“We serve Him most who take the most of His exhaustless love.”
Alice Cary (1820–1871) American writer
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 129.
“Loke who that is most vertuous alway,
Prive and apert, and most entendeth ay
To do the gentil dedes that he can,
And take him for the gretest gentilman.”
— Geoffrey Chaucer, book The Canterbury Tales
The Wife of Bath's Tale, l. 6695
The Canterbury Tales
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Prive and apert, and most entendeth ay
To do the gentil dedes that he can,
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Geoffrey Chaucer99
English poet 1343–1400Related quotes
“It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.”
Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist
As quoted in American Heritage (December 1955), p. 44
Context: I disagree with my brother Charles and Theodore Roosevelt. I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. These facts have nothing to do with the case and should not have been allowed to interfere with just penalties. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) British politician
Review of Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, in the Edinburgh Review (May 1811)
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
The Dilemma of Determinism (1884)
1880s
Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist
Source: The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, pp. 214-215
Context: For it is a conspicuous feature of democracy, as it evolves from generation to generation, that it leads people increasingly to take up public positions on the private affairs of others. Wherever people discover that money is being spent, either privately or by public officials, they commonly develop opinions on how it ought to be spent. In a state increasingly managed right down to small details of conduct, each person thus becomes his own fantasy despot, disposing of others and their resources as he or she thinks desirable. And this tendency itself results from another feature of the moral revolution. Democracy demands, or at least seems to demand, that its subjects should have opinions on most matters of public discussion. But public policy is a complicated matter and few intelligent comments can be made without a great deal of time being spent on the detail. On the other hand, every public policy may be judged in terms of its desirability. However ignorant a person may be, he or she can always moralize. And it is the propensity to moralize that takes up most of the space for public discussion in contemporary society.
“The most generous person is the one who offers help to those who do not expect him to help.”
Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 121
General Quotes
“The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Civilization
“For to lose time irks him most who most knows.”
Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio
Canto III, line 78 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio