“Not to have a thing is less humiliating than to beg it.”
Nahj al-Balagha
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Ali124
cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad 601–661Related quotes
“Identity is much less a thing people "inherit" than it used to be.”
Barry Schwartz book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
The Paradox of Choice (2004)
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat
On Democracy (6 October 1884)
Context: I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct — to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it.
“Traveling has less to do with seeing things than experiencing them….”
Nicholas Sparks book The Choice
Travis Parker, Chapter 8, p. 101
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)
Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter
Fond Farewell.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)
“Since the only things we remember are humiliations and defeats, what is the use of all the rest?”
Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
“Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.”
William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist
Source: Table Talk (1782), Line 246.