Quotes4study

Le moindre grain de mil serait bien mieux mon affaire=--The smallest grain of millet would serve my needs better.

_La Fontaine, "The Cock and the Pearl."_

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.

_J. S. Mill._

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.]

Mill, John Stuart.

History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution; if not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries.

_J. S. Mill._

The reality is this, though: a healthy person coupled with an unhealthy person will still result in an unhealthy relationship.

Donald Miller

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Vladimir Lenin

The sole missing link is the recognition that the acquisition of capital ownership by the millions is an indispensable goal. That is the turning point — our recognition of the proper goal.

Kelso, Louis O.

Seek the clasp of Christ's hand before every bit of work, every hard task, every battle, every good deed. Bend your head in the dewy freshness of every morning, ere you go forth to meet the day's duties and perils, and wait for the benediction of Christ, as He lays His hands upon you. They are hands of blessing. Their touch will inspire you for courage and strength and all beautiful and noble living.--_J. R. Miller._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.

_J. S. Mill._

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in tne world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulæ will not get a definite result out of loose data.

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

The mill will never grind with the water that is past.

Proverb.

>Mille hominum species et rerum discolor usus; / Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno=--There are a thousand kinds of men, and different hues they give to things; each one follows his own inclination, nor do they all agree in their wishes.

_Pers._

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would

all be millionaires.

Many indifferent things which men originally did from a motive of some sort, they continue to do from habit.

_J. S. Mill._

My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.

Arthur Miller

I didn’t stop talking immediately. I talked right up until the day I remembered everything that happened, over a year later. That was the day I went silent. It wasn’t a ploy or a tactic. It wasn’t psychosomatic. It was a choice. And I made it.

Katja Millay

The clouds treat the sea as if it were a mill-pond or a spring-run, too insignificant to make any exceptions to.

_John Burroughs._

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.

John Green

Five minutes of to-day are worth as much to me as five minutes in the next millennium.

_Emerson._

You can see farther into a millstone than he.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES. 1547-1616.     _Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. xxviii._

As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don't have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn't matter as much as how you do what you do.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Let but thy wicked men from out thee go, And all the fools that crowd thee so, Even thou, who dost thy millions boast, A village less than Islington wilt grow, A solitude almost.

ABRAHAM COWLEY. 1618-1667.     _Of Solitude, vii._

Words are things, and a small drop of ink, / Falling like dew upon a thought, produces / That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

_Byron._

A cultural inheritance may be acquired between dusk and dawn, and many have been so acquired. But the new "culture" was an inheritance of darkness, wherein "simpleton" meant the same thing as "citizen" meant the same thing as "slave." The monks waited. It mattered not at all to them that the knowledge they saved was useless, that much of it was not really knowledge now empty of content, its subject matter long since gone. Still, such knowledge had a symbolic structure that was peculiar to itself, and at least the symbol-interplay could be observed. To observe the way a knowledge-system is knit together is to learn at least a minimum knowledge-of-knowledge, until someday someday, or some century an Integrator would come, and things would be fitted together again. So time mattered not at all. The Memorabilia was there, and it was given to them by duty to preserve, and preserve it they would if the darkness in the world lasted ten more centuries, or even ten thousand years...

Walter M. Miller, Jr

O place and greatness, millions of false eyes / Are stuck upon thee! Volumes of report / Run with these false and most contrarious quests / Upon thy doings! thousand scapes of wit / Make thee the father of their idle dreams, / And rack thee in their fancies.

_Meas. for Meas._, iv. 1.

The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns, and grinds, and bruises the wheat into flour; if you put no wheat in, it still grinds on; but then it is itself it grinds and slowly wears away.

_Luther._

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

_J. S. Mill._

I wandered by the brookside, I wandered by the mill; I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES (LORD HOUGHTON). 1809-1885.     _The Brookside._

If a man could make himself humble to order, it might simplify matters, but we do not find that this happens. Hence we must all go through the mill. Hence death, death to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the quickest road to life. Pax Vobiscum, p. 35.

Henry Drummond     Beautiful Thoughts

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realised until personal experience has brought it home.

_J. S. Mill._

By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." … By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseperable from the desire for power.

George Orwell

Gottes Muhle geht langsam, aber sie mahlt fein=--God's mill goes slow, but it grinds fine.

_Ger. Pr._

Every honest miller has a golden thumb.

Proverb.

~Ink.~--A drop of ink may make a million think.--_Byron._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toun, Upstairs and dounstairs, in his nicht-goun, Tirlin' at the window, cryin' at the lock, "Are the weans in their bed? for it 's nou ten o'clock."

WILLIAM MILLER (1810-1872): _Willie Winkie._

All this plan does is make everybody a capitalist. I know that the New York Stock Exchange says there are 25 million shareholders in the United States, but let me tell you something: about 15 million of those people could save their dividends for 10 years and maybe buy a new suit. That’s not what I call capitalism.

Kelso, Louis O.

The worth of a state, in the long-run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.

_J. S. Mill._

There's too much of an attempt, it seems to me, to think in terms of controlling man, rather than freeing him. Of defining him rather than letting him go. It's part of the whole ideology of this age, which is power-mad.

Arthur Miller

You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand \x85 someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that.

Cyrano de Bergerac

If you analyse anything, you destroy it.

Arthur Miller

Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.

Arthur Miller

History and experience prove that the most passionate characters are the most fanatically rigid in their feelings of duty, when their passion has been trained to act in that direction.

_J. S. Mill._

Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _King Henry VI. Part II. Act iv. Sc. 7._

He is my friend that grinds at my mill.

Proverb.

Across the walnuts and the wine.

ALFRED TENNYSON. 1809- ----.     _The Miller's Daughter._

A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest — who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern — who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine — have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches. [ Principles of Political Economy , Book V, Chapter XI, § 6.]

Mill, John Stuart.

And brought of mighty ale a large quart.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 1328-1400.     _Canterbury Tales. The Milleres Tale. Line 3497._

The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.

ROBERT BURTON. 1576-1640.     _Anatomy of Melancholy. Part iii. Sect. 3, Memb. 4, Subsect. 1._

Every book is written with a constant secret reference to the few intelligent persons whom the writer believes to exist in the million.

_Emerson._

This is a key to understanding our history and psychology. Genus Homo’s position in the food chain was, until quite recently, solidly in the middle. For millions of years, humans hunted smaller creatures and gathered what they could, all the while being hunted by larger predators. It was only 400,000 years ago that several species of man began to hunt large game on a regular basis, and only in the last 100,000 years – with the rise of Homo sapiens – that man jumped to the top of the food chain. That spectacular leap from the middle to the top had enormous consequences. Other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that position very gradually, over millions of years. This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wreaking too much havoc. As lions became deadlier, so gazelles evolved to run faster, hyenas to cooperate better, and rhinoceroses to be more bad-tempered. In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.

Yuval Noah Harari

Sarah. I smiled. I couldn’t help but appreciate the absolute perfection of the name; bland, common, and wholly unoriginal. Best of all, it means princess.

Katja Millay

Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.

GEORGE HERBERT. 1593-1632.     _Sin._

Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal frown, read in the everlasting book, wide open to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pictures are not in black and sombre hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music--save when ye drown it--is not in sighs and groans, but songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the million voices in the summer air, and find one dismal as your own.

_Dickens._

Do we lose anything if we find that what we hold to be the most valuable truth is shared in and supported by millions of human beings? Ancient philosophers were most anxious to support their own belief in God by the unanimous testimony of mankind. They made the greatest efforts to prove that there was no race so degraded and barbarous as to be without a belief in something divine. Some modern theologians seem to grudge to all religions but their own the credit of having a pure and true, nay any concept of God at all, quite forgetful of the fact that a truth does not cease to be a truth because it is accepted universally. I know no heresy more dangerous to true religion than this denial that a true concept of God is within the reach of every human being, is, in fact, the common inheritance of mankind, however fearfully it may have been misused and profaned by Christian and un-Christian nations.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily ; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only a security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuate wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. [“Europe After the Treaty,” The Economic Consequences of the Peace , 1919.]

Keynes, John Maynard.

By no effort of the understanding, by no stretch of imagination, can I explain to myself how language could have grown out of anything which animals possess, even if we granted them millions of years for that purpose. If anything has a right to the name of specific difference, it is language, as we find it in man, and in man only. Even if we removed the name of specific difference from our philosophic dictionaries, I should still hold that nothing deserves the name of man except what is able to speak.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

We are in agreement with the desire of workers to increase their income…. However, we insist that most of the increased income should be derived from ownership of capital.… If property can confer dignity, material comfort, and security upon the few, it can do the same for the many.… We suggest that the perennial emphasis of the Church on the right of individuals to own property deserves reaffirmation at this time and that we should consider bold new steps to enable the vast majority of God’s people to become owners of property which will constitute for them a source of a second income. We maintain that this will help reduce poverty and restore human rights and dignity to millions. [Statement by the Executive Committee of the National Catholic Rural Conference, Des Moines, Iowa, June 19, 1968.]

National Catholic Rural Conference.

_Extravagances of the Apocalyptics, Preadamites, Millenarians, etc._--Whoever would found extravagant opinions on the Scripture will for instance found them on the fact that:

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

I'm not smart. I try to observe. Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why.

Bernard Baruch

What the present generation ought to learn, the young as well as the old, is spirit and perseverance to discover the beautiful, pleasure and joy in making it known, and resigning ourselves with grateful hearts to its enjoyment; in a word--love, in the old, true, eternal meaning of the word. Only sweep away the dust of self-conceit, the cobwebs of selfishness, the mud of envy, and the old type of humanity will soon reappear, as it was when it could still 'embrace millions.' The love of mankind, the true fountain of all humanity, is still there; it can never be quite choked up. He who can descend into this fountain of youth, who can again recover himself, who can again be that which he was by nature, loves the beautiful wherever he finds it; he understands enjoyment and enthusiasm, in the few quiet hours which he can win for himself in the noisy, deafening hurry of the times in which we live.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

The New York Stock Exchange says there are 25 million shareholders in the United States. But, let me tell you something: about 15 million of them could save their dividends for 10 years and maybe buy a new suit. That’s not what I call being a “capitalist.”

Kelso, Louis O

I hate bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.

_Goethe._

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD: The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

Arthur Miller

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

LORD BYRON 1788-1824.     _Don Juan. Canto iii. Stanza 88._

Perhaps that’s another reason true intimacy is so frightening. It’s the one thing we all want, and must give up control to get.

Donald Miller

On respecte un moulin, on vole une province!=--They (obliged by law) spare a mill, but steal a province!

Unknown

It was the mission of the Confederacy, ordinary whites were told, to carry out God’s design for an inferior and dependent race. Slaveholders claimed that owning slaves always entailed a duty and a burden — a duty and burden that defined the moral superiority of the South. And this duty and burden was respected by millions of nonslaveholding whites, who were prepared to defend it with their lives. That, perhaps, was the ultimate meaning of a “slave society.

David Brion Davis

It is not always guidance that we most need. Many of our dangers come upon us from behind. They are stealthy, insidious, assaulting us when we are unaware of their nearness. The tempter is cunning and shrewd. He does not meet us full front. It is a comfort to know that Christ comes behind us when it is there we need the protection.--_J. R. Miller._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk.

Stephen Hawking (born 8 January 1942

The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. … Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any thing in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? … The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

Herbert Spencer

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.

_Richard Rumbold._

Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt I knew thee, in thy glorious youth, And loved thy vast face, white as truth; I stood where thunderbolts were wont To smite thy Titan-fashioned front, And heard dark mountains rock and roll; I saw the lightning's gleaming rod Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll The awful autograph of God!

Joaquin Miller

Le plus ane des trois n'est pas celui qu'on pense=--The greatest ass of the three is not the one who seems so. _La Fontaine, "The Miller, his Son, and his Ass."_

Unknown

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.

FRIEDRICH VON LOGAU. 1604-1655.     _Retribution._ (_Sinngedichte._)

Setz' dir Perrucken auf von Millionen Locken, / Setz' deinen Fuss auf ellenhohe Socken, / Du bleibst doch immer, was du bist=--Clap on thee wigs with curls without number, set thy foot in ell-high socks, thou remainest notwithstanding ever what thou art.

_Goethe._

One murder made a villain, Millions a hero. Princes were privileged To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.

BEILBY PORTEUS. 1731-1808.     _Death. Line 154._

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.

Alec Bourne

Superior powers of mind and profound study are of no use if they do not sometimes lead a person to different conclusions from those which are formed by ordinary powers of mind without study.

_J. S. Mill._

I've woven them a garment that's prepared out of poor words, those that I overheard, and will hold fast to every word and glance all of my days, even in new mischance, and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout, then let them pray for me, as I do pray for them, this eve of my remembrance day.

Anna Akhmatova

[I]n the view of the Founding Fathers of this country, a widespread distribution of property ownership was essential to the preservation of individual liberty and a republican form of government. In their day, of course, they assumed that the seemingly limitless land of the new nation afforded the opportunity for every man to own a freehold farm. Some, however, looked ahead to the important role of property ownership in preserving the American experiment in a distant day and age, when America would lose its predominately agricultural character. As James Madison said in 1787: In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without land, but without any sort of property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands, or, which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side. Today, of course, America has come a long way from its origins as a nation of Jeffersonian yeomen. As we became urbanized and industrialized, we tended to lose sight of the importance of widespread property ownership. No longer can we return, as a people, to an 18th century way of life. Yet we should remember that private property is an indispensable part of the foundation of a free country. As time and technology advance, we need to reshape the Founding Fathers’ idea of the importance of widespread property ownership to fit new circumstances. This is particularly true in a Nation in which millions of families now have no ownership stake in anything greater than a television set or secondhand automobile. [ Congressional Record , June 8, 1971, p. S8483.]

Buckley, Senator James.

The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship    = 1 Millihelen

Unknown

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mill (born 20 May 1806

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