Doubtful Quotes - Page 7

• Once (says an Author; where I need not say)
  Two Trav'lers found an Oyster in their way;
  Both fierce, both hungry; the dispute grew stong;
  While Scale in Hand Dame Justice pass'd along
  Before her each with clamour pleads the Laws.
  Explain'd the matter, and would win the cause,
  Dame Justice wighing long the doubtful Right
  Takes, opens, swallows it, before their sight.
  The cause of strife remov'd so rarely well,
  "There take" (says Justice), "take ye each a shell.
  We thrive at Westminster on Fools like you:
  'Twas a fat oyster - live in peace - Adieu."

  Pope Alexander VI

  Winning, Sight, Hands

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• The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from many others. It is now doubtful whether America can afford the luxury of such a waste of human resources.

  Kenneth Clark

  Luxury, America, Justice

  Kenneth B. Clark (1988). “Prejudice and Your Child”, p.61, Wesleyan University Press

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• Man-hating is everywhere, but everywhere it is twisted and transformed, disguised, tranquilized, and qualified. It coexists, never peacefully, with the love, desire, respect, and need women also feel for men. Always man-hating is shadowed by its milder, more diplomatic and doubtful twin, ambivalence.

  Judith Levine

  Hate, Men, Feminist

  Judith Levine (1993). “My Enemy, My Love: Women, Men, and the Dilemmas of Gender”, Anchor Books

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• Is it not lack of faith that leads men to fear the scrutiny of reason? If the destination is doubtful, then the path must be fraught with fear. A robust faith need not fear, for if God exists, then reason cannot help but lead us to Him. 'Cogito, ergo Deus est,' argues St. Augustine, 'I think, therefore God is.'

  Donna Woolfolk Cross

  Men, Thinking, Needs

  "Pope Joan". Book by Donna Woolfolk Cross, www.e-reading.club. 1996.

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• In a Republican district I was a Republican. In a Democratic district I was a Democrat. And in a doubtful district, I was Doubtful. But I was always for Erie.

  Jay Gould

  Political, Politics, Republican

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• All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

  Edmund Burke

  Nature, Real, Historical

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.484, Penguin

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• The Poet's leaves are gathered one by one,
  In the slow process of the doubtful years.

  Bayard Taylor

  Years, Poet, Process

  Bayard Taylor (1863). “The Poet's Journal”, p.122

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• The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure.

  Bertrand Russell

  Nature, Children, Science

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.379, Psychology Press

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• Avarice often produces opposite results: there are an infinite number of persons who sacrifice their property to doubtful and distant expectations; others mistake great future advantages for small present interests.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Hope, Mistake, Sacrifice

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• We were good boys, good Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.

  Mark Twain

  Boys, Weather, Religion

  Mark Twain (2004). “Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race”, p.134, Univ of California Press

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• Doubtful, but it did work... "Annabeth?" Percy said again. "You're planning something. You've got that I'm-planning-something look." "I don't have an I'm-planning-something look." "Yeah, you totally do. Your eyebrows knit and your lips press together and ---" "Do you have a pen?" she asked him. "You're kidding, right?" He brought out Riptide. "Yes, but can you actually write with it?" "I--I don't know," he admitted. "Never tried.

  Rick Riordan

  Writing, Eyebrows, Together

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• Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future. It is doubtful that we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Life, Past, Insecurity

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• It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply." God actually rises up storms of conflict in relationships at times in order to accomplish that deeper work in our character. We cannot love our enemies in our own strength. This is graduate-level grace. Are you willing to enter this school? Are you willing to take the test? If you pass, you can expect to be elevated to a new level in the Kingdom. For He brings us through these tests as preparation for greater use in the Kingdom. You must pass the test first.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Hurt, School, Character

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• If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

  Erich Fromm

  Christian, Mean, Reflection

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Escape from Freedom”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man; lost a certain touching faith in the totem power of good manners, clean hair, and a proven competence on the Stanford-Binet scale. To such doubtful amulets had my self-respect been pinned, and I faced myself that day with the non-plused apprehension of someone who has come across a vampire and has no crucifix at hand.

  Joan Didion

  Children, Men, Keys

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Sep 10, 2011

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• We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established, and it is understood.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Inspirational, Two, Innovation

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.218

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• The only use for an atomic bomb is to keep somebody else from using one. It can give us no protection - only the doubtful satisfaction of retaliation...

  George Wald

  Giving, Use, Bombs

  "A Generation in Search of a Future". George Wald's speech at an anti-war teach-in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (March 4, 1969); published in Chicago Journalism Review by Ron Dorfman, May 1969.

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• A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Men, Meditation

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Collins'

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• Beauty's a doubtful good, a glass, a flower, Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour; And beauty, blemish'd once, for ever's lost, In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.

  William Shakespeare

  Beauty, Beautiful, Pain

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• As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

  Mark Twain

  Respect, Book, Character

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3759, GENERAL PRESS

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• Investment in the eradication of hunger today is a good business decision. If we fail to make this investment, it is doubtful that we can sustain healthy economic growth. Without this investment, our nation may disintegrate into a country sharply divided between those who have enough to eat and those who do not.

  Alan Hassenfeld

  Country, Decision, Healthy

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• Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religion, Atheism, Christ

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.573, Routledge

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• The members of the department became like the Athenians who, according to the Apostle Paul, "spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." Anyone who thought he had a bright idea rushed out to try it out on a colleague. Groups of two or more could be seen every day in offices, before blackboards or even in corridors, arguing vehemently about these 'brain storms.' It is doubtful whether any paper ever emerged for publication that had not run the gauntlet of such criticism. The whole department thus became far greater than the sum of its individual members.

  Joel Henry Hildebrand

  Running, Science, Ideas

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• He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.

  James Joyce

  Life, Distance, Reflection

  James Joyce (2016). “The Complete Works of James Joyce: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Poetry, Essays & Letters: Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners, The Cat and the Devil, Exiles, Chamber Music, Pomes Penyeach, Stephen Hero, Giacomo Joyce, Critical Writings & more”, p.1533, e-artnow

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• The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.

  Mark Twain

  Learning, Cat, Men

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