Degrees Quotes - Page 33

• Secret Societies have existed among all peoples, savage and civilized, since the beginning of recorded history... It is beyond question that the secret societies of all ages have exercised a considerable degree of political influence.

  Manly Hall

  History, Political, Secret

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• The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Judging, Intellectual, Excellence

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• Human ambitions are like Japanese carp; they grow proportional to the size of their environment. Our achievements grow according to the size of our dreams and the degree to which we are in touch with our mission.

  Keith Ferrazzi

  Dream, Ambition, Achievement

  Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz (2014). “Never Eat Alone, Expanded and Updated: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time”, p.39, Crown Business

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• [The notion of equilibrium] is a notion which can be employed usefully in varying degrees of looseness. It is an absolutely indispensable part of the toolbag of the economist and one which he can often contribute usefully to other sciences which are occasionally apt to get lost in the trackless exfoliations of purely dynamic systems.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Lost, Equilibrium, Economist

  "The Skills of the Economist". Book by Kenneth Ewart Boulding, p. 14, 1958.

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• [The loss-of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Military, Distance, Moving

  "Conflict and Defense: A General Theory". Book by Kenneth E. Boulding, p. 245, 1962.

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• Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.

  T. S. Eliot

  Exaltation, Degradation, Human Life

  T.S. Eliot (1950). “Selected Essays”

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• There are as many and innumerable degrees of wit, as there are cubits between this and heaven.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Heaven, Wit

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• Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.

  W. H. Auden

  Science, Skills, Needs

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• Of course, you don't have to have a degree to be rich. You just have to have ideas. Maybe having a degree sets you back, for it stuffs you into tick-tock [the daily grind of work], and perhaps that stifles your creative mind. But the fact is that many millionaires have few educational qualifications of any kind at all. However, they still have knowledge. The difference is, they have knowledge they can sell, and others have the "common knowledge" of tick-tock, which isn't worth as much, if anything at all.

  Stuart Wilde

  Educational, Knowledge, Ideas

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• Unless degree is preserved, the first place is safe for no one.

  Publilius Syrus

  Safety, Safe, Firsts

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• For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.

  Alan Watts

  Intelligent, Organization, Anxiety

  Alan Watts (1973). “This is It, and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience”, Vintage

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• The common ground where the activities of God and man become one is the motive of perfect love; for in the last resolve love is the essence of God's nature. When he thinks, love is his thought; when he wills, love is the product of his will. To the degree, therefore, that man thinks and wills the good--to the degree that he realizes love in his finite dealings--he interfuses himself with God.

  Frank C. Lockwood

  Love Is, Men, Thinking

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• Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Echoes, Ignorant, Mind

  "Memoirs and Essays, Washington Allston". As quoted in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations", p. 256-259, 1922.

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• A good taste in art feels the presence or the absence of merit; a just taste discriminates the degree--the poco piu and the poco meno. A good taste rejects faults; a just taste selects excellences. A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious. A good taste may be lowered or spoilt; a just taste can only go on refining more and more.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Art, Excellence, Goes On

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• Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Ideas, Perfection, Choices

  "Monadology". Book by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, paragraphs 53 & 54, 1714.

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• If it be the chief point of friendship to
  comply with a friends motions and inclinations,
  he possesses this in a eminent degree;
  he lies down when I sit, and walks when I walk,
  which is more than many good friends
  can pretend to do.

  Alexander Pope

  Lying, Good Friend, Chiefs

  Alexander Pope, John Wilson Croker, Whitwell Elwin, William John Courthope (1871). “The Works of Alexander Pope: New Ed. Including Several Hundred Unpublished Letters, and Other New Materials, Collected in Part by John Wilson Croker. With Introd. and Notes by Whitwell Elwin”, p.87

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• As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.

  Richard Whately

  Children, Book, Reading

  Francis Bacon, Richard Whately (1858). “The Essays ... Revised ... by Thomas Markby ... Second edition”, p.500

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• Our heirs, whatever or whoever they may be, will explore space and time to degrees we cannot currently fathom. They will create new melodies in the music of time. There are infinite harmonies to be explored.

  Clifford A. Pickover

  Space, May, Heirs

  Clifford A. Pickover (1999). “Time: A Traveler's Guide”, p.245, Oxford University Press

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• Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Writing, Men, Together

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• A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Education, Men, Musical

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• He that contemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Anger, Doe, Shrews

  Sir Roger L'Estrange (1738). “Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections”, p.455

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• Some people are all quality; you would think they are made up of nothing but title and genealogy. The stamp of dignity defaces in them the very character of humanity and transports them to such a degree of haughtiness that they reckon it below themselves to exercise either good nature or good manners.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Character, Exercise, Thinking

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• At this point, an urgent question arises: [...] Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being, one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism? Briefly, is the division of labor, at the same time that it is a law of nature, also a moral rule of human conduct; and, if it has this latter character, why and in what degree?

  Emile Durkheim

  Character, Law, Division Of Labor

  "De la division du travail social (The Division of Labor in Society)". Book by Emile Durkheim (p. 41 in 1947 translation of George Simpson), 1893.

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• The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Lust, Abuse, Shapes

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• Flowers produce an effect on me which can only be produced in an equal degree by music.

  Charlotte Alington Barnard

  Flower, Produce, Equal

  Charlotte Alington Barnard (1877). “Thoughts, verses, and songs, by Claribel”

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