Disposition Quotes - Page 20

• We must distinguish between genes that cause physical characteristics, like the color of your eyes or hair, over which you have no control, and what we could call 'behavioral dispositions'. We are responsible for our behavior, no matter what those dispositions are.

  Erwin W. Lutzer

  Eye, Color, Hair

  Source: www1.cbn.com

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• He has as yet no perfect love, whose disposition towards men depends on what they are like, loving one and despising another for this or that, or sometimes loving, sometimes hating one and the same man. Blessed is the man who can love all men equally.

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Hate, Blessed

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• For him who is perfect in love and has reached the summit of dispassion there is no difference between his own or another's, or between Christians and unbelievers, or between slave and free, or between male and female. But because he has risen above the tyranny of the passions and has fixed his attention on the single nature of man, he looks on all in the same way and shows the same disposition to all. For in him there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, bond not free, but Christ who 'is all, and in all' (Col. 3:11; cf. Gal. 3:28).

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Passion, Men

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• Regimes are modes of self-discipline, but are not solely constituted by the orderings of convention in day-to-day life; they are personal habits, organised in some part according to social conventions, but also formed by personal inclinations and dispositions. Regimes are of central importance to self-identity precisely because they connect habits with aspects of the visible appearance of the body.

  Anthony Giddens

  Self, Discipline, Identity

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• The doctrine called Philosophical Necessity is simply this: that, given the motives which are present to an individual's mind, and given likewise the character and disposition of the individual, the manner in which he will act might be unerringly inferred: that if we knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements which are acting upon him, we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any physical event.

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophical, Character, Science

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive: Mill's Works”, p.852, VM eBooks

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• It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition. This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.

  William Hazlitt

  Exercise, Opportunity, Thinking

  "Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners". Book by William Hazlitt. Chapter: "On Will-Making", 1822.

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• It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Eye, Imperfect Things, Poetry

  "L'art romantique". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1869.

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• Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.

  Francois Rabelais

  Men, Long, Honor

  "Gargantua (The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, Book II)". Book by Francois Rabelais, 1534.

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• For many people, morality means a set of rules governing the disposition on one's genital organs; or a set of injunctions against lying, stealing, or killing except when such acts are sanctioned by church or state.

  Marilyn French

  Lying, Mean, People

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• My disposition as a human being is kind of a go-along-to-get-along person. I tend to trust authority.

  Chris Hayes

  Kind, Authority, Humans

  "Chris Hayes: From 'Up' In The Morning To 'All In' At Night". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. March 26, 2013.

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• Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations? Friendship first, Friendship last.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Forever, Use, Lasts

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.110, Penguin

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• Anyone, without any great penetration, may distinguish the dispositions consequent on wealth; for its possessors are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence every thing seems to be purchasable by it.

  Aristotle

  Way, May, Wealth

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1823). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.167

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• All men have an equal disposition for understanding.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Men, Understanding, Equal

  "De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties". Book by Claude Adrien Helvétius, p. 286, 1758.

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• I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Believe, Bills, Sin

  Elbert Hubbard (1911). “A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard”

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• If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Teacher, Children, Memories

  "Reflections and Maxims". Book by Luc de Clapiers, translated by E. Lee, pp. 185-186, 1903.

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• All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts.

  John Stuart Mill

  Heart, Mind, May

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.258, Hackett Publishing

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• What acquaintance have the people at large with the arena of political rectitude, with the connections of kingdoms, the resources of national strength, the abilities of ministers, or even with their own dispositions?...I pay no regard whatever to the voice of the people: it is their duty to do what is proper, without considering what may be agreeable.

  Charles James Fox

  Voice, People, Political

  "The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume I" edited by J. Wright, (pp. 13-14), 1815.

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• Every wife ought to answer for her man. If the husband be engaged in a seditious club, or drinks mysterious healths, or be frugal of his candles on a rejoicing night, let her look to him and keep him out of harm's way; or the world will be apt to say, she has a mind to be a widow before her time. She ought, in such cases, to exert the authority of the curtain lecture; and if she finds him of a rebellious disposition, to tame him, as they do birds of prey, by dinning him in the ears all night long.

  Joseph Addison

  Husband, Night, Men

  Joseph Addison, Thomas Tickell (1811). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison: With the Exception of His Numbers of the Spectator”, p.48

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  Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.

  Alex Karras

  Strength, Fitness, Inspirational Sports

  "Alex Karras obituary" by Michael Carlson, www.theguardian.com. October 11, 2012.

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• Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.

  Samuel Johnson

  Delay, Fit, Hours

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1866). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.87

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• No one is so rich that he does not need another's help; no one so poor as not to be useful in some way to his fellow man; and the disposition to ask assistance from others with confidence and to grant it with kindness is part of our very nature.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Kindness, Men, Doe

  Pope Leo XIII (1990). “A Light in the Heavens: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII”, p.322, TAN Books

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• Through repentance the filth of our foul actions is washed away. After this, we participate in the Holy Spirit, not automatically, but according to the faith, humility and inner disposition of the repentance in which our soul is engaged. For this reason it is good to repent each day as the act of repentance is unending.

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Humility, Soul

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• True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear; it consists not in starting or shrinking at tales of misery, but in a disposition of heart to relieve it. True humanity appertains rather to the mind than to the nerves, and prompts men to use real and active endeavors to execute the actions which it suggests.

  Charles James

  Real, Heart, Men

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• The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority. Unrestrained political authority, though it be confided to masses, cannot be trusted without positive limitations, men in bodies being but an aggregation of the passions, weaknesses and interests of men as individuals.

  James F. Cooper

  Passion, Power, Men

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, p. 191, 1838.

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• Never have I experienced a serenity and sweetness of disposition as with my Chocolate Lab.

  Mortimer Zuckerman

  Dog, Serenity, Chocolate

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