Magnanimity Quotes - Page 3

• The rainbow in place of the unicorn? Why didn't God just restore the unicorn? We animals would have been happier with that, instead of a big hint in the sky about God's magnanimity every time it stopped raining.

  Julian Barnes

  Rain, Animal, Sky

  Julian Barnes (2010). “A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters”, p.28, Random House

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• To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all.

  Cornel West

  Mean, Moral, Prosperity

  Twitter post from Mar 27, 2012

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• I think we all have a selfish gene which rises to the top, sometimes. But then we're also all capable of a sudden magnanimity.

  Jim Broadbent

  Selfish, Thinking, Sometimes

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• I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations. I am sorry, however, that he has not been mellowed by the great success that has attended him. The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing would adorn his name in world history so much as acts of magnanimity and of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and friendless, to the weak and poor.... Let this great man search his own heart and conscience before he accuses anyone of being a warmonger.

  Winston Churchill

  Sorry, War, Heart

  "Mr. Churchill's Reply". The Times, November 7, 1938.

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• The great charm of poetry consists in lively pictures of the sublime passions, magnanimity, courage, disdain of fortune; or thoseof the tender affections, love and friendship; which warm the heart, and diffuse over it similar sentiments and emotions.

  David Hume

  Heart, Passion, Poetry

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.453

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• Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues--constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness--are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.

  Edmund Burke

  Fall, Political, Quality

  William Pitt (Earl of Chatham), Edmund Burke, Thomas Erskine Baron Erskine, Jean Gabriel Peltier (1834). “Celebrated Speeches of Chatham, Burke, and Erskine: To which is Added the Arguement of Mr. Mackintosh in the Case of Peltier”, p.87

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• The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it might deify both.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Friendship, Trust, Essence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.70, 谷月社

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• how magnanimous was a gesture if one were constantly aware of its magnanimity?

  Laura Lippman

  Gestures, Magnanimous, Ifs

  Laura Lippman (2011). “What the Dead Know”, p.79, Hachette UK

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• It is rather the nature of America - our freewheeling, outspoken, prosperous, liberty-loving citizens extend equality to women, homosexuals, minorities, and almost anyone who comes to our shores, and thereby create desire and with it shame for that desire. Indeed, it is worse still than that: Precisely because we worry publicly that we are insensitive, our enemies scoff privately that we in fact are too sensitive - what we think is liberality and magnanimity they see as license and decadence. If we don't have confidence in who we are, why should they?

  Victor Davis Hanson

  Thinking, America, Worry

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• Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Lovers, Knows

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.200, e-artnow

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• Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight -- this is magnanimity; but bet on the other one -- this is business.

  Mark Twain

  Dog, Business, Fighting

  Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Albert Bigelow Paine (2014). “The Mark Twain Autobiography + 3 Biographies: 4 Mark Twain Biographies In 1 Book: Chapters From My Autobiography By Mark Twain + My Mark Twain By William Dean Howells’ + Mark Twain A Biography By Albert Bigelow Paine + The Boys’ Life Of Mark Twain By Albert Bigelow Paine”, p.1036, e-artnow

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• The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not - will not be forgotten nor neglected. But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief. Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Destiny, America, Soldier

  Letter to Oliver Downing. "Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States". Book edited by Charles Richard Williams, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, March 15, 1889.

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• Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Pride, Names, Receiving

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• Cheerfulness consists in not regarding things as our own, but as entrusted to us by God for the benefit of our fellow-servants. It consists in scattering them abroad generously with joy and magnanimity, not reluctantly or under compulsion.

  Symeon the New Theologian

  Christian, Joy, Benefits

  Saint Symeon (the New Theologian) (1980). “Symeon New Theologian”, p.156, Paulist Press

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• The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Memories, Men, Honest

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2610, Delphi Classics

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• The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action, she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling.

  Henry James

  Girl, Determination, Thinking

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• My career as a critic still lay in the future but unconsciously I may have been preparing for it. They were not easy companions, these intellectuals I was now getting to know. They were overbearing and arrogant, excessively competitive; they lacked magnanimity and often they lacked common courtesy. But they were intellectually energetic and - this particularly attracted me - they were proof against cant.

  Diana Trilling

  Careers, Arrogant, May

  Diana Trilling (1993). “The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling”, Harcourt

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• In a contest with a weaker party it is more honorable to yield than to force concession. Magnanimity becomes the strong.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Strong, Party, Yield

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• When their minds mingle with His magnanimity, something of eternity rubs off on their imaginations.

  Geoffrey Wood

  Imagination, Mind, Eternity

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• I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books — brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity.

  James Branch Cabell

  Beautiful, Dream, Book

  James Branch Cabell (2013). “The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection”, p.179, eBookIt.com

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• You have to have a habitual vision of greatness ... you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity ... believe in fact that living is connected to giving.

  Cornel West

  Integrity, Believe, Greatness

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• Very sad to hear about the passing of Nelson Mandela. He was a true inspiration for human rights and equality for South Africa and the reason apartheid no longer exists there. The world will never forget his capacity for forgiveness and magnanimity. RIP

  Bryan Adams

  Rip, Inspiration, Rights

  FaceBook post by Bryan Adams from Dec 06, 2013

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• Terence: nihil humanum alienum a me-"nothing human is alien to me," the greatest expression of ancient megalopsychia or great-souled and cosmopolitan "magnanimity."

  Kenny Smith

  Expression, Soul, Aliens

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• In Spain in the meantime, Aristotelian scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda was putting the impolitic moralizing of Las Casas into proper perspective for posterity: "Compare then the blessings enjoyed by Spaniards of prudence, genius, magnanimity, temperance, humanity, and religion with those of the little men [the Indians] in whom you will scarcely find even vestiges of humanity. . . . How can we doubt that these people - so uncivilized, so barbaric, contaminated with so many impieties and obscenities - have been justly conquered?"

  Juan Gines de Sepulveda

  Blessing, Men, People

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• Procrastination is the thief of time; year after year it steals, till all are fled, and to the mercies of a moment leaves the vast concerns of an eternal state. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; at fifty chides his infamous delay, pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; in all the magnanimity of thought, resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same.

  Edward Young

  Procrastination, Men, Years

  'The Complaint: Night Thoughts' (1742-5) 'Night 1' l. 417

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