“I see better things, and approve, but I follow worse.”
Book VII, 20
Metamorphoses (Transformations)
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Ovid120
Roman poet -43–17 BCRelated quotes
“I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.”
Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange
Source: A Clockwork Orange
“There are worse things than a lie and there are better things than the truth!”
Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock
Source: Finnikin of the Rock
“Things get worse before they get better.”
John King (1559–1621) Bishop of London in the Church of England
“I see the right, and I approve it too,
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.”
Samuel Garth (1661–1719) British writer
Translation of Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii. 20 (translated by Tate and Stonestreet, edited by Garth), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue" [veggio ’l meglio, et al peggior m’appiglio], Petrarch, Sonnet ccxxv. canzone xxi. To Laura in Life.
“Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.”
Humanam impotentiam in moderandis et coercendis affectibus servitutem voco; homo enim affectibus obnoxius sui juris non est sed fortunæ in cujus potestate ita est ut sæpe coactus sit quanquam meliora sibi videat, deteriora tamen sequi.
Baruch Spinoza book Ethics
Part IV, Preface; translation by R. H. M. Elwes
Ethics (1677)
“Neither worse then or better is a thing made by being praised.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
Source: Meditations
“I've been called worse things by better people.”
Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada
When it was reported to him that President Richard Nixon had called him an "asshole" (1971), quoted in Absurdities, Scandals & Stupidities in Politics (2006) by Hakeem Shittu and Callie Query, p. 19
My only response was that I had been called worse things by better people.
Trudeau's account of the comment, in Memoirs (1993) by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, p. 218
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Reply to a Roman Catholic student urging him to pray to Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and convert to Christianity.
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein's God (1997), p. 88