Quotes4study

These are some of the causes which render man so totally unable to know nature. For nature has a twofold infinity, he is finite and limited. Nature is permanent, and continues in one stay; he is fleeting and mortal. All things fail and change each instant, he sees them only as they pass, they have their beginning and end, he conceives neither the one nor the other. They are simple, he is composed of two different natures. And to complete the proof of our weakness, I will finish by this reflection on our natural condition. In a word, to complete the proof of our weakness, I will end with these two considerations....

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. — How is this?

Rutherford B. Hayes

A moment can change the way you view the world, and the way you view the world will give you more moments.

Nikki Rowe

If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.

Timothy Leary

We can't be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don't have something better.

C. JoyBell C.

Loves change sure as man or moon, and wane like warm full days of June.--_Joaquin Miller._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Men are but children of a larger growth; / Our appetites are apt to change as theirs, / And full as craving too, and full as vain.

_Dryden._

From very low forms up to the highest--in the animal no less than in the vegetable kingdom--the process of life presents the same appearance of cyclical evolution. Nay, we have but to cast our eyes over the rest of the world and cyclical change presents itself on all sides. It meets us in the water that flows to the sea and returns to the springs; in the heavenly bodies that wax and wane, go and return to their places; in the inexorable sequence of the ages of man's life; in that successive rise, apogee, and fall of dynasties and of states which is the most prominent topic of civil history.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

Great joy, especially after a sudden change and revolution of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

_Fielding._

Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on one's sleeve can have the same effect. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open — to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren't afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas.

Jack Welch

For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.

Eric Roth

This day / Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

_Henry V._, v. 2.

This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change.

Taylor Swift

I will not name all its effects. Every one knows that the sight of cats, and rats, or the crushing of a coal, etc., may quite unhinge the reason. The tone of voice will affect the wisest and change the whole force of a speech or a poem.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function. This must seem to some like a very strange direction in which to move. It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.

Carl R. Rogers

Stylum vertere=--To change or correct the style.

Unknown

Historically the great movements for human liberation have always been movements to change institutions and not to preserve them intact. It follows from what has been said that there have been movements to bring about a changed distribution of power to do — and power to think and to express thought is a power to do— so that there would be a more balanced, a more equal, even, and equitable system of human liberties. [ Freedom and Culture, Putnam, 1939.]

Dewey, John.

Time heals all pain and misunderstanding, because we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves. It is like a nation which we have angered and meet again after two generations. They are Frenchmen still, but not the same.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Jucunda rerum vicissitudo=--A delightful change of circumstances.

Unknown

The hardships or misfortunes we lie under are more easy to us than those of any other person would be, should we change conditions with him.

Horace.

Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS. 121-180 A. D.     _Meditations. ix. 19._

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

JOHN MILTON. 1608-1674.     _Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 597._

One look up to heaven, and all this dust of the highroad of life vanishes. Yes! one look up to heaven and that dark shadow of death vanishes. We have made the darkness of that shadow ourselves, and our thoughts about death are very ungodly. God has willed it so; there is to be a change, and a change of such magnitude that even if angels were to come down and tell us all about it, we could not understand it, as little as the new-born child would understand what human language could tell about the present life. Think what the birth of a child, of a human soul, is; and when you have felt the utter impossibility of fathoming that mystery, then turn your thoughts upon death, and see in it a new birth equally unfathomable, but only the continuation of that joyful mystery which we call a birth. It is all God's work, and where is there a flaw in that wonder of all wonders, God's ever-working work? If people talk of the miseries of life, are they not all man's work?

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

~Honor.~--Keep unscathed the good name, keep out of peril the honor, without which even your battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on half pay and a wooden leg, would not change with Achilles.--_Bulwer-Lytton._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

Ellen Goodman

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.

W. Somerset Maugham

Would that loving Father begin such a work in us as is now going on, and then destroy it, leave it unfinished? No, what is will be; what really is in us will always be; we shall be because we are. Many things which are now will change, but what we really are we shall always be; and if love forms really part of our very life, that love, changed it may be, purified, sanctified, will be with us, and remain with us through that greatest change which we call death. The pangs of death will be the same for all that, just as the pangs of childbirth seem ordained by God in order to moderate the exceeding joy that a child is born into the world. And as the pain is forgotten when the child is born, so it will be after death--the joy will be commensurate to the sorrow. The sorrow is but the effort necessary to raise ourselves to that new and higher state of being, and without that supreme effort or agony, the new life that waits for us is beyond our horizon, beyond our conception. It is childish to try to anticipate, we cannot know anything about it; we are meant to be ignorant; even the _Divina Commedia_ of a great poet and thinker is but child's play, and nothing else.... No illusions, no anticipations; only that certainty, that quiet rest in God, that submissive expectation of the soul, which knows that all is good, all comes from God, all tends to God.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.

EURIPIDES. 484-406 B. C.     _Iphigenia in Tauris. 721._

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

_Confucius._

Certainly had he known it, he would not have established the maxim, most general of all current among men, that every one must conform to the manners of his own country; the splendour of true equity would have brought all nations into subjection, and legislators would not have taken as their model the fancies and caprice of Persians and Germans instead of stable justice. We should have seen it established in all the States of the world, in all times, whereas now we see neither justice nor injustice which does not change its quality upon changing its climate. Three degrees of latitude reverse all jurisprudence, a meridian decides what is truth, fundamental laws change after a few years of possession, right has its epochs, the entrance of Saturn into the Lion marks for us the origin of such and such a crime. That is droll justice which is bounded by a stream! Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on that.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which persuades human beings to change their basic assumptions is usually contained in a few phrases.

Kenneth Clark

Aendern und bessern sind zwei=--To change, and to change for the better, are two different things.

_Ger. Pr._

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America. It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

Barack Obama

>Change is inevitable in a progressive country--is constant.

_Disraeli._

Le temps guerit les douleurs et les querelles, parcequ'on change, on n'est plus la meme personne=--Time heals our griefs and wranglings, because we change, and are no longer the same.

_Pascal._

But since dreams are all different, and each single dream is diversified, what we see in them affects us much less than what we see when awake, because that is continuous, not indeed so continuous and level as never to change, but the change is less abrupt, except occasionally, as when we travel, and then we say, "I think I am dreaming," for life is but a little less inconstant dream.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Majus et minus non variant speciem=--Greater and less don't change the nature of a thing.

Unknown

The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.

John Adams

Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, / Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new.

_Johnson._

Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth. [“Cicero,” The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans , translated by John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. (New York: Random House, Modern Library edition, p. 1046).]

Plutarch.

Do not worry--between one twinkle of the eye and that which follows it things may change.

John Wortabet     Arabian Wisdom

The sky is changed,--and such a change! O night And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder.

LORD BYRON 1788-1824.     _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iii. Stanza 92._

And, oh! what beautiful years were these When our hearts clung each to each; When life was filled and our senses thrilled In the first faint dawn of speech. Thus life by life and love by love We passed through the cycles strange, And breath by breath and death by death We followed the chain of change.

Langdon Smith ~ (In honor of our reaching a myriad of articles at Wikiquote, a selection from the official "10,000th article

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

They are perfect; how else?--they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?--we have time in store.

ROBERT BROWNING. 1812-1890.     _Old Pictures in Florence. xvi._

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. … We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

Wendell Berry (quote for Earth Day

Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable.

Stanisław Lem

The people of a nation are enslaved when, together, they are helpless to institute effective change, when the people serve the government more than the government serves them.

Gerry Spence

These children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through...

David Bowie

The names of entities that have the power to constrain us change with time. Convention and authority are replaced by infirmity. But my attitude toward them has not changed. Has not changed.

Cormac McCarthy

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

William Faulkner

Les honneurs changent les m?urs=--Honours change manners.

_Fr. Pr._

I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.

Stephen Chbosky

How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?

Unknown

How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?

Unknown

_Against scepticism._--We suppose that we all conceive of things in the same way, but it is a gratuitous supposition, of which we have no proof. I see indeed that the same words are applied on the same occasions, and that every time two men see a body change its place, they both express their view of the same object by the same word, both saying that it has moved, and from this sameness of application we have a strong conviction of a sameness of idea; but this, though it may be enough to justify us in wagering the affirmative, is not finally or completely convincing, since we know that we often draw the same conclusions from different premisses.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Experience has taught me that the only friends we can call our own, who can have no change, are those over whom the grave has closed; the seal of death is the only seal of friendship.--_Byron._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Forward, forward let us range, / Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

_Tennyson._

I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.

Jonathan Safran Foer

To me, “FEARLESS” is not the absence of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, FEARLESS is having fears. FEARLESS is having doubts. Lots of them. To me, FEARLESS is living in spite of those things that scare you to death. FEARLESS is falling madly in love again, even though you’ve been hurt before. FEARLESS is walking into your freshmen year of high school at fifteen. FEARLESS is getting back up and fighting for what you want over and over again… even though every time you’ve tried before, you’ve lost. It’s FEARLESS to have faith that someday things will change. FEARLESS is having the courage to say goodbye to someone who only hurts you, even if you can’t breathe without them. I think it’s FEARLESS to fall for your best friend, even though he’s in love with someone else. And when someone apologizes to you enough times for things they’ll never stop doing, I think it’s FEARLESS to stop believing them. It’s FEARLESS to say “you’re NOT sorry”, and walk away. I think loving someone despite what people think is FEARLESS. I think allowing yourself to cry on the bathroom floor is FEARLESS. Letting go is FEARLESS. Then, moving on and being alright…That’sFEARLESS too. But no matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have to believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after. That’s why I write these songs. Because I think love is FEARLESS.

Taylor Swift

There is always the shadow of the cross resting upon the Christian's path. Is that a reason why you should avoid or not undertake the duty? Have you made up your mind that you will follow your Master everywhere else, save when he ascends the path that leads to the cross? Is that your religion? The sooner you change it, the better. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is the religion of the cross, and unless we take up our cross, we can never follow Him.--_W. Hay Aitken._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.--_Byron._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Futurists and common sense concur that a substantial change, worldwide, in life style and moral guidelines will soon become an absolute necessity.

Roger Wolcott Sperry

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Denis Diderot

There are forty men of wit for one of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of ready change.= (?)

Unknown

We live in a moment that’s so quickly taken, it’s like it was never even ours. Time is borrowed; you need to capture everything you can before it’s just a fleeting memory of someone you used to be. You say you’ll never change, you promise nothing will change what you have but those aren’t our choices. The world changes, circumstances change.

Ker Dukey

Nothing mortal is so unstable and subject to change as power which has no foundation. ( Nihil rerum mortalium tam instabile ac fluxum est quam fama potenti? non sua vi nix?. ) P. Cornelius Tacitus c. AD55—117, Annales, XIII, 19.

Tacitus

Nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage, / But music for the time doth change its nature.

_Mer. of Venice_, v. 1.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

Confucius (born Kong Qiu, styled Zhong Ni)

Characters are developed, and never change.

_Disraeli._

Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.

Ally Condie

~Morals.~--Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.--_Macaulay._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Nous avons change tout cela=--We have changed all that.

_Moliere._

Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.

Steve Maraboli

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

George Bernard Shaw

Joy, in a changeable subject, must necessarily change as the subject changeth.

_S. Bern._

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

_Ruskin._

Sperat infestis, metuit secundis / Alteram sortem bene pr?paratum / Pectus=--A heart well prepared in adversity hopes for, and in prosperity fears, a change of fortune.

Horace.

One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.

Cassandra Clare

Love or hate will change the aspect of justice, and an advocate retained with a large fee has an increased confidence in the right of the cause he pleads, while the assurance of his demeanour commends it to the judges, duped in their turn by appearances. How ridiculous is reason, swayed by a breath in every direction!

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Diseases are another source of error. They impair our judgment and our senses, and if the more violent produce a sensible change, I do not doubt that slighter ailments produce each its proportionate impression.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

What we call Christianity embraces several fundamental doctrines, but the most important of them all is the recognition of the Divine in man, or, as we call it, the belief in the Divinity of the Son. The belief in God, let us say in God the Father, or the Creator and Ruler of the world, had been elaborated by the Jews, and most of the civilised and uncivilised nations of the world had arrived at it. But when the Founder of Christianity called God His Father, and not only His Father, but the Father of all mankind, He did no longer speak the language of either Jews or Greeks. To the Jews, to claim Divine sonship for man would have been blasphemy. To the Greeks, Divine sonship would have meant no more than a miraculous, a mythological event. Christ spoke a new language, a language liable, no doubt, to be misunderstood, as all language is; but a language which to those who understood it has imparted a new glory to the face of the whole world. It is well known how this event, the discovery of the Divine in man, which involves a complete change in the spiritual condition of mankind, and marks the great turning-point in the history of the world, has been surrounded by a legendary halo, has been obscured, has been changed into mere mythology, so that its real meaning has often been quite forgotten, and has to be discovered again by honest and fearless seeking. Christ had to speak the language of His time, but He gave a new meaning to it, and yet that language has often retained its old discarded meaning in the minds of His earliest, nay sometimes of His latest disciples also. The Divine sonship of which He speaks was not blasphemy as the Jews thought, nor mythology as so many of His own followers imagined, and still imagine. Father and Son, divine and human, were like the old bottles that could hardly hold the new wine; and yet how often have the old broken bottles been preferred to the new wine that was to give new life to the world.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

Providence may change, but the promise must stand.

Proverb.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

OLD TESTAMENT.     _Jeremiah xiii. 23._

not everyone on this planet is going to like you. It doesn’t matter what you do, what your hairstyle looks like, what type of music you listen to, or how nice you are. Someone somewhere is going to hate you. And thinking you can do anything to change other people’s minds will lead you to insanity.

Perry Noble

It has indeed been allowed to change the custom of not making priests save with such great circumspection, that there were scarcely any who were worthy, yet we are not allowed to complain of the custom which makes so many who are unworthy.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

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