Ought Quotes - Page 11

• Every man's vanity ought to be his greatest shame; and every man's folly ought to be his greatest secret.

  Francis Quarles

  Men, Vanity, Secret

  Francis Quarles (1856). “Enchiridion: Containing Institutions Divine Contemplative Practical: Moral Ethical Oeconomical Political”, p.134

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am -- and this ought to be made very clear -- I am a very serious woman.

  Bella Abzug

  Mother, Men, Names

  Bella S. Abzug (1972). “Bella!: Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington”, Saturday Review Press

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.

  Edmund Burke

  Church, One Day, Mankind

  Edmund Burke (2010). “On Taste on the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the Revolution, A Letter to a Noble Lord”, p.160, Cosimo, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended by public authority. So recommended, they soon form the character of the age.

  Edmund Burke

  Book, Character, Age

  Edmund Burke (1804). “Maxims and opinions, moral, political and economical, with characters, from the works of ... Edmund Burke”, p.14

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

  Edmund Burke

  Struggle, Greatness, Honor

  Edmund Burke (1790). “Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London, relative to that event. In a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris ... The seventh edition”, p.74

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men want to be reminded, who do not want to be taught; because those original ideas of rectitude to which the mind is compelled to assent when they are proposed, are not always as present to us as they ought to be.

  Edmund Burke

  Teaching, Men, Ideas

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.2071, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now flattery can never do good; twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Giving, Receiving, Flattery

  Maria Edgeworth (1971). “The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is equally wrong to speed a guest who does not want to go, and to keep one back who is eager. You ought to make welcome the present guest, and send forth the one who wishes to go.

  Homer

  Wish, Doe, Guests

  4 Copy quote

• You ought not to practice childish ways, since you are no longer that age.

  Homer

  Practice, Age, Way

  5 Copy quote

• Fine thoughts are wealth, for the right use of which
  Men are and ought to be accountable,--
  If not to Thee, to those they influence.

  Philip James Bailey

  Men, Use, Influence

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.104

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes it seems to me I've known so many men that the FBI ought to come to me first to compare fingerprints.

  Mae West

  Men, Firsts, Sometimes

  5 Copy quote

• We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.

  Plutarch

  Book, Latter, Aim

  4 Copy quote

• We ought to give our friend pain if it will benefit him, but not to the extent of breaking off our friendship; but just as we make use of some biting medicine that will save and preserve the life of the patient. And so the friend, like a musician, in bringing about an improvement to what is good and expedient, sometimes slackens the chords, sometimes tightens them, and is often pleasant, but always useful.

  Plutarch

  Friends, Pain, Medicine

  Plutarch (1888). “Morals: Ethical Essays. Translated, with Notes and Index. by Arthur Richard Shilleto”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn't, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.

  Agnes Repplier

  Sunshine, Biblical, Years

  29 Copy quote

• The happy marriage, which is the only proper nursery, is indissoluble. The unhappy marriage, which perpetually tells the child a bogey-man story about life, ought to be dissolved.

  Rebecca West

  Children, Divorce, Men

  Rebecca West, Jane Marcus (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, New York : Viking Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sex, which ought to be an incident of life, is the obsession of the well-fed world.

  Rebecca West

  Sex, World, Life Is

  Rebecca West (2011). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West 1911-17”, p.82, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We don't consider manual work as a curse, or a bitter necessity, not even as a means of making a living. We consider it as a high human function, as the basis of human life, the most dignified thing in the life of the human being, and which ought to be free, creative. Men ought to be proud of it.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Mean, Men, Creative

  10 Copy quote

• Christians ought to suspect that affliction is the very essence of creation. To be a created thing is not necessarily to be afflicted, but it is necessarily to be exposed to affliction. ... Affliction is the surest sign that God wishes to be loved by us; it is the most precious evidence of His tenderness.

  Simone Weil

  Christian, Essence, Suffering

  Simone Weil (1998). “Simone Weil”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.

  Laurence Sterne

  Pride, Men, Done

  Laurence Sterne (1810). “The Beauties of Sterne: Containing All His Pathetic Tales, His Humorous Descriptions, His Most Distinguished Observations on Life, and a Copious Selection from His Sermons ...”, p.71

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.

  Jeremy Collier

  Rivers, Mind, Suffering

  Jeremy Collier (1969). “Essays Upon Several Moral Subjects: (1698-1709).”

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our friends should be our incentives to right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic, stars. To love by right is much, to love by faith is more; both are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love one another, not merely for the absolute worth of each, but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary character.

  Margaret Fuller

  Friends, Stars, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophy, Reason, Theory

  John Stuart Mill (1856). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.448

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to cosmic sadness? ... Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge-from which new sorrows will be born for others-then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.

  Etty Hillesum

  Revenge, Grief, Sadness

  100 Copy quote

• He who overlooks a healthy spot for the site of his house is mad and ought to be handed over to the care of his relations and friends.

  Marcus Terentius Varro

  Health, Mad, House

  "De Re Rustica". Book by Marcus Terentius Varro, I, 2,

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• the important consideration is not your opponents, but yourself. It is bad to scream at them, not because it hurts them, they ought to be hurt, but because it hurts you. Anger is a form of recognition. It amounts to admitting that those people are important to you and that they have the power to hurt you. Actually, they haven't.

  Ayn Rand

  Hurt, Anger, People

  Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.510, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

  Show source