All This Useless Beauty
Song lyrics, All This Useless Beauty (1996)
Context: Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they're the gods of antiquity
If something you missed didn't even exist
It was just an ideal — is it such a surprise?
“Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat
Interview with Lorie Conway (1997) from Interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith (2004) ed. James Ronald Stanfield and Jacqueline Bloom Stanfield. Conway saw these words on a framed needlepoint, entitled "Galbraith's First Law," at Galbraith's home
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
No. 43
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
“Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 231 (24 November 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
“Modesty is oftner mistaken than any other Virtue.”
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
“Patience is a virtue,
Virtue is a grace.
Grace is a little girl
Who would not wash her face.”
Dick King-Smith (1922–2011) English writer of children's books
Source: Lady Daisy
“Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style.”
Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)
Context: So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church
Pange, Lingua, stanza 5 (Tantum Ergo)
“Modesty is an old-fashioned virtue, which, given your charms, you must certainly do without.”
Marquis de Sade Philosophy in the Bedroom
First Dialogue, Delmonce
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist
Source: Epigrams, p. 358
