Quotes by Statesmen - Page 6

Ordinary people know little of the time and effort it takes to learn to read. I have been eighty years at it and have not reached my goal.
Goethe
It's in the anomalies that nature reveals its secrets.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything is just how I imagined it, yet everything is new
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.
Seneca
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
Seneca
The society of women is the foundation of good manners.
Goethe
He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Reading maketh a full man.
Sir Francis Bacon
Let us not be deceived - we are today in the midst of a cold war.
Bernard Baruch
Some books are to be tasted others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon
Love does not dominate it cultivates.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But Nature granted to gold and silver no function with which we cannot easily dispense. Human folly has made them precious because they are rare. In contrast, Nature, like a most indulgent mother, has placed her best gifts out in the open, like air, water and the earth itself; vain and unprofitable things she has hidden away in remote places.
Thomas More
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
Francis Bacon
Classicism is health, romanticisim is sickness.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.
Thomas More
The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread: for how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still for all its wearing it.
Thomas More
Time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon
God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.
Francis Bacon
Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us mastery over ourselves is destructive.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Instruction does much, but encouragement everyt
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Alexander von] Humboldt showers us with true treasures.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ridicule is the best test of truth.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
It is better to be deceived by one's friends than to deceive them.
Goethe
Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate.
Seneca
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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 billows rise on high,With murmur deep.To tread the silent grove where wander I,When all's asleep.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Learn how to feel joy.
Seneca
So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is superfluous, what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting. All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re travelling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.
Seneca
Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The best work and of greatest merit for the public has proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.
Sir Francis Bacon
What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,For good things, oft, are not so near;A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Little do men perceive what solitude is and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company and faces are but a gallery of pictures and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love.
Francis Bacon
Know the true value of time snatch seize and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness no laziness no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Lord Chesterfield
As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delights of presence best known by the torments of absence.
Alcibiades
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.
Edmund Burke
But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.
Edmund Burke
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 oh save me from the candid friend!
George Canning
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten but they may start a winning game.
Goethe
Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgement and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke
Is not that government both unjust and ungrateful, that is so prodigal of it's favors to those called gentlemen, or goldsmiths, or such others who are idle, or live either by flattery or by contriving the arts of vain pleasure, and, on the other hand, takes no care of those of a meaner sort, such as ploughmen, colliers, and smiths, without whom it could not subsist? But after the public has reaped all the advantage of their service, and they come to be oppressed with age, sickness, and want, all their labours and the good they have done is forgotten, and all the recompense given them is that they are left to die in great misery.
Thomas More
There occurs the beautiful feeling that only humanity together is the true human being, and that the individual can be cheerful and happy only if he has the courage to feel himself in the Whole.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Des Menschen Kraft, im Dichter offenbartThe human power is revealed by poetIl potere dell'umanità si rivela nel poeta
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What you feed in yourself that grows.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men do not fail they stop trying.
Elihu Root
Generally music feedeth that disposition of the spirits which it findeth.
Francis Bacon
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.
Otto von Bismarck
but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and chreerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?
Thomas More
Despise no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it… There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man’s observation, what he finds good and of what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.
Francis Bacon
It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the
Edmund Burke
Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.
Francis Bacon
Fortune reveres the brave and overwhelms the cowardly.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men and their story is not given only on stone over their clay but abides everywhere without visible symbol woven into the stuff of other mens lives.
Pericles
Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies?
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
We accept every person in the world as that for which he gives himself out only he must give himself out for something. We can put up with the unpleasant more easily than we can endure the insignificant.
Goethe
True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have which is abundantly sufficient.
Seneca
Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
Francis Bacon