Accounts Quotes - Page 33

• How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Language, Mint, Pursuit

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU – The Man, The Philosopher & The Trailblazer (Illustrated): Biographies, Memoirs, Autobiographical Books & Personal Letters (Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada…)”, p.1353, e-artnow

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• Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why.... The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Ideas

  "History teaches us that man learns nothing from history" by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, § 31, 1807.

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• On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. … I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

  J. B. Priestley

  Mean, Loss, Air

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• I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways findtheir Account in the Speculation of the Day.

  Joseph Addison

  May, Way, Morality

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.32

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• When sins are dear to us we are too prone to slide into them again. The act of repentance itself is often sweetened with the thought that it clears our account for a repetition of the same sin.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Slides, Sin, Repentance

  Thomas Jefferson, Maria Hadfield Cosway, John P. Kaminski (1999). “Jefferson in Love: The Love Letters Between Thomas Jefferson & Maria Cosway”, p.72, Rowman & Littlefield

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• The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Taken, Party, Responsibility

  Letter to Charles F. Gardner, August 9, 1924.

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• Change, not habit, is what gets most of us down; habit is the stabilizer of human society, change accounts for its progress.

  William Feather

  Change, Progress, Habit

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• A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up" verses.

  Lucy Larcom

  Morning, Thinking, Poetry

  Lucy Larcom (1961). “A New England girlhood”

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• In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendour and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details. But in history the matter is far otherwise. Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Science, Night

  "On History". The Independent Review 3, pp. 207-215, users.drew.edu. July 1904.

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• Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.

  Laurence Sterne

  Travel, Owing, Littles

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• We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study ofphilosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Philosophy, Believe, Heart

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• On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children's children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.

  William Howard Taft

  Children, Taken, Thinking

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• And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Party, Blow, Judging

  Thomas Hobbes (2016). “The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition”, p.25, Hackett Publishing

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• The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of any one, who feeling inhimself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm'd with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  David Hume (2012). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.221, Courier Corporation

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• If anyone proposes to believe, i.e., imagines himself to believe, because many good and upright people living here on the hill have believed, i.e., have said that they believedthen he is a fool, and it is essentially indifferent whether he believes on account of his own and perhaps a widely held opinion about what good and upright people believe, or believes a Münchhausen.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Believe, People, Fool

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• Short accounts make long friends.

  Anthony Trollope

  Money, Long

  Anthony Trollope (1864). “Rachel Ray: A Novel”, p.342

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• Internationalism means that we can see into the dark corners of the world, and hold those companies to account when they are devastating forests or employing children as bonded labour. Globalization is the complete opposite, its rules pit country against country and workers against workers in the blinkered pursuit of international competitiveness.

  Anita Roddick

  Country, Children, Mean

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• This trivializing rhetoric runs the subtle but unmistakable message: pray if you like, worship if you must, but whatever you do, do not on any account take your religion seriously.

  Stephen L. Carter

  Christian, Running, Religious

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• If you're not fascinated by Korea yet, you damn well should be. The most innovative country on earth deserves a hilarious and poignant account on the order of Euny Hong's The Birth of Korean Cool. Her phat beats got Gangnam Style and then some.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Country, Order, Korea

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• It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides.

  Charles Dickens

  Art, Real, Fate

  Charles Dickens (2015). “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Volume 2 (of 2) (Illustrations)”, p.178, E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

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• Serious skeptics, true believers, and seekers of every stripe will want to read Mitch Horowitz's vibrant, probing, and richly researched account of the impact of the positive-thinking movement on every aspect of American life today. Filled with a cast of remarkable characters and many lively tales, One Simple Idea is a readable, responsible examination of the limits and possibilities of mind-power as a source of constructive transformation.

  Judith Viorst

  Character, Positive Thinking, Simple

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• Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of the earth’s volume must forever remain invisible and untouchable. Because more than 97 per cent of it is too hot to crystallize, its body is extremely weak. The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial ice, ocean water or deposits of sand and mud. It must bend in the opposite sense if widely extended loads of such material be removed. This accounts for … the origin of chains of high mountains … and the rise of lava to the earth’s surface.

  Reginald Aldworth Daly

  Ocean, Ninety Nine, Ice

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• We don't legislate emergent technologies into existence. We almost never do. They just emerge, dragged forth by Adam Smith's invisible hand. Then we have to see what people are actually going to do with them, and try to legislate to take account of that.

  William Gibson

  Technology, Hands, Invisible Hand

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. August 22, 2007.

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• I think all countries need to aim to cut the CO2 emissions per person, taking account of externalities like imports and exports.

  Martin Rees

  Country, Cutting, Thinking

  "Lord Martin Rees, eminent British scientist". "Sunday Profile" with Monica Attard, www.abc.net.au. March 28, 2010.

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• God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the things we have calculated on without taking Him into account. We get into circumstances which were not chosen by God, and suddenly we find we have been calculating without God; He has not entered in as a living factor. The one thing that keeps us from the possibility of worrying is bringing God in as the greatest factor in all our calculations.

  Oswald Chambers

  Worry, Upset, Way

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “My Utmost for His Highest Classic Edition”, p.383, Discovery House

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