Obstinacy Quotes - Page 2

• Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creatures's will.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Love, Fire, Iron

  Alexander Maclaren (1910). “St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians: (to II Corinthians, Chapter V)”

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• The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Clever, Literature, Reason

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1866). “Little Foxes, Or, The Little Failings which Mar Domestic Happiness”, p.70

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• Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

  Robert Peel

  Feelings, Weakness, Public Opinion

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• Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Mean, Soul, Quality

  Michel de Montaigne, George Savile Marquis of Halifax (1743). “Montaigne's Essays in Three Books: With Notes and Quotations. And an Account of the Author's Life. With a Short Character of the Author and Translator”, p.168

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• He says NO! In thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.

  Herman Melville

  Devil, Baggage, Thunder

  1851 Of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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• Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

  Thomas Browne

  Causes, Stubbornness, Constancy

  'Religio Medici' (1643) pt. 1, sect. 25

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• 'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.

  Laurence Sterne

  Perseverance, Names, Causes

  'Tristram Shandy' (1759-67) bk. 1, ch. 17

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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 history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.

  Karl Popper

  Inspirational, Dream, Errors

  1960 Conjectures and Refutations (published1963), ch.10.

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• Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Global Warming, Fashionable, Consensus

  "Empowering girls is about rights, not just economics" by Tanya Barron, www.theguardian.com. January 25, 2014.

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• There is something in obstinacy which differs from every other passion. Whenever it fails, it never recovers, but either breaks like iron, or crumbles sulkily away, like a fractured arch. Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their sufferings and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.

  Samuel Johnson

  Passion, Iron, Suffering

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• At the back of it there lies the central citadel of obstinacy: I will not give up my right to myself--the thing God intends you to give up if ever you are going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

  Oswald Chambers

  Jesus, Giving Up, Lying

  Oswald Chambers (2015). “Called of God: Extracts from My Utmost for His Highest on the Missionary Call”, p.33, Discovery House

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• We often credit ourselves with vices the reverse of what we have, thus when weak we boast of our obstinacy.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Advice, Vices, Credit

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• Obstinacy standing alone is the weakest of all things in one whose mind is not possessed by wisdom.

  Aeschylus

  Mind, Standing Alone, All Things

  Aeschylus (2013). “Aeschylus I: The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliant Maidens, Prometheus Bound”, p.214, University of Chicago Press

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• Obstinacy alone is not a virtue.

  Albert Camus

  Virtue

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.99, Vintage

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• You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?' I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore an inclement and pitiless sky.' That is not what I meant,' interrupted my father, as obstinate as the trees and as pitiless as the sky.

  Marcel Proust

  Father, Sky, Tree

  Marcel Proust (2003). “In Search of Lost Time: The Way by Swann's”, ePenguin

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• No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Use, Particles

  Henry Ward Beecher (1880). “Golden Gleams: From Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Words and Works : Being a Choice Collection of Over 350 Extracts from the Latest Writings, Sermons, and Lectures of the Celebrated American Preacher and Author”

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• Many are obstinate with regard to the pathway once they have set upon it, few with regard to the goal.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Goal, Pathways, Obstinate

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• I can see no justification whatever for the attitude which refuses on purely a priori grounds to accept action at a distance ... Such an attitude bespeaks an unimaginativeness, a mental obtuseness and obstinacy.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Attitude, Distance, Astrology

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• Sheer obstinacy is very very important for anybody who wants to create.

  Wayne White

  Important, Want, Sheer

  Source: screenanarchy.com

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• But this inestimable privilege was soon violated: with the knowledge of truth the emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from the catholic church were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Christianity. Constantine easily believed that the heretics, who presumed to dispute his opinions or to oppose his commands, were guilty of the most absurd and criminal obstinacy; and that a seasonable application of moderate severities might save those unhappy men from the danger of an everlasting condemnation.

  Edward Gibbon

  Men, History, Catholic

  Edward Gibbon (1837). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.292

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• If self is a location, so is love: Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance, Here and there and now and then, a stance.

  Seamus Heaney

  Distance, Taken, Self

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• The 'Cercle et Carré' group owes its existence to my encounter with the Uruguayan painter Torrès-Gracia in 1929... However difficult our relationship, his obstinacy matching my patience, this unholy team of fire and water was bound to produce something. Towards the end of the year, after consulting sundry artists, including Arp, Mondrian, and Van Doesburg, we drew up the program for a new group and launched a magazine which was be called 'Cercle et Carré'.

  Michel Seuphor

  Team, Artist, Fire

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• Of course, I'm aware of the animosities destroying brain cells on both sides, and I know all about the obstinacy of the warring parties, their refusal to reach an agreement, their devotion to their own murderous hatred.

  Yasmina Khadra

  Party, Agreement, Cells

  Yasmina Khadra (2005). “The Attack”, Nan A. Talese

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• If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thous didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Mother, Art, Father

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