“Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.”
Referring to London.
Memoirs (1796)
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Edward Gibbon 43
English historian and Member of Parliament 1737–1794Related quotes
“A company cannot be a learning company without also being a teaching company.”
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)
“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
First attributed to Johnson 15 years posthumously in a footnote in William Seward's Biographiana (1799), but written in slightly different form in 1764, in a profile in The Scots Magazine of Charles Churchill. The Scots Magazine, Volume 26 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y14AAAAAYAAJ&q=%22without+effort%22&redir_esc=y&hl=en#v=snippet&q=%22without%20effort%22&f=false
Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/11/08/without-effort/, retrieved 17 May 2016
Misattributed
Source: Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II
6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) 'The Mechanical Activity of Thought" http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/the-impossible-question/1970-07-28-jiddu-krishnamurti-the-impossible-question-the-mechanical-activity-of-thought in The Impossible Question (1972) http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=9&chid=57009, Part I, Ch. 6], p. 63 J.Krishnamurti Online, Serial No. 330
1970s
Context: What does it mean to be compassionate? Not merely verbally, but actually to be compassionate? Is compassion a matter of habit, of thought, a matter of the mechanical repetition of being kind, polite, gentle, tender? Can the mind which is caught in the activity of thought with its conditioning, its mechanical repetition, be compassionate at all? It can talk about it, it can encourage social reform, be kind to the poor heathen and so on; but is that compassion? When thought dictates, when thought is active, can there be any place for compassion? Compassion being action without motive, without self-interest, without any sense of fear, without any sense of pleasure.
“Without pleasure there is no sight or measure.”
Knowledge http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21394/Knowledge
From the poems written in English
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
A list closing an article in Young India (22 October 1925); Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 33 (PDF) p. 135 http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL033.PDF
A written list given to his departing grandson Arun Gandhi (October 1947), as quoted in Marriot (Spring 1998; p.5) http://marriottschool.uberflip.com/h/i/16655510-spring-1998-exchange. Some alternative or erroneous translations exist that use intros "There are seven sins in the world:", "Seven Blunders of the world:", "The things that will destroy us are", and items "politics without principle", "education without character", or "business without morality".
The list was originally written by a Socialist clergyman in England in March 1925 and was passed along to Gandhi, who published it later that year, as detailed in this article http://quezi.com/21020.
1920s
Variant: The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.
“Without complicity, it cannot exist any pleasure.”
Original: Senza la complicità, non può esistere alcun piacere.
Source: prevale.net
G 4
Variant translations:
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of wisdom through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.
It is virtually impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd, without singeing someone's beard
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)