Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.
Aliena negotia centum / Per caput, et circa saliunt latus=--A hundred affairs of other people leap through my head and at my side.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
Thu' nur das Rechte in deinen Sachen, / Das Andre wird sich von selber machen=--In thy affairs do thou only what is right, the rest will follow of itself.
Lay not thine heart open to every one, but treat of thy affairs with the wise and such as fear God.
Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs.
_Lustravit lampade terras._--The weather and my moods have little in common. I have my foggy and my fine days within me, whether my affairs go well or ill has little to do with the matter. I sometimes strive against my luck, the glory of subduing it makes me subdue it gaily, whereas I am sometimes wearied in the midst of my good luck.
A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination…. In proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving them to the government, their desires will turn to repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannizing: while in proportion as all ready initiative and direction resides in the government, and individuals habitually feel and act as under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite for place and power. [ Principles of Political Economy , Book V, Chapter XI, § 6.]
'Tis rashness to conclude affairs in a lost condition because some crosses have baulked your expectations.
Governments, wherein the will of every one has a just influence… has its evils,… the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. [I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.] Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. [Letter to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:64.]
There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries; / On such a full sea are we now afloat; / And we must take the current when it serves, / Or lose our ventures.
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
Ludit in humanis divina potestas rebus, / Et certam pr?sens vix habet hora fidem=--The divine power sports with human affairs so much that we can scarcely be sure of the passing hour.
Dominus videt plurimum in rebus suis=--The master sees best in his own affairs.
Respect for sovereignity, for privacy, for total independence. Gentle alliances against loneliness, they were, cool rational love-affairs without the love.
I was not born for courts or great affairs; / I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers.
The great successes of the world have been affairs of a second, a third, nay, a fiftieth trial.
When war is waged it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it.
Omnes, quibus res sunt minus secund?, magis sunt, nescio quomodo / Suspiciosi: ad contumeliam omnia accipiunt magis; / Propter suam impotentiam se credunt negligi=--All those whose affairs are unprosperous are, somehow or other, extremely suspicious; they take every hint as an affront, and think the neglect with which they are treated is due to their humble position.
L'eloquence a fleuri le plus a Rome lorsque les affaires ont ete en plus mauvais etat=--Eloquence flourished most in Rome when its affairs were in the worst condition.
In every civilization, however generally prosaic, however addicted to the short-time point of view on human affairs, there are always certain alien spirits who, while outwardly conforming to the requirements of the civilization around them, still keep a disinterested regard for the plain intelligible law of things, irrespective of any practical end. They have an intellectual curiosity, sometimes touched with emotion, concerning the august order of nature; they are impressed by the contemplation of it, and like to know as much about it as they can, even in circumstances where its operation is ever so manifestly unfavourable to their best hopes and wishes.
Et credis cineres curare sepultos?=--And do you think that the ashes of the dead concern themselves with our affairs?
Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting for ever in one direction.
As self-government was secured through a struggle for mastery over the public purse, so must it be maintained through the exercise by the people of complete control over public expenditure. Money is the vital principle of the body politic; the public treasury is the heart of the state; control over public supplies means control over public affairs. Any method of procedure, therefore, by which a public servant can veil the true meaning of his acts, or which allows the government to enter upon any great enterprise without bringing the fact fairly to the knowledge of the public, must work against the realization of the constitutional idea. This is exactly the state of affairs introduced by a free use of public credit. Under ordinary circumstances, popular attention can not be drawn to public acts, except they touch the pocket of the voters through an increase in taxes; and it follows that a government whose expenditures are met by resort to loans may, for a time, administer affairs independently of those who must finally settle the account. [ Public Debts, An Essay in the Science of Finance . New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898, pp. 22-23.]
Neu Regiment bringt neue Menschen auf, / Und fruheres Verdienst veraltet schnell=--A new administration of affairs raises up new men, and qualifications formerly of service become soon antiquated.
Fortuna parvis momentis magnas rerum commutationes efficit=--Fortune in brief moments works great changes in our affairs.
The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.
Ut sunt humana, nihil est perpetuum=--As human affairs go, nothing is everlasting.
In America the principle of the sovereignty of the people is neither barren nor concealed, as it is with some other nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed by the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment at its most remote consequences. If there is a country in the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people can be fairly appreciated, where it can be studied in its application to the affairs of society, and where its dangers and its advantages may be judged, that country is assuredly America.… In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society governs itself for itself. All power centers in its bosom, and scarcely an individual is to be met with who would venture to conceive or, still less, to express the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little do the authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate. The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them. [ Democracy in America , Volume I, New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1994, pp. 55-58.]
Friendship is constant in all other things, / Save in the office and affairs of love; / Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues; / Let every eye negotiate for itself, / And trust no agent.
Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent.
~Vexations.~--Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so also the smallest affairs disturb us most.--_Montaigne._
Sed quum res hominum tanta caligine volvi / Adspicerem, l?tosque diu florere nocentes, / Vexarique pios: rursus labefacta cadebat / Religio=--When I beheld human affairs involved in such dense darkness, the guilty exulting in their prosperity, and pious men suffering wrong, what religion I had began to reel backward and fall.
Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.
~Faith.~--In affairs of this world men are saved not by faith but by the want of it.--_Fielding._
Lampis, the sea commander, being asked how he got his wealth, answered, "My greatest estate I gained easily enough, but the smaller slowly and with much labour."
~Anarchy.~--The choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three-half-pence cheaper by the ruin of living bodies and immortal souls.--_Carlyle._
Worldly affairs, which my friends thought so heavy upon me, they are most of them of our own making, and fall away as soon as we know ourselves.
Il conduit bien sa barque=--He manages his affairs well.
Aliena negotia curo / Excussus propriis=--I attend to other people's affairs, baffled with my own.
Keep your affairs to yourself, for every favoured man is an object of envy.
I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed.
I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs and human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom.
If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters.
[T]he right of private property, including that pertaining to goods devoted to productive enterprises, is permanently valid. Indeed, it is rooted in the very nature of things, whereby we learn that individual men are prior to civil society, and hence, that civil society is to be directed toward man as its end. Indeed, the right of private individuals to act freely in economic affairs is recognized in vain, unless they are at the same time given an opportunity of freely selecting and using things necessary for the exercise of this right. Moreover, experience and history testify that where political regimes do not allow to private individuals the possession also of productive goods, the exercise of human liberty is violated or completely destroyed in matters of primary importance. Thus it becomes clear that in the right of property, the exercise of liberty finds both a safeguard and a stimulus. [ Mater et Magistra , Section 109. 1961.]
Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars... The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope \x97 we must hope \x97 that man\x92s own creation, man\x92s own genius, will not destroy him.
There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when...to dare, is the highest wisdom.
Do not disturb yourself with vain curiosity concerning the affairs of others, nor how they conduct themselves, unless your position makes it your duty to do so.--VEN. LOUIS DE BLOIS.
Xenophon says that there is no sound more pleasing than one's own praises.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international affairs. The machinery's of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
The vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes, other than those which are practised by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.
The man of intellect at the top of affairs; this is the aim of all institutions and revolutions, if they have any.
The test or measure of poetic genius is to read the poetry of affairs, to fuse the circumstance of to-day.
It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? . . . Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.
Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.
_The arrangement._--Why should I take on myself to divide my moral qualities into four rather than into six? Why should I rather establish virtue in four, in two, in one? Why into _Abstine et sustine_ rather than into _Follow nature_, or, _Conduct your private affairs without injustice_, as Plato, or anything else?
It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs.
In misfortune, in error, and when the time appointed for certain affairs is about to elapse, a servant who hath his master's welfare at heart ought to speak unasked.
Our whole evolution has reached a stage where nearly every man is either ruler or ruled; sometimes he is both. By this the attitude of dependence has been greatly strengthened, for a truly free man does not like to play the part of either the ruler or the ruled. He is, above all, concerned with making his inner values and personal powers effective in a way as to permit him to use his own judgment in all affairs and to be independent in action.
The risings and sinkings of human affairs are like those of a ball which is thrown by the hand.
I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq.
There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Est animus tibi / Rerumque prudens, et secundis / Temporibus dubiisque rectus=--You possess a mind both sagacious in the management of affairs, and steady at once in prosperous and perilous times.
To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life, with due thought for the morrow, because no man can be sure he will be alive an hour hence.
There is a great deal of folly in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs.
In regard to the affairs of mortals, there is nothing happy throughout.--_Euripides._
Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.
Res sunt human? flebile ludibrium=--Human affairs are a jest to be wept over.
No man at the head of affairs always wishes to be explicit.
God needeth not the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the Spirit in the affairs of conscience.
The sole universal rules are the laws of the country in ordinary affairs, and the law of the majority in others. And this comes from the power which is in them.
Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.
Ne depugnes in alieno negotio=--Do not take up the cudgels in another man's affairs.
There is something in sorrow more akin to the course of human affairs than joy.
My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them, or indisposed me to serve them; nor in spite of failures, which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge; or of the present aspect of affairs; do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.
Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying? I don’t do games. I don’t do one-night stands. I don’t do affairs. Usually, when I meet a woman and take interest in her, I will be loyal to her, and only her. I expect the same. I don’t share well. I’m all for exclusiveness in everything I do, and own. I’m not afraid of commitment or hard work. You’re right; I’m not new to this. I’ve been in many relationships. This is good news, Sophie. It means I won’t waste your time. Rest assured, if I’m with you it’s because that’s exactly where I want to be. If ever I want out of a relationship, I leave. My commitment ends there. It’s simple enough and this is the only thing that makes sense to me.
He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.
The saddest external condition of affairs among men, is but evidence of a still sadder internal one.
Quantum est in rebus inane!=--What emptiness there is in human affairs!
Human affairs are governed by a hierarchy of values, each corresponding to one of the two sides of man’s nature. The priority order of particular activities on these tables of value is inverse, so that an activity which occupies first place on one is in last place in the other. Man is an animal, and his animal needs and wants are the subject of economics. But he is also a spiritual being, with a mind unique in the natural order; he is a civilized or human being. It is from the dual nature of man as both animal and human that the dual scale of values governing his life arises. One is a hierarchy of urgency; the other is a hierarchy of importance. The history of man, at least as we read it, leaves no doubt that he places the highest value on the goods of the mind and the spirit — what Plato called “the wares of the soul; that in the human scale of things, it is the goods of civilization — the arts, sciences, religion, education, philosophy, statesmanship and the like, that weigh the heaviest.… It is equally clear, however, that for all but the most exceptional human beings, the goods and services that minister to the need and desire for creature comforts weigh heaviest on the scale of urgency. Physical goods and services of economics are more urgent. It is only when man’s material needs and desires are satisfied and he is secure in his belief that they will continue to be satisfied — when, in a word, he becomes affluent—that the urgency of economic matters disappears, and the truly important things move into the foreground of consciousness.… Economic planning for a free industrial society that fails to take into account the significance of the inverse dual scale of values implicit in man’s nature is predestined to error. The lesson to be learned … is simple: solve the economic problem of society first, and a floodtide of goods of civilization will follow.” [ Two-Factor Theory: The Economics of Reality , pp. 111-112.]
Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to anger.
Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor be judged of from glimpses got in the press of affairs or a few occasions.
Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limitation and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.
Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.
If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
Jove weighs affairs of earth in dubious scales, And the good suffers while the bad prevails.
Habere derelictui rem suam=--To neglect one's affairs.
Hope is a curtail dog in some affairs.
No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their affairs they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet, across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.