“Love's but a frailty of the mind,
When 'tis not with ambition joined.”
William Congreve The Way of the World
Act III, scene xii
The Way of the World (1700)
“And wit's the noblest frailty of the mind.”
Act II, sc. i.
The True Widow (1679)
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Thomas Shadwell5
English poet and playwright 1642–1692Related quotes
Tara Westover book Educated
Source: Educated (2018), Chapter 22, “What We Whispered and What We Screamed” (p. 197)
“The noblest mind the best contentment has.”
Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene
Canto 1, stanza 35
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I
“As that the walls worn thin, permit the mind
To look out thorough, and his frailty find. 1”
Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) Poet and historian
History of the Civil War (1595), Book iv, Stanza 84, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made", Edmund Waller, Verses upon his Divine Poesy.
“Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.”
Amit Ray (1960) Indian author
Mindfulness Living in the Moment - Living in the Breath (2015)
Honoré de Balzac book Une fille d'Ève
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 4: A Man of Note.
Context: This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.
Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 194
Context: To the impure, the dishonest, the false-hearted, the corrupt and the sensual, occasions come every day, and in every scene, and through every avenue of thought and imagination. He is prepared to capitulate before the first approach is commenced; and sends out the white flag when the enemy's advance comes in sight of his walls. He makes occasions; or, if opportunities come not, evil thoughts come, and he throws wide open the gates of his heart and welcomes those bad visitors, and entertains them with a lavish hospitality.
The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, and degrades one mind, while in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independency integrity, and generosity. Pleasure is a poison to some, and a healthful refreshment to others. To one. the world is a great harmony, like a noble strain of music with infinite modulations; to another, it is a huge factory, the clash and clang of whose machinery jars upon his ears and frets him to madness.
“An eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind.”
Ernst Hanfstaengl (1887–1975) German businessman
William Shirer, a CBS journalist
“To all this, his illustrious mind reflects the noblest ornament; he places no part of his happiness in ostentation, but refers the whole of it to conscience; and seeks the reward of a virtuous action, not in the applauses of the world, but in the action itself.”
Ornat haec magnitudo animi, quae nihil ad ostentationem, omnia ad conscientiam refert recteque facti non ex populi sermone mercedem, sed ex facto petit.
Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer
Letter 22, 5.
Letters, Book I