Quotes4study

The brilliant chief, irregularly great, Frank, haughty, rash,--the Rupert of debate!

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 1805-1873.     _The New Timon._ (_1846._) _Part i._

And he that gives us in these days New Lords may give us new laws.

GEORGE WITHER. 1588-1667.     _Contented Man's Morrice._

Where the statue stood Of Newton, with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 1770-1850.     _The Prelude. Book iii._

Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.

Francis (Pope).

The highest exercise of invention has nothing to do with fiction; but is an invention of new truth, what we can call a revelation.

_Carlyle._

Ill news comes apace.

Proverb.

If we feel that this life can only be a link in a chain without beginning and without end, in a circle which has its beginning and its end everywhere and nowhere, we learn to bear it, and to enjoy it too, in a new sense. What we achieve here assumes a new meaning--it will not altogether perish, whether for good or for evil. What is done in time is done for ever--what is done by one affects us all. Thus our love too is not lost--what is loved in time is loved for ever. The form changes, but that which changes, which undergoes change, remains itself unchanged. We seem to love the fleeting forms of life, and yet how can we truly love what is so faithless? No, we truly love what is, and was, and will be, hidden under the fleeting forms of life, but in itself more than those fleeting forms however fair. We love the fair appearance too, how could it be otherwise? but we should love it only as belonging to what we love--not as being what we love. So it is, or rather so it ought to be. Yet while we are what we are, we love the flower, not the sightless grain of seed, and when that flower fades and passes away, we mourn for it, and our only comfort is that we too fade and pass away. Then we follow there, wherever they go. Some flowers fade sooner, some later, but none is quite forgotten.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.

Douglas Adams

Who so shall telle a tale after a man, He moste reherse, as neighe as ever he can, Everich word, if it be in his charge, All speke he never so rudely and so large; Or elles he moste tellen his tale untrewe, Or feinen thinges, or finden wordes newe.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 1328-1400.     _Canterbury Tales. Prologue. Line 733._

Of the land which the Romans gained by conquest from their neighbours, part they sold publicly, and turned the remainder into common; this common land they assigned to such of the citizens as were poor and indigent, for which they were to pay only a small acknowledgment into the public treasury. But when the wealthy men began to offer larger rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law that no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundred acres of ground. This act for some time checked the avarice of the richer, and was of great assistance to the poorer people, who retained under it their respective proportions of ground, as they had been formerly rented by them. Afterwards the rich men of the neighbourhood contrived to get these lands again into their possession, under other people’s names, and at last would not stick to claim most of them publicly in their own. The poor, who were thus deprived of their farms, were no longer either ready, as they had formerly been, to serve in war or careful in the education of their children; insomuch that in a short time there were comparatively few freemen remaining in all Italy, which swarmed with workhouses full of foreign-born slaves. These the rich men employed in cultivating their ground of which they dispossessed the citizens. [“Tiberius Gracchus,” 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. 997).]

Plutarch.

Fate with jealous eye does see Two perfect loves, nor lets them close: Their union would her ruin be, And her tyrranic power depose. And therefore her decrees of steel Us as the distant Poles have placed (Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel) Not by themselves to be embraced, Unless the giddy heaven fall, And earth some new convulsion tear; And, us to join, the world should all Be cramped into a planisphere. As lines (so loves) oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet: But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet. Therefore the love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the mind, And opposition of the stars.

Andrew Marvell

For many are called, but few are chosen.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _Matthew xxii. 14._

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1709-1784.     _Life of Johnson_ (Boswell). _Vol. ii. Chap. ii. 1755._

The IBM purchase of ROLM gives new meaning to the term "twisted pair".

Howard Anderson, "Yankee Group"

Wars and rumours of wars.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _Matthew xxiv. 6._

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

ISAAC NEWTON. 1642-1727.     _Brewster's Memoirs of Newton. Vol. ii. Chap. xxvii._

It is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent that the generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they be new.

_Goethe._

There is an atheism which is unto death, there is another atheism which is the life-blood of all true faith. It is the power of giving up what, in our best, our most honest, moments, we know to be no longer true; it is the readiness to replace the less perfect, however dear, however sacred it may have been to us, by the more perfect, however much it may be detested, as yet, by the world. It is the true self-surrender, the true self-sacrifice, the truest trust in truth, the truest faith. Without that atheism religion would long ago have become a petrified hypocrisy; without that atheism no new religion, no reform, no reformation, no resuscitation would ever have been possible; without that atheism no new life is possible for any one of us.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

And if his name be George, I 'll call him Peter; For new-made honour doth forget men's names.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _King John. Act i. Sc. 1._

Owe no man anything, but to love one another.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _Romans xiii. 8._

But if I regard it closely, a curious reflection arises. I suppose that, fifteen hundred years ago, the child of any well-to-do Roman citizen was taught just these same things; reading and writing in his own, and, perhaps, the Greek tongue; the elements of mathematics; and the religion, morality, history, and geography current in his time. Furthermore, I do not think I err in affirming that, if such a Christian Roman boy, who had finished his education, could be transplanted into one of our public schools, and pass through its course of instruction, he would not meet with a single unfamiliar line of thought; amidst all the new facts he would have to learn, not one would suggest a different mode of regarding the universe from that current in his own time.

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

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Niccolò Machiavelli (born 3 May 1469

Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit proceeding from the deep realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved. [Address, New York City, October 31, 1932.]

Hoover, Herbert Clark

Novus homo=--A new man; a man risen from obscurity.

Unknown

What people call 'mere words' are in truth the monuments of the fiercest intellectual battles; triumphant arches of the grandest victories won by the intellect of man. When man had formed names for body and soul, for father and mother, and not till then, did the first art of human history begin. Not till there were names for right and wrong, for God and man, could there be anything worthy of the name of human society. Every new word was a discovery, and these early discoveries, if but properly understood, are more important to us than the greatest conquests of the kings of Egypt and Babylon. Not one of our greatest explorers has unearthed more splendid palaces, than the etymologist. Every word is the palace of a human thought, and in scientific etymology we possess the charm with which to call these ancient thoughts back to life.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _Matthew xiii. 57._

A workman that needeth not to be ashamed.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _2 Timothy ii. 15._

Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities--whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of Science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party?

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

Ownership of productive property — long a basic principle of Catholic social doctrine — is more important today than ever before. Productive property (capital) and productive human effort (labor) are the sources of all goods and services. New technology is greatly increasing the contribution of capital to production and causing a decrease in the relative contribution of labor. Many, many tasks which were once done by human hands and minds are now done rapidly and unerringly by machines. Many economists predict that the day will soon come when labor will account for a tiny fraction of production and capital will account for almost all of it. The implications of these trends are inescapable. Unless ownership of productive property becomes more widespread, a growing number of our people will be unable to support themselves or to buy the products of our industry and agriculture. This will result in much hardship among individuals and a check upon the growth of our economy. [Editorial, Catholic Rural Life , vol. XVI, October, 1967.]

O’Rourke, Edward W. (former Bishop of Peoria and Executive Director, National Catholic Rural Life Conference).

If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be the private ownership of the means of production as a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. All civilizations have up to now been based on private property. Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art, and literature. There is no experience to show that any other social system could provide mankind with any of the achievements of civilization. [ Socialism , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1951, p. 583.]

Mises, Ludwig von.

The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands. "I already know the important things!" we say. Then Changer comes and throws our old ideas away.

Frank Herbert ~ in ~ Chapterhouse : Dune

A thrill passes through all men at the reception of a new truth, or at the performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature.... By the necessity of our constitution, a certain enthusiasm attends the individual's consciousness of that Divine presence.

_Emerson._

Is. xlii. 9. "Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them."

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See, what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,-- A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4._

Is. xlii. "I am the Lord: and my glory will I not give to another. I have foretold the former things which have come to pass, and declare those which are to come. Sing a new song to God in all the earth."

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Christ's invitation to the weary and heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again upon a new principle--upon His own principle. "Watch My way of doing things," He says. "Follow Me. Take life as I take it. Be meek and lowly, and you will find Rest." Pax Vobiscum, p. 32.

Henry Drummond     Beautiful Thoughts

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind; how the observation of last year seems childish, superficial; how this year \x97 even this week \x97 even with this new phrase \x97 it seems to us that we have grown to a new maturity. It may be a fallacious persuasion, but at least it is stimulating, and so long as it persists, one does not stagnate.

Vita Sackville-West

Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand.

Tahereh Mafi

Every man's work shall be made manifest.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _1 Corinthians iii. 13._

There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1819-1891.     _Among my Books. First Series. New England Two Centuries ago._

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 1819-1891.     _Among my Books. First Series. New England Two Centuries ago._

And the day star arise in your hearts.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _2 Peter i. 19._

Il n'y a de nouveau que ce qui a vieilli=--There is nothing new but what has become antiquated.

_Fr. Pr._

Your Honor,” Blumberg rang out, “every dog must have his day!” And he got perhaps the first standing ovation ever given in New York City night court.

Andrew Vachss

Life sues the young like a new acquaintance.... To us, who are declined in years, life appears like an old friend.

_Goldsmith._

Client-therapist disagreement about the goals and tasks of therapy may impair the therapeutic alliance.† This issue is not restricted to group therapy. Client-therapist discrepancies on therapeutic factors also occur in individual psychotherapy. A large study of psychoanalytically oriented therapy found that clients attributed their successful therapy to relationship factors, whereas their therapists gave precedence to technical skills and techniques.84 In general, analytic therapists value the coming to consciousness of unconscious factors and the subsequent linkage between childhood experiences and present symptoms far more than do their clients, who deny the importance or even the existence of these elements in therapy; instead they emphasize the personal elements of the relationship and the encounter with a new, accepting type of authority figure.

Irvin D. Yalom

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.

Mark Twain

There is no truth in him.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _John viii. 44._

Ring out the old, ring in the new, / Ring, happy bells, across the snow!

_Tennyson._

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; / God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.

_Pope._

Our own self-interest surely would seem to suggest as severe a trial of our own religion as of other religions, nay, even a more severe trial. Our religion has sometimes been compared to a good ship that is to carry us through the waves and tempests of this life to a safe haven. Would it not be wise, therefore, to have it tested, and submitted to the severest trials, before we entrust ourselves and those dear to us to such a vessel. And remember, all men, except those who take part in the foundation of a new religion, or have been converted from an old to a new faith, have to accept their religious belief on trust, long before they are able to judge for themselves. And while in all other matters an independent judgment in riper years is encouraged, every kind of influence is used to discourage a free examination of religious dogmas, once engrafted on our intellect in its tenderest stage. We condemn an examination of our own religion, even though it arises from an honest desire to see with our own eyes the truth which we mean to hold fast; and yet we do not hesitate to send missionaries into all the world, asking the faithful to re-examine their own time-honoured religions. We attack their most sacred convictions, we wound their tenderest feelings, we undermine the belief in which they have been brought up, and we break up the peace and happiness of their homes. Yet if some learned Jew, or subtle Brahman, or outspoken Zulu asks us to re-examine the date and authorship of the Old or New Testament, or challenges us to produce the evidence on which we also are quite ready to accept certain miracles, we are offended, forgetting that with regard to these questions we can claim no privilege, no immunity.

Friedrich Max Müller     Thoughts on Life and Religion

When the heart is still agitated by the remains of a passion, we are more ready to receive a new one than when we are entirely cured.

La Rochefoucauld.

_The reason of effects._--Gradation. The people honours persons of high birth. The half-educated despise them, saying that birth is not a personal, but a chance advantage. The educated honour them, not from the motives of the people, but from another motive. Devout persons of more zeal than knowledge despise them, in spite of that consideration which makes them honoured by the educated, because they judge by a new light arising from their piety. But true Christians honour them by a still higher light. So there is a succession of opinions for and against, according to the measure of our light.

Blaise Pascal     The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds.... This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. Their writing is blood-warm.

_Emerson._

The very hairs of your head are all numbered.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _Matthew x. 30._

What is new finds better acceptance than what is good or great.

_Denham._

In an ideal University,.... the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by go much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality. Do what you can to do what you ought, and leave hoping and fearing alone.

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

True theories…are the expression of actual facts and are characterized by being able to predict new facts, a natural consequence of these already known. In a word, the characteristic of a true theory is its fruitfulness. [ The Life of Pasteur .]

Vallery-Radot, Rene.

In the natural world we absorb heat, breathe air, draw on Environment all but automatically for meat and drink, for the nourishment of the senses, for mental stimulus, for all that, penetrating us from without, can prolong, enrich, and elevate life. But in the spiritual world we have all this to learn. We are new creatures, and even the bare living has to be acquired. Natural Law, p. 267.

Henry Drummond     Beautiful Thoughts

We were so poor that we thought new clothes meant someone had died.

Unknown

But we have the advantage over our shovel-headed predecessor--or possibly ancestor--and can perceive that a certain vein of thrift runs through this apparent prodigality. Nature is never in a hurry, and seems to have had always before her eyes the adage, "Keep a thing long enough, and you will find a use for it." She has kept her beds of coal many millions of years without being able to find much use for them; she has sent them down beneath the sea, and the sea-beasts could make nothing of them; she has raised them up into dry land, and laid the black veins bare, and still, for ages and ages, there was no living thing on the face of the earth that could see any sort of value in them; and it was only the other day, so to speak, that she turned a new creature out of her workshop, who by degrees acquired sufficient wits to make a fire, and then to discover that the black rock would burn.

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

Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem / Testa diu=--The jar will long retain the odour of the liquor with which, when new, it was once saturated.

Horace.

There may be only one avenue between the new life and the old, it may be but a small and SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGE, but this is sufficient to keep the old life in. So long as that remains the victim is not "dead unto sin," and therefore he cannot "live unto God." Natural Law, p. 187.

Henry Drummond     Beautiful Thoughts

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

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Boris Yeltsin (recent death

How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.

ROBERT BROWNING. 1812-1890.     _After._

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.

The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty reasoning on policy, and vain conjectures on the public management.

_La Bruyere._

Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _Luke xiv. 28._

If it was a new thing, it may be I should not be displeased with the suppression of the first libel that should abuse me; but, since there are enough of them to make a small library, I am secretly pleased to see the number increased, and take delight in raising a heap of stones that envy has cast at me without doing me any harm.--_Balzac._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Go, and do thou likewise.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _Luke x. 37._

No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.

Amelia Earhart

Morte carent anim?, semperque priore relicta / Sede novis domibus vivunt habitantque recept?=--Souls are immortal; and admitted, after quitting their first abode, into new homes, they live and dwell in them for ever.

_Ovid._

Every discovery opens a new field for investigation of facts, shows us the imperfection of our theories. It has justly been said, that the greater the circle of light, the greater the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded.

Humphry Davy

A thorn in the flesh.

NEW TESTAMENT.     _2 Corinthians xii. 7._

You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

Oscar Wilde

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