Perpetual Quotes

• Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life.

  Walter Inglis Anderson

  Thankful, Character, Responsibility

  29 Copy quote

• I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have-life itself.

  Walter Inglis Anderson

  Thankful, Pain, Grief

  24 Copy quote

• Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.

  Frank Norris

  Truth, Giving, Prussia

  13 Copy quote

• Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Change, Growth, Eternal Love

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.47, Publishdrive

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• Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.

  Ellis Peters

  Nature, Spring, Contentment

  Ellis Peters (2014). “The Summer Of The Danes”, p.115, Head of Zeus

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• I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

  William Shakespeare

  Success, Rust, Perpetual Motion

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 1, sc. 2, l. [247]

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• Sometimes people need a kick in the pants to get them to do what they would be doing if government weren't there as a perpetual parent.

  Cal Thomas

  Government, People, Parent

  8 Copy quote

• What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

  Alexander Pope

  Food, Health, Anxiety

  18 Copy quote

• Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.

  Walter Anderson

  Moving On, Thankful, Gratitude

  Walter Anderson (1997). “The Confidence Course: Seven Steps to Self-Fulfillment”, Harpercollins

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• The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sacrifice, Doctrine, Peculiar

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.92

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• War is to man what maternity is to a woman

  Benito Mussolini

  War, Men, Maternity

  143 Copy quote

• There is but one mode by which man can possess in perpetuity all the happiness which his nature is capable of enjoying, - that is by the union and co-operation of all for the benefit of each.

  Robert Owen

  Happiness, Happy, Men

  "The Social System - Constitution, Laws, and Regulations of a Community". Book by Robert Owen, 1826.

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• Capitalism in the 19th century did not doom the worker to a life of perpetual poverty. Instead, they kept creating new and better-paying employments as the decades went by. They produced the wealth and rising income that resulted in the emergence of a phenomenon completely new to human history: a self-supporting and educated middle class that grew more and more as they lower classes bettered their economic well-being.

  Richard Ebeling

  Class, Creating, Self

  6 Copy quote

• But the real life of a writer resides in showing up at the keyboard every day, with the necessary patience and mercy, and making the best decisions you can on behalf of your people. It’s a slow process. It often feels hopeless, more like an affliction than an art form. Most of us will have to find our readers one by one, in other words, and against considerable resistance. If anything qualifies us as heroic, it’s that private perpetual struggle. Put down the magazine, soldier. Forget about the other guy. Remember who you are.

  Steve Almond

  Art, Real, Struggle

  "The New Yorker’s One Over 40" by Steve Almond, therumpus.net. June 14, 2010.

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• You do not know what you are going to do,the only thing you know is that God knows what He is doing.......It is this attitude that keeps you in perpetual wonder-you do not know what God is going to do next.

  Oswald Chambers

  Attitude, Next, Wonder

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• O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Gold, Quests, Vain

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1906). “Note Books: Arranged and Rendered Into English, with Introd”

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• Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.

  George Eliot

  Life, Saws, Gravity

  George Eliot (1863). “Romola”, p.101

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• The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

  Alain de Botton

  Anxiety, Might, Expecting

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.44, Vintage

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• The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.

  Aristotle

  War, Men, Light

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• I am in awe of the perpetual tumult of the sea. I am moved by the still place on the horizon where the sky begins. I am stirred by the soaring and dipping fields that make the landscape into a rumpled green counterpane. I thought I would never have such powerful feelings again. I thought I would live through the rest of my life having experiences, and thoughts, but I never thought I would again feel deeply-- I was convinced that my wounds had healed and become thick scars, essentially numb.

  Katharine Weber

  Powerful, Sea, Sky

  Katharine Weber (2011). “The Music Lesson: A Novel”, p.19, Crown

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• We're all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.

  Sidney Poitier

  Struggle, Imperfection, Life Is

  46 Copy quote

• The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Real, Home, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Studies in Pessimism: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.23, 谷月社

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• No society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Animal, Generations, Earth

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.596, Cambridge University Press

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• I'm trying to learn something about making a balance between the inner life and the outer life. I wouldn't write if I didn't need to be making those discoveries, if I didn't feel the perpetual ignorance of being a human being.

  Alison Hawthorne Deming

  Writing, Ignorance, Discovery

  Nashville Review Interview, as.vanderbilt.edu. December 1, 2012.

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• Life has, indeed, many ills, but the mind that views every object in its most cheering aspect, and every doubtful dispensation as replete with latent good, bears within itself a powerful and perpetual antidote. The gloomy soul aggravates misfortune, while a cheerful smile often dispels those mists that portend a storm.

  Lydia Sigourney

  Gratitude, Cheer, Powerful

  9 Copy quote