Contending Quotes - Page 2

• Certainly there is no contending against the Will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Religious, Cases, Difficulty

  Abraham Lincoln, Mario Matthew Cuomo, G. S. Boritt (2004). “Lincoln on Democracy”, p.131, Fordham Univ Press

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• Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

  Brian Tracy

  Strength, Stars, Inspiration

  Twitter post from Mar 18, 2015

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• Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site of variously contending discourses.

  Seamus Heaney

  Realizing, Consciousness, Site

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture”, p.11, Macmillan

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• Whether it's watching a $4,000 laptop fall off the conveyor belt at airport security, contending with a software conflict that corrupted your file management system, or begging your family to stop opening those virus-carrying 'greeting cards' attached to emails, all computer owners are highly leveraged and highly vulnerable technology investors.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Fall, Technology, Airports

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• Kent. Where's the king? Gent. Contending with the fretful elements; Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main, That things might change or cease; tears his white hair, Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage, Catch in their fury and make nothing of; Strives in his little world of man to outscorn The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain. This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch, The lion and the belly-pinched wolf Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs, And bids what will take all.

  William Shakespeare

  Running, Kings, Rain

  William Shakespeare (1813). “The Plays of William Shakespeare”, p.836

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• These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

  Abigail Adams

  Hero, Heart, Character

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• The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.

  Abigail Adams

  Challenges, Mind, Habit

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• If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side’s battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and from the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Fighting, Self

  C. S. LEWIS (1961). “The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes a Toast”

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• We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

  John Adams

  Religious, Revenge, Passion

  John Adams (1854). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.229

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• Although Verwoerd thought Africans were lower than animals, his death did not yield us any pleasure. Political assassination is not something I or the ANC ever supported. It is a primitive way of contending with an opponent

  Nelson Mandela

  Animal, Yield, Political

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• Time's glory is to command contending kings,
  To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Kings, Truth

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• Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse.
  To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing,
  As in a foundering ship.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Life, Self, Ships

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1861). “The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, including his translations and notes”, p.352

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• From hence, let fierce contending nations know, what dire effects from civil discord flow.

  Joseph Addison

  War, Flow, Fierce

  'Cato' (1713) act 5, sc. 1, closing lines

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• The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth. I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is. I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Thinking, Law

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• Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.

  Walter Pater

  Law, Mind, Association

  Walter Pater (2011). “The Works of Walter Pater”, p.12, Cambridge University Press

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• When God gives a promise, He always tries our faith. Just as the roots of trees take firmer hold when they are contending with the wind, so faith takes a firmer hold when it struggles with adverse appearances.

  Robert Murray M'Cheyne

  Struggle, Wind, Roots

  Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1847). “Additional Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Late Minister of St. Peter's Church, Dundee: Consisting of Various Sermons and Lectures Delivered by Him in the Course of His Ministry”, p.470

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• If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.

  Edward Gibbon

  War, Blood, History

  Edward Gibbon (2009). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition”, p.367, Modern Library

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• History more often records the brilliant successes and spectacular defeats of contending forces than the effect of war on the common people.

  Mildred Cable

  War, People, Records

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• The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.

  Edmund Burke

  Eye, Men, Earth

  Edmund Burke (1826). “The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.93

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• If we set out with... a scrupulous regard to the Constitution, the government will acquire a spirit and a tone productive of permanent blessings to the community. If on the contrary,... the Constitution is slighted, or explained away, upon every frivolous pretext, the future of government will be feeble, distracted and arbitrary. The rights of the subjects will be the sport of every party vicissitude. There will be no settled rule of conduct, but everything will fluctuate with the alternate prevalency of contending factions.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Sports, Party, Blessing

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• There is a great deal of quarrelling in the houses, and contending for power and authority; and the second wife is against the first wife, perhaps, in some instances.

  Heber C. Kimball

  Wife, House, Firsts

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• Fathers who compete hard with their kids are monstrous. The father, for a throw-away victory, is sacrificing the very heart of hischild's sense of being good enough. He may believe he is making his son tough, as he was made tough by a similarly contending father, but he is only making his child desperate and mean like himself. Fathers must let their sons (and daughters) have their victories.

  Frank Pittman

  Daughter, Children, Father

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• Our present condition is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independence contending for dependence.

  Thomas Paine

  Law, Names, Perfect

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.61

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• The truth is, most of those female stories that are contending for Oscars are directed by men. Let's be honest. I looked at the 44 Oscar contenders in Variety that someone wrote up - there was not one directed by a woman. All the ones that were getting an Oscar pitch with the money and everything behind them were by men.

  Catherine Hardwicke

  Men, Female, Stories

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.

  James Madison

  Party, Passion, Practice

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.44

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