Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 116.
1870s
Context: My fourth principle is—that you should avoid needless and entangling engagements. You may boast about them, you may brag about them, you may say you are procuring consideration of the country. You may say that an Englishman may now hold up his head among the nations. But what does all this come to, gentlemen? It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase your engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it. You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations.
“Block the passages, shut the doors,
And till the end your strength shall not fail.
Open up the passages, increase your doings,
And till your last day no help shall come to you.”
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 52 as translated by Arthur Waley (1934)
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Laozi 79
semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th centur… -604Related quotes
As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals
Context: To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed — and that fulfillment shall enrich us all.
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Book I, epistle ii, p. 104
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Epistles
Variant: Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
Source: Four Quartets
“Mind your till, and till your mind.”
The Salt-Cellars (1885)
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The Pillow Book
“You have to come to your closed doors before you’ll ever get to your open doors.”
Source: I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your Life
Oxford January 29. 1696, 7.
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)