Distinction Quotes - Page 12

• Agape is disinterested love. . . . Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. . . . Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Faith, People, Enemy

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

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• Place, time, life, death, earth, heaven are divisions and distinctions we make, like the imaginary lines we trace upon the surface of the globe.

  Fanny Kemble

  Oneness, Heaven, Division

  Fanny Kemble (1882). “Records of Later Life”

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• The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Excellence, Pursuit, Vocation

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• The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Self, May

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1843). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.305

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• Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Pride, Thinking

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1466, Delphi Classics

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• An assembly of the states, a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and grave as a table of gamesters playing very high; a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks; envy and rancor agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth or distinctions.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Clouds, Gambling, Envy

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• It would be nice to think that a censor could allow a genuine work of artistic seriousness and ban a titillating piece of sadism, but it would take a miracle to make such a distinction stick.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Nice, Thinking, Miracle

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• A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of understanding. This might be illustrated by saying that acuteness consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the air of truth.

  William Hazlitt

  Air, Understanding, Feelings

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1468, Delphi Classics

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• To have to die is a distinction of which no man is proud.

  Alexander Smith

  Death, Men, Proud

  Dreamthorp Ch. II (1863)

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• It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain. A man who would endeavor to fix an enthusiast by argument might as well attempt to spread quicksilver with his finger.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Feelings, Might

  Oliver Goldsmith (1837). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M. B.: Including a Variety of Pieces”, p.432

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• The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Character, People

  Oliver Goldsmith (1834). “An inquiry into the present state of polite learning. The Bee. History of Cyrillo Padovano. Life of Dr. Parnell. Life of Lord Bolingbroke. Prefaces and introductions”, p.77

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• All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.

  Thomas Paine

  Equality, Men, Heaven

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE RIGHTS OF MAN: The French Revolution – Ideals, Arguments & Motives (Political Classic): Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution”, p.34, e-artnow

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• The tomb is the pedestal of greatness. I make a distinction between God's great and the king's great.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Kings, Greatness, Pedestal

  Walter Savage Landor (1824). “Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen”, p.313

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• The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Appreciation, Intellectual, Criticism

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• Nobody is publicly accepted as an expert on poetry unless he displays the sign of poet, mathematician, etc., but universal men want no sign and make hardly any distinction between the crafts of poet and embroiderer. Universal men are not called poets or mathematicians, etc. But they are all these things and judges of them too. No one could guess what they are, and they will talk about whatever was being talked about when they came in. One quality is not more noticeable in them than another, unless it becomes necessary to put it into practice, and then we remember it.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Practice, Judging

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• I did ... learn an important distinction in graduate school: a speculation about who had syphilis when is gossip if it's about your friends, a plot element if it's about a character in a novel, and scholarship if it's about John Keats.

  Margaret Atwood

  School, Character, Gossip

  Margaret Atwood (1984). “Second words: selected critical prose”, Beacon Press, 1984

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• It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists; and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.

  Edmund Burke

  Reality, Skills, Way

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• We must note carefully what distinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed.

  John Ruskin

  Rose, Healthy, Gothic

  John Ruskin (1854). “On the Nature of Gothic Architecture: And Herein of the True Functions of the Workman in Art ...”, p.16

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• No distinction is 'tween man and man,
  But as his virtues add to him a glory
  Or vices cloud him.

  William Habington

  Men, Clouds, Vices

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• Compared to men writers of like distinction and years of life, few women writers have had lives of unbroken productivity, or leave behind a 'body of work.' Early beginnings, then silence; or clogged late ones (foreground silences); long periods between books (hidden silences); characterize most of us.

  Tillie Olsen

  Book, Men, Years

  Tillie Olsen (2014). “Silences”, p.38, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• Glory darts her soul-pervading ray on thrones and cottages, regardless still of all the artificial nice distinctions vain human customs make.

  Hannah More

  Nice, Soul, Rays

  Hannah More (1840). “Miscellaneous Works: Tragedies. Miscellaneous poems. Hymns and ballads. Sacred Dramas. Coelebs. Practical piety. Moriana”, p.301

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• While women were tortured, drowned and burned by the thousands, scarce one wizard to a hundred was ever condemned ... The same distinction of sex appears in our own day. One code of morals for men, another for women.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Sex, Men, Wizards

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (2012). “The Woman's Bible”, p.156, tredition

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• I remember how surprised I was when my first novel was about to be published and I was informed that I could be sued for anything any one of my characters said. 'But I often don't agree with what they say,' I protested. The lawyer was not interested in the clear distinction I make between my own voice and the voices of my characters. Neither, I have found, are many of my readers.

  Jane Rule

  Character, Voice, Firsts

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.213, Open Road Media

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• Circles in water as they wider flow
  The less conspicuous in their progress grow,
  And when at last they trench upon the shore,
  Distinction ceases and they're view'd no more.

  George Crabbe

  Views, Circles, Water

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• In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed to men and forbidden to women.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Sex, Simple, Men

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (2015). “Women and Economics - A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution: From the famous American writer, feminist, social reformer and a respected sociologist who holds an important place in feminist fiction, well-known for her stories The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland”, p.29, e-artnow

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