“Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson 362
English writer 1709–1784

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Giovanni della Casa photo

“These kinds of habits, in good company, are so very nauseous and disgusting, that if we indulge ourselves in them, no one can be very fond of our acquaintance. So far from it, that even those, who are inclined to wish us well, must, by these and the like disagreeable customs, be entirely alienated from us.”

Giovanni della Casa (1503–1556) Roman Catholic archbishop

Those ill-bred people, who expect their acquaintance to love and caress them, with all their foibles, are as absurd as a poor ragged cinder-wench; who should roll about upon an heap of ashes, scrabbling and throwing dust in the face of every one that passed by; and yet flatter herself that she should allure some youth to her embraces, by these dirty endearments; which would infallibly keep him at a distance.
Source: Galateo: Or, A Treatise on Politeness and Delicacy of Manners, p. 15

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“The holiday humour that ought to have prevailed in the tent that evening — our first on the plateau — did not make its appearance; there was depression and sadness in the air - we had grown so fond of our dogs.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

Upon slaughtering some dogs to feed other dogs and themselves
Sydpolen (The South Pole) (1912)

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“He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Paris Review (Summer 1966)
Context: A playwright … is … the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.

“That’s another thing about emperors—and regents,” Gareth said. “They aren’t very fond of changes, even if the changes are for the better.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: Time Cat (1963), Chapter 9 “Secret Journeys” (p. 91)

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Power and the Useful Economist (1973)
Context: When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality. The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error. The beneficiaries are the institutions whose power we so disguise. Let there be no question: economics, so long as it is thus taught, becomes, however unconsciously, a part of the arrangement by which the citizen or student is kept from seeing how he or she is, or will be, governed.

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