“Good fortune is a god among men, and more than a god.”
Aeschylus The Libation Bearers
Variant translation: Success is man's god.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), The Libation Bearers, line 59
Search
Topics
Quotes
“Time, matter, space — all, it may be, are no more than a point.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist
Dying words of Nicholas Saunderson as portrayed in Lettre sur les aveugles [Letter on the Blind] (1749)
Variant translation:
What is this world of ours? A complex entity subject to sudden changes which all indicate a tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings which follow one another, assert themselves and disappear; a fleeting symmetry; a momentary order.
Context: What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days. You judge of the continuous existence of the world, as an ephemeral insect might judge of yours. The world is eternal for you, as you are eternal to the being that lives but for one instant. Yet the insect is the more reasonable of the two. For what a prodigious succession of ephemeral generations attests your eternity! What an immeasurable tradition! Yet shall we all pass away, without the possibility of assigning either the real extension that we filled in space, or the precise time that we shall have endured. Time, matter, space — all, it may be, are no more than a point.
“Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
More wonderful than man.”
Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian
Variant translation: There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man.
Source: Antigone, Line 333 (Ode I)
“Posterity has justified more the policy of conquest than that of concession.”
Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer
The Provinces of the Roman Empire, From Caesar to Diocletian 1854-6
Context: It is not meant to be denied that in a policy of conquest consistency is a dangerous praise, and that Trajan after his fashion yielded in these enterprises more than was reasonable to the effort after external success, and went beyond the rational; but wrong is done to him when his demeanor in the East is referred to blind lust of conquest. He did what Caesar would have done had he lived. His policy is but the other side of that of Nero's statesmen, and the two are as opposite, as they are equally consistent and equally warranted. Posterity has justified more the policy of conquest than that of concession.
Trajan's Oriental Policy
“True character arises from a deeper well than religion.”
Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)
Context: True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.
“More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself.”
Charles Francis Adams (1807–1886) American historical editor, politician and diplomat (1807-1886)
As quoted in Washington's Birthday : Its History, Observance, Spirit, and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse (1918) by Robert Haven Schauffler http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/5/1/4/15140/15140.htm, p. 143. <br class="br">Context: More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.
“It's easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Idiot
Part 4, Chapter 7 http://books.google.com/books?id=WuAKAQAAMAAJ&q=&quot;It's+easier+for+a+Russian+to+become+an+atheist+than+for+anyone+else+in+the+world&quot;&pg=PA548#v=onepage <br class="br">The Idiot (1868–9)
“More cruel than death itself, to die at that particular conjuncture!”
O morte ipsa mortis tempus indignius!
Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer
Letter 16, 6.
Letters, Book V
“Better sit still, men say, than rise to fall.”
Edward Fairfax (1580–1635) English translator
Book II, stanza 79
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)
“There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”
Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War
Radio broadcast (March 21, 1943), cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 21 ISBN 1586486381
The Second World War (1939–1945)
“All societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others.”
Geert Hofstede (1928) Dutch psychologist
Source: Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values (1980), p. 137.
“What I’m not changes more than what I am.”
James Richardson (1950) American poet
#91
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)
“It is better to be
An olde mans derlyng, than a yong mans werlyng.”
John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs
It is better to be
An old man's darling than a young man's warling.
Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546)
Variant: It is better to be
An olde mans derlyng, than a yong mans werlyng.
“Loneliness, insomnia, and change: the fear of these is even worse than the reality.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
“Ofttimes the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die.”
Spesso è da forte,
Più che il morire, il vivere.
Oreste, IV, 2; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 440.
“A well-fought defeat is worth more than a casual victory.”
José de San Martín (1778–1850) Argentine general and independence leader
Una derrota peleada vale más que una victoria casual.
100 Masones Su Palabra (2010)
“Dance, in general, has become more atavistic than artistic.”
Ilana Mercer South African writer
"Hollywood: The No-Good, The Bad And The Beastly" http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/03/hollywood-no-good-bad-and-beastly.html Economic Policy Journal, March 7, 2014. <br class="br">2010s, 2014
“Every star was once darker than the night, before it awoke.”
Dejan Stojanovic book The Sign and Its Children
"Earth and Light," p. 57
The Sign and Its Children (2000), Sequence: “The Sign and the Dream”
“Half a revolution is not better than none… It may, in fact, be worse.”
James A. Champy (1942) American businessman
Source: Reengineering management, 1995, p. 3
“More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.”
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist
The Phantom 'Rickshaw http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/PhantomRickshaw/phantomrickshaw.html (1888). <br class="br">Other works