Contrary Quotes - Page 10

• A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.

  Joseph Addison

  Hands, Law, Giving

  Joseph Addison (1856). “The works of ... Joseph Addison, with notes by R. Hurd”, p.274

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• There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.

  Joseph Addison

  Wine, Men, Mind

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• It is certain that there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated.

  Joseph Addison

  Love, Passion, Soul

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.7

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• In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

  Joseph Addison

  Wise, Running, Wisdom

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.191

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• I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.

  Gloria Steinem

  Family, Children, Selfish

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• Feminism is not antisexuality. On the contrary. It says that sexuality shouldn't be confused with violence and dominance and that it should be a matter of free choice. It shouldn't be forced on you by economics, including dependence on a husband, or by pressure.

  Gloria Steinem

  Husband, Confused, Choices

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• Commerce however we may please ourselves with the contrary opinion, is one of the daughters of fortune, inconstant and deceitful as her mother. She chooses her residence where she is least expected, and shifts her abode when her continuance is, in appearance, most firmly settled.

  Samuel Johnson

  Daughter, Mother, May

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The works of Samuel Johnson, with Murphy's essay, ed. by R. Lynam”, p.292

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• He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.

  Washington Irving

  Men, Thinking, Ideas

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• gardening is a madness, a folly that does not go away with age. Quite the contrary.

  May Sarton

  Gardening, Going Away, Age

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.30, Open Road Media

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• I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.

  William Shenstone

  Silly, Character, People

  William Shenstone (1804). “Essays on Men and Manners”, p.107

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• Contraries are cured by contraries.

  Bill Vaughan

  Behaviour, Behavior, Manners

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• Gaming is a vice the more dangerous as it is deceitful; and, contrary to every other species of luxury, flatters its votaries with the hopes of increasing their wealth; so that avarice itself is so far from securing us against its temptations that it often betrays the more thoughtless and giddy part of mankind into them.

  Henry Fielding

  Gambling, Luxury, Temptation

  Henry Fielding (1988). “An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings”, p.92, Wesleyan University Press

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• The raillery which is consistent with good-breeding is a gentle animadversion of some foible, which, while it raises the laugh in the rest of the company, doth not put the person rallied out of countenance, or expose him to shame or contempt. On the contrary, the jest should be so delicate that the object of it should be capable of joining in the mirth it occasions.

  Henry Fielding

  Joining In, Laughing, Mirth

  Henry Fielding, Thomas Roscoe (1851). “The Works of Henry Fielding: Complete in One Volume”, p.643

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• There is no learned man but will confess be hath much profited by reading controversies,--his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach that contraries laid together, more evidently appear; it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth.

  John Milton

  Reading, Writing, Men

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• I am a member of a small, nearly extinct minority group, a kind of urban lost tribe who insist, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, on the sanctity of being on time. Which is to say that we On-timers are compulsively, unfashionably prompt, that there are only handfuls of us in any given city and, unfortunately, we never seem to have appointments with each other.

  Ellen Goodman

  Cities, Faces, Tribes

  Ellen Goodman (1986). “Close to Home”, Fawcett Books

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• When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.

  Diane Ackerman

  Flames, Life And Death, Effort

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• There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

  Blaise Pascal

  Faith, Inspiration, Believe

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• Monogamy is contrary to nature but necessary for the greater social good.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Monogamy, Social, Greater

  Rita Mae Brown (2009). “Animal Magnetism: My Life with Creatures Great and Small”, p.21, Ballantine Books

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• In How to Be an American Housewife Margaret Dilloway creates an irresistible heroine. Shoko is stubborn, contrary, proud, a wonderful housewife and full of deeply conflicted feelings. I wanted to shake her, even as I was cheering her on, and this cunningly structured novel allowed me to do both. It also took me on two intricate journeys, from post-war Japan and the shadow of Nagasaki to contemporary California, and from motherhood to daughterhood and back again. A profound and suspenseful debut.

  Margot Livesey

  Cheer, War, Motherhood

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• It is the nature of tyranny and rapacity never to learn moderation from the ill-success of first oppressions; on the contrary, all oppressors, all men thinking highly of the methods dictated by their nature, attribute the frustration of their desires to the want of sufficient rigor.

  Edmund Burke

  Frustration, Men, Thinking

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.381, Penguin

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• Tranquillity consisteth in a steadiness of the mind; and how can that vessel that is beaten upon by contrary waves and winds, and tottereth to either part, be said to keep a steady course? Resolution is the only mother of security.

  Joseph Hall

  Mother, Wind, Mind

  Joseph Hall, Philip Wynter (1863). “Works”, p.37

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• Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice. Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.

  Jane Austen

  Friendship, Nice, Mean

  Jane Austen (2013). “Persuasion In Modern English”, p.296, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Man is neither by birth nor disposition a savage, nor of unsocial habits, but only becomes so by indulging in vices contrary to his nature.

  Plutarch

  Men, Vices, Savages

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• Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own.

  Jeremy Collier

  Singularity, Distasteful

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• Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.

  Madame de Stael

  God, Thinking, Increase

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