“How true it is that arguments have only power over us while the temper is disposed to listen to them!”

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Retreat to Priests, Washington, D.C., p. 19, quoted in Bernard Hayes, C.R., To Live as Jesus Did (Locust Valley, N.Y.: Living Flame Press, 1981), p. 108. There is no book by Sheen with the title Retreat to Priests. Hayes is presumably quoting from a transcription of Sheen's 1974 retreat for priests of the Washington diocese. This was recorded on reel-to-reel tape and later issued in nine 60-minute tapes under the title Renewal and Reconciliation.

Mukesh Ambani on retail and SEZ plans

Context: It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient. The lawyer never yet existed who has not boldly urged an objection which he knew to be fallacious, or endeavoured to pass off a weak reason for a strong one. Intellect is the greatest and most sacred of all endowments; and no man ever trifled with it, defending an action to-day which he had arraigned yesterday, or extenuating an offence on one occasion, which, soon after, he painted in the most atrocious colours, with absolute impunity. Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.

The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 1, p. 370 (1803)

Source: Henry V

"Definition of a Gentleman" http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/LEE/gentdef.html, a memorandum found in his papers after his death, as quoted in Lee the American (1912) by Gamaliel Bradford, p. 233
Context: The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman.
The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly — the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light.
The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which imparts sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.

2013, Brandenburg Gate Speech (June 2013)