Quotes about handmaiden (17 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization. There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit here at home, if we are permanently to succeed; and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

Lie , Justice , Law , Home

“Life is suffering.
Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated.
Truth is the handmaiden of love.
Dialogue is the pathway to truth.
Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.
To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and small.
So speech must be untrammeled, so that dialogue can take place,
so that we can all humbly learn,
so that truth can serve love,
so that suffering can be ameliorated,
so that we can all stumble forward to the Kingdom of God.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Banned lecture at Linfield College: Ethics and Free Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKHuxVvA7T8
Other

Love , Life , Truth , Way

“My Dear Governor Durbin, permit me to thank you as an American citizen for the admirable way in which you have vindicated the majesty of the law by your recent action in reference to lynching. I feel, my dear sir, that you have made all men your debtors who believe, as all far-seeing men must, that the wellbeing, indeed the very existence, of the republic depends upon that spirit of orderly liberty under the law which is as incompatible with mob violence as with any form of despotism. Of course, mob violence is simply one form of anarchy, and anarchy is now, as it always has been, the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

Men , Law , Way , Feeling

“Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.”

Alain de Botton book Status Anxiety

Source: Status Anxiety

“Behold me, here I am; thy little handmaiden Acceptance-with-Joy and all that is in my heart is thine.”

Hannah Hurnard book Hinds' Feet on High Places

Source: Hinds' Feet on High Places

Heart , Joy

“It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history — free culture.
If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon.”

Lawrence Lessig book Free Culture

Free Culture (2004)

Truth , History , Parting

“Light, with its handmaiden color, was everywhere.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 37, “Jiriki’s Hunt” (p. 629).

Color , Light

“Father, I am greatly disturbed by a vision which has appeared to me through divine revelation, a vision seen not with my fleshly eyes but only in my spirit. Wretched, and indeed more than wretched in my womanly condition, I have from earliest childhood seen great marvels which my tongue has no power to express but which the Spirit of God has taught me that I may believe." Steadfast and gentle father, in your kindness respond to me, your unworthy servant, who has never, from her earliest childhood, lived one hour free from anxiety. In your piety and wisdom look in your spirit, as you have been taught by the Holy Spirit, and from your heart bring comfort to your handmaiden.”

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) Medieval saint, prophetise, mystic and Doctor of Church

Letter to Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, 1146-47

Wisdom , God , Appearance , Heart

“The creative scientist lives in a 'wildness of logic,' where reason is the handmaiden and not the master.”

Marston Morse (1892–1977) American mathematician

Attributed in Princeton & Mathematics: A Notable Record, Chaplin, Virginia, Princeton Alumni Weekly, May 9, 1958 http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/finding_aids/mathoral/pmcxpaw.htm,

“I searched the FM band but there was nothing besides other pious pleaders, and they didn't come in too well. The AM band offered about the same thing, only with worse reception, nothing remotely describable as news, and no music because commercial entertainment as we knew it was no more, and its handmaiden, advertising had gone with it.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 4, p. 21

Music , Search

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 4, What Is A Good Sentence?, p. 42

Dead

“Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“When Poetry thus keeps its place as the handmaiden of piety, it shall attain not a poor perishable wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

From the Preface to A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, (c 1779)
General sources

“Life is not a thing of knowing only — nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotion.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"Class-Day Oration" (1893).
Extra-judicial writings

Life , Feeling , Knowledge

“Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead. The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose to employ it in one way rather than another.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 4, What Is A Good Sentence?, p. 42

Way , Dead