“It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform.”

— Edmund Burke , A Letter to a Noble Lord

Source: A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796), p. 20

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Edmund Burke 270

Anglo-Irish statesman 1729–1797

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“It is very strange indeed that Poetry should be elder Brother to Prose… but it is very probable… precepts… were shap'd into measured lines, that they might be the more easily remembred”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: But why then did the Ancient Priestesses always answer in Verse?... To this Plutarch replies... That even the Ancient Priestesses did now and then speak in Prose. And besides this, in Old times all People were born Poets.... [T]hey had no sooner drank a little freely, but they made Verses; they had no sooner cast their eyes on a Handsom Woman, but they were all Poesy, and their very common discourse fell naturally into Feet and Rhime: So that their Feasts and their Courtships were the most delectable things in the World. But now this Poetick Genius has deserted Mankind: and tho' our passions be as ardent... yet Love at present creeps in humble prose.... Plutarch gives us another reason... that the Ancients wrote always in Verse, whether they treated of Religion, Morality, Natural Philosophy or Astrology. Orpheus and Hesiod, whom every body acknowledges for Poets, were Philosophers also: and Parmenides, Xenophanes, Empedocles, Eudoxus, and Thales... [the] Philosophers, were Poets too. It is very strange indeed that Poetry should be elder Brother to Prose... but it is very probable... precepts... were shap'd into measured lines, that they might be the more easily remembred: and therefore all their Laws and their rules of Morality were in Verse. By this we may see that Poetry had a much more serious beginning than is usually imagin'd, and that the Muses have of late days mightily deviated from their original Gravity.<!--pp. 207-209

“Whenever (a Christian) sins, he must, for the time being, cease to be holy. This is self-evident. Whenever he sins, he must be condemned; he must incur the penalty of the law of God ... If it be said that the precept is still binding upon him, but that with respect to the Christian, the penalty is forever set aside, or abrogated, I reply, that to abrogate the penalty is to repeal the precept, for a precept without penalty is no law. It is only counsel or advice. The Christian, therefore, is justified no longer than he obeys, and must be condemned when he disobeys or Antinomianism is true ... In these respects, then, the sinning Christian and the unconverted sinner are upon precisely the same ground.”

Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) American writer

"Does a Christian cease to be a Christian, whenever he commits a sin?" p. 65
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“The geometric line is an invisible thing. It is the track made by the moving point; that is, its product. It is created by movement – specifically through the destruction of the intense self-contained repose of the point. Here, the leap out of the static to the dynamic occurs. […] The forces coming from without which transform the point into a line, can be very diverse. The variation in lines depends upon the number of these forces and upon their combinations.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

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“Reality, it cannot be repeated too often, varies with every one of us.”

Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) French novelist

Source: Pène du Bois, Henri (1897). Witty, Wise and Wicked Maxims https://archive.org/stream/wittywisewickedm00peneiala#page/n3/mode/2up, New York: Brentano's, p. 88.

“Societies held together by fear and repression may offer the illusion of stability for a time, but they are built upon fault lines that will eventually tear asunder.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Barack Obama: "Remarks at the Department of State," May 19, 2011. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=90397&st=&st1=
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“What modern apologists call 'true' Christianity is something depending upon a very selective process. It ignores much that is to be found in the Gospels: for example, the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the doctrine that the wicked will suffer eternal torment in Hell fire. It picks out certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount, though even these it often rejects in practice. It leaves the doctrine of non-resistance, for example, to be practised only by non-Christians such as Gandhi. The precepts that it particularly favours are held to embody such a lofty morality that they must have had a divine origin. And yet … these precepts were uttered by Jews before the time of Christ.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

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“We cannot lose Poland. If this line is crossed, they will grab us, too.”

Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) Soviet politician and diplomat

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“They will carry us over the finishing line every so often, and we’ll carry them over the line other times. It’s a mutual respect at the moment.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

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That nearly makes sense.

“The harmony of the lines and folds of modern dress works upon our sensitiveness with the same emotional and symbolical power as did the nude upon the sensitiveness of the old masters.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

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“Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have actually been effected?”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

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Naturalis Historia

“It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform.”

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Edmund Burke 270

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