Chiefs Quotes - Page 32

• There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then forever passed her by.

  George Eliot

  Mistake, Forever, Secret

  George Eliot (2016). “Romola: Top Novelist Focus”, p.434, 谷月社

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• Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhaltations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence.

  George Eliot

  Joy, Soul, Desire

  George Eliot (1876). “Daniel Deronda0: Collection of British and American Authors”, p.2

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• Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Mean, Passion, Heart

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (2009). “Emile: Or, On Education”, p.384, The Floating Press

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• Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

  Virginia Woolf

  Marriage, Memories, Writing

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• Perhaps the chief cause which has retarded the progress of poetry in America, is the want of that exclusive cultivation, which so noble a branch of literature would seem to require. Few here think of relying upon the exertion of poetic talent for a livelihood, and of making literature the profession of life. The bar or the pulpit claims the greater part of the scholar's existence, and poetry is made its pastime.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Thinking, America, Progress

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.794, Library of America

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• A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Country, Pain, Ignorance

  "Main Street". Book by Sinclair Lewis, 1920.

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• The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.

  Richard Dawkins

  Faith, Religious, Liberty

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Religion, Facts

  1841 On Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic,'The Hero as Divinity' (published 1897).

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• Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Littles, Given, Teach

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

  Robertson Davies

  School, Sunday, Boys

  "Forgotten Dialogues". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1961.

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• There's no doubt that I really have a feeling for the theater. These past few days it has occurred to me to do a comedy whose chief characters are photographic enlargements. Those people we see in doorways. Newlyweds, sergeants, dead girls, an anonymous crowd full of mustaches and wrinkles. It should be terrible. If I focus it well, it will possess pathos without consolation. In the midst of those people I will place an authentic fairy.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Girl, Character, Past

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• No artist's masterpiece can match a mother's creation of a successful child, one who has been freed to explore and to grow. ... Success is measured not only by who we are, but by what gifts we give. As the old chief said, "The gift is not complete until it is given again." Ah, the mother whose gift to the world is a person !

  Gerry Spence

  Mother, Children, Successful

  Gerry Spence (1999). “Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century”, p.244, Macmillan

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• In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings.

  James G. Frazer

  Kings, Facts, Magician

  "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion". Book by James G. Frazer, 1890.

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• What rare days were those, When my chief duty was to write a song.

  George Arnold

  Song, Writing, Duty

  George Arnold (1866). “Drift: A Sea-shore Idyl : and Other Poems”, p.27

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• (President Nixon,) in the face of a vote to impeach he might try, as "commander-in-chief", to use military forces to keep himself in power.

  Carl T. Rowan

  Military, Trying, President

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• (Carmine Crocco) A farm-labourer and cowherd, had joined the Bourbon army, killed a comrade in a brawl, deserted and lived as an outlaw for ten years. He joined the liberal insurgents in 1860 in the hope of an amnesty for his past offences, and subsequently became the most formidable guerilla chief and leader of men on the Bourbon side.

  Eric Hobsbawm

  Army, Past, Men

  Eric J. Hobsbawm (1985). “Bandits”

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• There was a time when corporations played a minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Men, Play, Corporations

  Woodrow Wilson, Ronald J. Pestritto (2005). “Woodrow Wilson: the essential political writings”

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• Jean Kirkpatrick [is] the chief sadist-in-residence of the Reagan Administration.

  Noam Chomsky

  Administration, Residence

  "The Empire and Ourselves". A Solidarity Pamphlet, chomsky.info. April 09, 1986.

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• Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power. The indications are that such an impairment is brought about not by strengthening the individual and pitting him against the possessors of power, but by distributing and diversifying power and pitting one category or unit of power against the other. Where power is one, the defeated individual, however strong and resourceful, can have no refuge and no recourse.

  Eric Hoffer

  Strong, Power, Purpose

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.

  Eric Hoffer

  Ambition, Responsibility, Daily Tasks

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.

  William James

  Lying, Character, Men

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.83, 谷月社

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• All this, the positive and physical essence of mechanics, which makes its chief and highest interest for a student of nature, is in existing treatises completely buried and concealed beneath a mass of technical considerations.

  Ernst Mach

  Essence, Students, Consideration

  Ernst Mach (2013). “The Science of Mechanics”, p.7, Cambridge University Press

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• Winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don't need to care about science, literature or peace.

  Stephen Colbert

  Winning, Thinking, President

  "A Mock Columnist, Amok" by Maureen Dowd, www.nytimes.com. October 14, 2007.

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• Dexterity is one of the chief weapons of diplomacy; governments rely more upon the supremacy of this instrument, when in the hands of a skillful diplomatist, than in the soundness or justice of their claims.

  James Ellis

  Government, Hands, Justice

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• The fact that creative powers come from an area of the mind that seems to be independent of the conscious will, and often emerge with a good deal of emotional disturbance in their wake, provides the chief analogy between prophecy and the arts... Some people pursue wholeness and integration, others get smashed up, and fragments are rescued from the smash of an intensity that the wholeness and integration people do not reach.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Independent, Emotional

  "The Collected Works of Northrop Frye, Volume 19: 'The Secular Scripture' and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1976-1991". Book by Northrop Frye, November 1, 2005.

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