Quotes
Quotes about Wit
The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes. . . . It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their "betters" were derelict.
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning,--an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
There is something more horrible than hoodlums, churls and vipers, and that is knaves with moral justification for their cause.
Everywhere, the ethical predicament of our time imposes itself with an urgency which suggests that even the question "Have we anything to eat?" will be answered not in material but in ethical terms.
What I have absolutely no sympathy with is the legislator, the man who seeks, for his own profit, to exploit the weaknesses of those who are unable to help themselves and then to fasten some moral superscription upon it. This I loathe so much that I cannot conceivably explain how much it is.
Evangelical faith without Christian ethics is a travesty on the gospel.
Principle, particularly moral principal, can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true. And that is as important in business as it is in the classroom.
However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about, In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins would bleed, Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.
There is none, In all this cold and hollow world, no fount Of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within A mother's heart.
That it should come to this, But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two, So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth, Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on, and yet within a month-- Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father's body Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she-- O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourned longer--married with my uncle, My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules.
The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the obligation to become the servant of a man.
And say to mothers what a holy charge Is theirs--with what a kingly power their love Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind.
Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall, He shall not blind his soul with clay.
My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
What gained we, little moth? Thy ashes, Thy one brief parting pang may show: And withering thoughts for soul that dashes, From deep to deep, are but a death more slow.
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
Nobody motivates today's workers. If it doesn't come from within, it doesn't come. Fun helps remove the barriers that allow people to motivate themselves.
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power.
For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.
He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
Alis volat Propriis [She flies with her own wings]
Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains; They crown'd him long ago On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, With a diadem of snow.
