Endeavour Quotes - Page 9

• His high endeavours are an inward light That makes the path before him always bright.

  William Wordsworth

  Light, Inward, Path

  'Character of the Happy Warrior' (1807)

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• The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

  William Godwin

  Teaching, Men, Thinking

  William Godwin, Luke White (bookseller.) (1793). “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: And Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness”, p.375

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• They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.

  Thomas Browne

  Vices, Virtue, Contrary

  Sir Thomas Browne (1831). “Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Browne: With Some Account of the Author and His Writings”, p.119

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• As every writer has his use, every writer ought to have his patrons; and since no man, however high he may now stand, can be certain that he shall not be soon thrown down from his elevation by criticism or caprice, the common interest of learning requires that her sons should cease from intestine hostilities, and, instead of sacrificing each other to malice and contempt, endeavour to avert persecution from the meanest of their fraternity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Son, Sacrifice

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.32

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• It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood.

  Samuel Johnson

  Spring, Winter, Play

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1837). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.88

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• I look upon a good physician, not so properly as a servant to nature, as one, that is a counsellor and friendly assistant, who, in his patient's body, furthers those motions and other things, that he judges conducive to the welfare and recovery of it; but as to those, that he perceives likely to be hurtful, either by increasing the disease, or otherwise endangering the patient, he thinks it is his part to oppose or hinder, though nature do manifestly enough seem to endeavour the exercising or carrying on those hurtful motions.

  Robert Boyle

  Recovery, Exercise, Science

  Robert Boyle, Edward B. Davis, Michael Hunter (1996). “Robert Boyle: A Free Enquiry Into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature”, p.137, Cambridge University Press

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• After some time passed in studying - and even imitating - the works of others, I would recommend the student to endeavour to be original, and to remember that originality should not be undiscovered plagiarism.

  Henry Peach Robinson

  Creativity, Students, Originality

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• A faith project in Christian artistry will never be healthy among us until there is a living sense of Christian community, and the misplaced emphasis on the 'individual' has been corrected. God has set things up so that cultural endeavour is always a communal enterprise, done by trained men and women in concert, gripped by a spirit that is larger than each one individually and that pulls them together as they do their formative work.

  Calvin Seerveld

  Christian, Men, Community

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• I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries.

  Pablo Casals

  Artist, Simple, Men

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• There is something mysteriously powerful that can happen when young, inchoate minds come into contact with older and more worldly ones in a spirit of intellectual and creative endeavour - if I believed in progress, I suppose that's what I'd call it.

  Will Self

  Powerful, Creative, Intellectual

  "Why I said yes to Professor Self" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. February 22, 2012.

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• Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise above such narrow prejudices. If wisdom be desirable on its own account, if virtue, to deserve the name, must be founded on knowledge, let us endeavour to strengthen our minds by reflection till our heads become a balance for our hearts.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Heart, Reflection, Names

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution”, p.166, Oxford University Press

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• In south west Lancashire, babies don't toddle, they side-step. Queuing women talk of 'nipping round the blindside'. Rugby league provides our cultural adrenalin. It's a physical manifestation of our rules of life, comradeship, honest endeavour, and a staunch, often ponderous allegiance to fair play.

  Colin Welland

  Life, Baby, Rugby League

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• Our highest endeavour must be to develop individuals who are able out of their own initiative to impart purpose & direction to their lives.

  Rudolf Steiner

  Purpose, Able, Initiative

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• We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization.

  Winston Churchill

  Civilization, People, Rising

  Anthony Eden, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill (1938*). “The Austrian Crisis and British Foreign Policy: Speeches by Anthony Eden, Neville Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill”

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• That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them.

  William Hazlitt

  Hurt, Men, Humanity

  William Hazlitt (2016). “Characters of Shakespeare's Plays”, p.48, William Hazlitt

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• In fact, whenever energy is transmitted from one body to another in time, there must be a medium or substance in which the energy exists after it leaves one body and before it reaches the other ... and if we admit this medium as an hypothesis, I think it ought to occupy a prominent place in our investigations, and that we ought to endeavour to construct a mental representation of all the details of its action, and this has been my constant aim in this treatise.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Thinking, Details

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• The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Perfect

  David Hume (1793). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.31

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• THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.

  David Hume

  Philosophical, Discovery, Topics

  David Hume (1875). “Essays Moral, Political, and Literary”, p.79

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• Poets themselves, tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.

  David Hume

  Liars, Air, Giving

  'A Treatise upon Human Nature' (1739) bk. 1, pt. 3

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• Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

  Charles Lamb

  Knowing, Feelings, Attention

  'Essays of Elia' (1823) 'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'

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• I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Children, Tired, Heart

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• We should only endeavour to think and speak correctly ourselves, without wishing to bring others over to our taste and opinions.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Thinking, Wish, Taste

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• An artistic endeavour comes into the world naked, unnamed, and vulnerable. Every creative effort requires the artist to wrest something from nothingness, a purposive cosmos from an apparently indifferent chaos.

  Peter London

  Artist, Creative, Effort

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• His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

  Arthur Balfour

  Country, Religious, Home

  Letter to Lionel Walter, Lord Rothschild, 2 Nov. 1917. Known as the "Balfour Declaration."

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• To discover the meaning of what is called "social justice" has been one of my chief preoccupations for more than 10 years. I have failed in this endeavour or rather, have reached the conclusion that, with reference to society of free men, the phrase has no meaning whatever.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Years, Justice

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek, The Atavism of Social Justice (ch. 5), 1978.

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