Quotes
Quotes about Power
Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."
Alexander said, "I assure you I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion."
Shall I show you the muscular training of a philosopher? "What muscles are those?"--A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised; careful resolutions; unerring decisions.
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do.
That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.
Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,--there, if one must speak out, the real man.
Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions;... that laws were like cobwebs,--for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off.
Heraclitus says that Pittacus, when he had got Alcæus into his power, released him, saying, "Forgiveness is better than revenge."
How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?
We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.
Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping, and watching for the morrow,--
He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.
Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.
The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic or eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith,--that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind. The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery on the other hand is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship, the power of proselytism. When the "cross" became the "foolishness" of the cross, it took possession of the masses.
Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.
Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
The powers that be are ordained of God.
The power of the poet pulsed blood through his body. The truth of life lay in the vatic messages words sent, meanings beyond what the world called meaning.
It is because literature has no power to imitate the sound of music that it is led to mockery of its sister art
We have all come to feel a powerful and desperate guilt since the revelations of Belson and the blasting of Hiroshima: there are few of us now, Christian or not, who would reject the doctrine of original sin
Useless to hope to hold off the unavoidable happening with that frail barricade of week, day or hour which melts as it is made, for time himself will bring you in his high-powered car, rushing to it, whether you will or not
We need philosophers, not men who've been exalted through their skill at shyster's tricks, who shell out shibboleths, who fox, who fix, committed to the timocractic view that wealth is power, and neither is for you
Daughter can overcome power of evil. Son not.
The power of the unconscious mind is huge - it can do anything
There are certain things that God can't do. He can't not be God, for instance. As a creator he has no power of destruction. He can't even destroy a human soul. He can only make it suffer eternally
