Affection Quotes - Page 33

• Thus love is the most easy and agreeable, and gratitude the most humiliating, affection of the mind. We never reflect on the man we love without exulting in our choice, while he who has bound us to him by benefits alone rises to our ideas as a person to whom we have in some measure forfeited our freedom.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Gratitude, Love Is, Men

  Oliver Goldsmith (1852). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith: With an Account of His Life and Writings”, p.330

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• Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Amusement, Lasts, Firsts

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• Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame and the particular affection of their citizens. One of such streets is the Cannebiere, and the jest: "If Paris had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Marseilles" is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too, I have been under the spell. For me it has been a street leading into the unknown.

  Joseph Conrad

  Book, Pride, Paris

  Joseph Conrad (2016). “The Arrow of Gold”, p.7, Joseph Conrad

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• We care not how many see us in choler, when we rave and bluster, and make as much noise and bustle as we can; but if the kindest and most generous affection comes across us, we suppress every sign of it, and hide ourselves in nooks and covert.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Care, Noise, Rave

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].”, p.574

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• Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

  Blaise Pascal

  Children, Parent, Firsts

  Blaise Pascal (1828). “Thoughts on religion, and other subjects”, p.112

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• [My father] was generous with his affection, given to great, awkward, engulfing hugs, and I can remember so clearly the smell of his hugs, all starched shirt, tobacco, Old Spice, and Cutty Sark. Sometimes I think I've never been properly hugged since.

  Linda Ellerbee

  Friendship, Father, Thinking

  Linda Ellerbee (1993). “Move On”

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• There is a gentle absurdity about Washington, D.C., and it is easy to develop affection for the place, if you can forget that the consequences of what goes on there are real, whereas what goes on there may not be.

  Linda Ellerbee

  Real, Goes On, May

  Linda Ellerbee (1987). “"And so it goes": adventures in television”, Berkley Pub Group

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• Of all vices take heed of drunkenness; other vices are but fruits of disordered affections--this disorders, nay, banishes reason; other vices but impair the soul--this demolishes her two chief faculties, the understanding and the will; other vices make their own way--this makes way for all vices; he that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.

  Francis Quarles

  Two, Understanding, Soul

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• Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety.

  Edmund Burke

  Anxiety, Curiosity, Appearance

  Edmund Burke (1824). “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, p.24

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• Such as thy words are, such will thy affections be esteemed; and such will thy deeds be as thy affections and such thy life as thy deeds.

  Socrates

  Deeds

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• His kingdom come!" For this we pray in vain,
  Unless He does in our affections reign.
  How fond it were to wish for such a King,
  And no obedience to his sceptre bring,
  Whose yoke is easy, and His burthen light;
  His service freedom, and His judgments right.

  Edmund Waller

  Kings, Light, Wish

  Edmund Waller (1854). “Poetical Works”, p.252

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• So also it is good not always to make a friend of the person who is expert in twining himself around us; but, after testing them, to attach ourselves to those who are worthy of our affection and likely to be serviceable to us.

  Plutarch

  Friends, Experts, Worthy

  Plutarch (1898). “Plutarch's Morals: Ethical Essays”

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• Without discretion, people may be overlaid with unreasonable affection, and choked with too much nourishment.

  Jeremy Collier

  People, May, Too Much

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• Self-affection is the real dwelling to which we must always return with a view to a faithfulness to ourselves and an ability to welcome the other as different.

  Luce Irigaray

  Real, Self, Views

  Luce Irigaray (2015). “Building a New World”, p.75, Springer

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• Literature is a place for generosity and affection and hunger for equals - not a prizefight ring. We are increased, confirmed in our medium, roused to do our best, by every good writer, every fine achievement. Would we want one good writer or fine book less? The sense of writers being pitted against each other is bred primarily by the workings of the commercial marketplace, and by critics lauding one writer at the expense of another while ignoring the existence of nearly all.

  Tillie Olsen

  Book, Generosity, Achievement

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.174, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• I am persuaded that there is no affection of the human heart more exquisitely pure, than that which is felt by a grateful son towards a mother.

  Hannah More

  Mother, Grateful, Heart

  Hannah More (1840). “The Miscellaneous Works of Hannah More”, p.390

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• We are too ready to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if the thoughts of other men's heads were really the feelings of our own hearts. But piety has not its seat in the memory, but in the affections, for which however the memory is an excellent purveyor, though a bad substitute.

  Hannah More

  Religious, Memories, Heart

  Hannah More (1814). “The Works of Hannah More: Including Several Pieces Never Before Published ...”, p.98

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• Unhappy love freezes all our affections: our own souls grow inexplicable to us. More than we gained while we were happy we lose by the reverse.

  Madame de Stael

  Heartbreak, Soul, Unhappy

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• A woman's best qualities do not reside in her intellect, but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge.

  Samuel Smiles

  Women, Giving, Quality

  Samuel Smiles (1871). “Character”, p.310

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• Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time. The very reverse may be said of love. In a great degree, love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom; even when inspired by different objects they weaken or destroy each other, and for the same object can only be felt in succession. The vain fears and fond jealousies, the winds which fan the flame of love, when judiciously or artfully tempered, are both incompatible with the tender confidence and sincere respect of friendship.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Friendship, Flames, Wind

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2012). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.71, Courier Corporation

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• Intellectual life requires for its expansion and manifestation the influences and assimilation of the interests and affections of others.

  Jane Addams

  Intellectual, Expansion, Influence

  Jane Addams, Jean Bethke Elshtain (2002). “The Jane Addams Reader”, p.19, Basic Books

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• A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Character, Self, Wish

  Elizabeth Hardwick (2011). “Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature”, p.195, New York Review of Books

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• Nature has concatenated our fortunes and affections together with indissoluble bands of mutual sympathy.

  Isaac Barrow

  Sympathy, Together, Band

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• Oh, I never meant, in my old age, to become subject to the thrall of a love like this; it is almost dreadful, so absorbing, so stirring down to the deeps. For the tiny creature is so old and wise and sweet, and so fascinating in his sturdy common sense and clear intelligence; and his affection for me is a wonderful, exquisite thing, the sweetest flower that has bloomed for me in all my life through.

  Celia Thaxter

  Wise, Sweet, Flower

  Celia Thaxter (1896). “Letters of Celia Thaxter”

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• It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Music, Song, Passion

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.22

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