangers by being despised grow great.
Edmund Burke
No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity
Seneca
Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia ...
Seneca
I make presents to the mother but think of the daughter.
Goethe
Give me the avowed the erect and manly foe Bold I can meet perhaps may turn the blow But of all plagues good Heaven thy wrath can send Save save oh save me from the candid friend!
George Canning
You will find that reason, which always ought to direct mankind, seldom does; but that passions and weaknesses commonly usurp its seat, and rule in its stead.
Philip Dormer Stanhope