Quotes about sake
page 2

Charles Grandison Finney photo
W. H. Auden photo
Ayn Rand photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Rather than cope with the unbearable loneliness of their condition men will continue to seek their shattered God, and for His sake they will love the very serpents that dwell among His ruins.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

As quoted by J. P. Stern in an interview conducted by Bryan Magee in The Great Philosophers : A History of Western Philosophy (1987)
Disputed

George Boole photo

“A studious person may neglect his business for the sake of books; but if he does this, it is not his books that are to blame, but his want of principle of of firmness.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Attributed to George Boole : Des MacHale (1985) George Boole: his life and work. p. 5
Attributed from posthumous publications

Thomas Paine photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Barack Obama photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Socrates photo
George Washington photo
Toni Morrison photo
Martin Luther photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Barack Obama photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo

“Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“Swamy Shraddananda’, written by Rabindranath in Magh, 1333 Bangabda; compiled in the book ‘Kalantar’.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay photo
Thomas Paine photo

“Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake let us come to a final separation.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“So if you can manage it, you shouldn’t touch your partner, except for the sake of having children.”
Non ergo accedas, si potes, nisi liberorum procreandorum causa.

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

278:9; translation from: The works of Saint Augustine, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, 1994, ISBN 1565480600 ISBN 978-1565480605p. 55. http://books.google.com/books?id=5jswAAAAYAAJ&q=%22if+you+can+manage+it,+you+shouldn%E2%80%99t+touch+your+partner,+except+for+the+sake+of+having+children%22&dq=%22if+you+can+manage+it,+you+shouldn%E2%80%99t+touch+your+partner,+except+for+the+sake+of+having+children%22&hl=en&ei=dMJkTaOcCcGC8gah4IjmBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA
Sermons

Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola photo

“This much will I say for myself — and on this point I do not blush for praising myself — that I have never philosophized save for the sake of philosophy, nor have I ever desired or hoped to secure from my studies and my laborious researches any profit or fruit save cultivation of mind and knowledge of the truth — things I esteem more and more with the passage of time. I have also been so avid for this knowledge and so enamored of it that I have set aside all private and public concerns to devote myself completely to contemplation; and from it no calumny of jealous persons, nor any invective from enemies of wisdom has ever been able to detach me.”
Dabo hoc mihi, et me ipsum hac ex parte laudare nihil erubescam, me numquam alia de causa philosophatum nisi ut philosopharer, nec ex studiis meis, ex meis lucubrationibus, mercedem ullam aut fructum vel sperasse alium vel quesiisse, quam animi cultum et a me semper plurimum desideratae veritatis cognitionem. Cuius ita cupidus semper et amantissimus fui ut, relicta omni privatarum et publicarum rerum cura, contemplandi ocio totum me tradiderim; a quo nullae invidorum obtrectationes, nulla hostium sapientiae maledicta, vel potuerunt ante hac, vel in posterum me deterrere poterunt.

25. 158-159; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Thomas Mann photo

“For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.”

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 6
Context: I will keep faith with death in my heart, yet will remember that faith with death and the dead is only wickedness and dark voluptuousness and enmity against humankind, if it is given power over our thought and contemplation. For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts. And with that, I wake up.

Khalil Gibran photo

“All that you see was and is for your sake. The numerous books, uncanny markings, and beautiful thoughts are the ghosts of souls who preceded you.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)
Context: All that you see was and is for your sake. The numerous books, uncanny markings, and beautiful thoughts are the ghosts of souls who preceded you. The speech they weave is a link between you and your human siblings. The consequences that cause sorrow and rapture are the seeds that the past has sown in the field of the soul, and by which the future shall profit.

Frank Herbert photo

“It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced — in a word, insane.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Dune Genesis (1980)
Context: Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem.
It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced — in a word, insane. … Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.
It is the systems themselves that I see as dangerous.

Abraham Lincoln photo

“It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment
Context: I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

Aristotle photo
Mikhail Lermontov photo

“My whole past life I live again in memory, and, involuntarily, I ask myself: 'why have I lived - for what purpose was I born?'… A purpose there must have been, and, surely, mine was an exalted destiny, because I feel that within my soul are powers immeasurable… But I was not able to discover that destiny, I allowed myself to be carried away by the allurements of passions, inane and ignoble. From their crucible I issued hard and cold as iron, but gone for ever was the glow of noble aspirations - the fairest flower of life. And, from that time forth, how often have I not played the part of an axe in the hands of fate! Like an implement of punishment, I have fallen upon the head of doomed victims, often without malice, always without pity… To none has my love brought happiness, because I have never sacrificed anything for the sake of those I have loved: for myself alone I have loved - for my own pleasure. I have only satisfied the strange craving of my heart, greedily draining their feelings, their tenderness, their joys, their sufferings - and I have never been able to sate myself. I am like one who, spent with hunger, falls asleep in exhaustion and sees before him sumptuous viands and sparkling wines; he devours with rapture the aerial gifts of the imagination, and his pains seem somewhat assuaged. Let him but awake: the vision vanishes - twofold hunger and despair remain!
And tomorrow, it may be, I shall die!… And there will not be left on earth one being who has understood me completely. Some will consider me worse, others, better, than I have been in reality… Some will say: 'he was a good fellow'; others: 'a villain.”

And both epithets will be false. After all this, is life worth the trouble? And yet we live - out of curiosity! We expect something new... How absurd, and yet how vexatious!
A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Abraham Lincoln photo

“When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)
Context: When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

Jane Roberts photo

“When every young man refuses to go to war, you will have peace. As long as you fight for gain and greed, there will be no peace. As long as one person commits acts of violence for the sake of peace, you will have war.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 274
Context: When every young man refuses to go to war, you will have peace. As long as you fight for gain and greed, there will be no peace. As long as one person commits acts of violence for the sake of peace, you will have war. Unfortunately it is difficult to imagine that all the young men in all of the countries will refuse to go to war at the same time. And so you must work out what violence has wrought. Within the next hundred years, that time may come. Remember, you do not defend any idea with violence. There is no man who hates but that hatred is reflected outward and made physical. And there is no man who loves but that love is reflected outward and made physical.

Thomas Mann photo

“Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living.”

The Magic Mountain (1924)
Context: Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for the sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment. C'est ça. You don't realize what revolting egoism it is, and that one day it will make you the enemies of the human race.

John Locke photo

“Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other bye-end.”

Book IV, Ch. 19 : Of Enthusiasm (Chapter added in the fourth edition).
Variant paraphrase, sometimes cited as a direct quote: One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
As paraphrased in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 500; also in The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1994) by Carl Sagan, p. 64
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
Context: He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it. There is nobody in the commonwealth of learning who does not profess himself a lover of truth: and there is not a rational creature that would not take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. And yet, for all this, one may truly say, that there are very few lovers of truth, for truth's sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth's sake, but for some other bye-end.

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.”

A Man Without a Country (2005)
Context: If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“I cannot tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign, and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of common country, that they make up their minds to speak only the truth, and not use that kind of slander and mendacity which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence.”

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

1910s, Address at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1912)
Context: I cannot tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign, and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of common country, that they make up their minds to speak only the truth, and not use that kind of slander and mendacity which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence. Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me. I am all right. I am all right and you cannot escape listening to the speech either.

Erykah Badu photo
John Keats photo

“They really need discipline, to be objective, to know what they really want in life. If you train with the mind of winning you always win, if you train with a weak mind, no I am just doing it for the sake of running then something is wrong somewhere.”

Samukeliso Moyo (1974) athletics competitor

Source: 43-year-old Samukeliso Moyo has no intentions of quitting running https://www.sundaynews.co.zw/43-year-old-samukeliso-moyo-has-no-intentions-of-quitting-running/

Plato photo
Zafar Mirzo photo
Oswald Chambers photo
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi photo
Brian Jacques photo
Georges Bataille photo

“Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaining it.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: Erotism: Death and Sensuality

George Bernard Shaw photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. (Long translation)”

All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them. (trans. Meric Casaubon).
Οἱ ἄνθρωποι γεγόνασιν ἀλλήλων ἕνεκεν· ἢ δίδασκε οὖν ἢ φέρε.
VIII, 59
Variant: Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

William Blake photo
James Patterson photo

“Oh, Blimey O'Riley's pantyhose…. What is the point of Shakespeare? I know he is a genius and so on, but he does rave on. 'What light doth through yonder window break?' It's the bloody moon, for God sake, Will, get a grip!”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Variant: Oh Blimey O‘Reilly's pantyhose... what is the point of Shakespeare? I know he is a genius and so on, but he does rave on. It's the bloody moon, for God's sake, Will, get a grip!!
Source: Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants

“Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

"Water", p. 114
Desert Solitaire (1968)
Source: The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

Rick Riordan photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Neil deGrasse Tyson photo
Herman Melville photo
Dalton Trumbo photo
Nora Roberts photo

“Damn me to hell or take me to heaven, but for Gods sake, do it now….”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Stanislaski Brothers: Mikhail and Alex

Dorothy Parker photo
Peter Singer photo
Hiro Mashima photo
D.H. Lawrence photo

“It's not art for art's sake, it's art for my sake.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter
Nora Roberts photo
Alberto Manguel photo
Shmuley Boteach photo
Shunryu Suzuki photo

“We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Source: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

Plutarch photo

“But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.”

I, 4
Moralia, Of Eating of Flesh
Context: For the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them.

Thomas Hardy photo

“Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Emma Donoghue photo

“Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

Ian McEwan photo
Philip Yancey photo
Herman Melville photo

“… to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Jane Austen photo
James Patterson photo
William Blake photo
Shannon Hale photo
Jenny Han photo
David Levithan photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Art of Literature

John Locke photo

“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703) http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1726#lf0128-09_head_098

Kelley Armstrong photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Daniel H. Wilson photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Joss Whedon photo
Raymond E. Feist photo