“A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.”
14 November 1760
1750s, Diaries (1750s-1790s)
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John Adams202
2nd President of the United States 1735–1826Related quotes
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 249 (15 December 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 256 (24 December 1711)
The Spectator (1711–1714)
“My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 January 1946), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 540.
1940s
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
Lectures on the English Poets http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16209/16209.txt (1818), Lecture VIII, "On the Living Poets"
Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968) Russian-born French philosopher and statesman
Source: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, assembled by Raymond Queneau, edited by Allan Bloom, translated by James H. Nichols, Jr. (1969), p. 36
Context: Now, this I is essential. For Man, and consequently the Philosopher, is not only Consciousness, but also- and above all-Self-Consciousness. Man is not only a being that thinks - i.e., reveals Being by Logos, by Speech formed of words that have a meaning. He reveals in addition -also by Speech - the being that reveals Being, the being that he himself is, the revealing being that he opposes to the revealed being by giving it the name Ich or Selbst, I or Self.
John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 236.
“It is not by his faults, but by his excellences, that we measure a great man.”
George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher
On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1875) p. 13
“A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.”
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
Source: Meditations
“Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)