Grandeur Quotes - Page 12

• History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories, exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur or a delusion of persecution. It makes whole nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable and vainglorious.

  Paul Valery

  Dream, Memories, People

  68 Copy quote

• This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds.

  Amy Lowell

  Confused, America, Sublime

  Amy Lowell (1955). “Complete poetical works: With an introd. by Louis Untermeyer”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Perseverance, Stupid, Silence

  4 Copy quote

• The very act of sacrifice magnifies the one who sacrifices himself to the point where his sacrifice is much more costly to humanity than would have been the loss of those for whom he is sacrificing himself. But in his abnegation lies the secret of his grandeur.

  Andre Gide

  Lying, Loss, Sacrifice

  9 Copy quote

• It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, -- some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church. On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Faith, Believe, Blessed

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1874). “The Gods, and Other Lectures”, p.171

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.

  Thomas de Quincey

  War, Men, Ineffable

  Thomas De Quincey (1863). “De Quincey's Works ...: Miscellanies: chiefly narrative”, p.286

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Divinity, Harbors, Ifs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing is absolutely unjust. There is no real equity, no total grandeur, no pure vice, no absolute crime.

  Julien Offray de La Mettrie

  Real, Vices, Unjust

  9 Copy quote

• He has given ample evidence of qualities hardly any other living statesman has demonstrated to the same degree: the courage to look facts in the face and to seek flexible solutions, respect for others, give-and-take in dialog situations, absence of hypocrisy, a complete absence of grandeur in the conduct of his personal life. He has never been driven by blind self-assertion to make absurd decisions.

  Alice Miller

  Self, Hypocrisy, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Speech, Moments, Evoke

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2009). “The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I; Barbara W. Tuchman's Great War Series”, p.300, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is the simplest of all earthly things.
  It needs no grandeur of celestial trust
  In more than what it is, no holy wings:
  It stands with honest feet in honest dust,
  And is the body's blossoming in clear air
  Of trustfulness and joyance when alone
  Two mortals pass beyond the hour's despair
  And claim that Paradise which is their own.
  Amid a universe of sweat and blood,
  Beyond the glooms of all the nations' hate,
  Lovers, forgetful of the poisoned mood
  Of the loud world, in secret ere too late
  A gentle sacrament may celebrate
  Before their private altar of the good.

  Arthur Davison Ficke

  Hate, Love Is, Dust

  4 Copy quote

• You know what grandeur is? It's awesome.

  Chris Kaman

  Knows

  5 Copy quote

• Joy and amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion.

  Albert Einstein

  Men, Joy, World

  Albert Einstein (2007). “The World As I See It”, p.91, Book Tree

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Righteousness, or justice, is, undoubtedly of all the virtues, the surest foundation on which to create and establish a new state. But there are two nobler virtues, industry and frugality, which tend more to increase the wealth, power and grandeur of the community, than all the others without them.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Two, Justice, Community

  5 Copy quote

• The grandeur of man lies in song, not in thought.

  Francois Mauriac

  Song, Lying, Men

  9 Copy quote

• Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  America, Rude, Vigor

  W. E. B. Du Bois (2016). “The Souls of Black Folk”, p.207, First Avenue Editions

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Class, People, India

  "A home for Mr Naipaul". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. September 11, 2004.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philosophy may raise us above grandeur, but nothing can elevate us above the ennui which accompanies it.

  Francoise d'Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon

  Philosophy, Greatness, May

  7 Copy quote

• How beautiful the water is! To me 'tis wondrous fair-- No spot can ever lonely be If water sparkle there; It hath a thousand tongues of mirth, Of grandeur, or delight, And every heart is gladder made When water greets the sight.

  Elizabeth Oakes Smith

  Beautiful, Lonely, Heart

  20 Copy quote

• Grandeur of effect is produced by two different ways which seem entirely opposed to each other. One is by reducing the colors to little more than chiaroscuro... and the other, by making the colors very distinct and forcible... but still, the presiding principle of both those manners is simplicity.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Color, Two, Simplicity

  9 Copy quote

• The distinct blue, red, and yellow colors... though they have not the kind of harmony which is produced by a variety of broken and transparent colors, have the effect of grandeur.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Blue, Color, Yellow

  4 Copy quote

• The strong experience of nature... is the necessary basis for all conception of art on which rests the grandeur and beauty of all future work.

  Paul Cezanne

  Art, Strong, Experience

  7 Copy quote

• This whole universe, with all its vastness, grandeur and beauty, is nothing but sheer imagination. In spite of so many discoveries, researches and scientific knowledge, the creation remains a great unsolved riddle.

  Meher Baba

  Discovery, Imagination, Research

  "Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba". Book by Bhau Kalchuri, 1986.

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a quality of murky grandeur we give ourselves in having our own feelings, recoiling, separate from other things... To feel that we can care for ourselves without seeing our feelings as objects, and liking them as objects, is to be wrong about our care for ourselves.

  Eli Siegel

  Giving, Feelings, Quality

  18 Copy quote

• Grandeur . . . consists in form, and not in size: and to the eye of the philosopher, the curve drawn on a paper two inches long, is just as magnificent, just as symbolic of divine mysteries and melodies, as when embodied in the span of some cathedral roof.

  Charles Kingsley

  Eye, Two, Curves

  Charles Kingsley (1859). “Sir Walter Raleigh and His Time, with Other Papers”, p.405

  7 Copy quote

  Show source