Please Quotes - Page 12

• When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest. A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness.

  Eric Hoffer

  People, Giving, Originality

  'Passionate State of Mind' (1955) p. 21

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• Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Perfection, World

  Joseph Addison (1837). “The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 1-314”, p.329

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• We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time. And so on until the unforeseen day, gloomy as a winter night, when one no longer seeks that girl, or any other, when to find her would actually scare one. For one no longer feels that one has attractions enough to please, or strength enough to love. Not, of course, that one is in the strict sense of the word impotent. And as for loving, one would love more than ever. But one feels that it is too big an undertaking for the little strength one has left.

  Marcel Proust

  Girl, Winter, Night

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.348, Modern Library

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• Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it--how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table. Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all.

  Charles Lamb

  Eye, Men, Wife

  Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb (1913). “Miscellaneous prose (1798-1834)”

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• In things which we know, everyone will trust us ... and we may do as we please, and no one will like to interfere with us; and we are free, and masters of others; and these things will be really ours, for we shall turn them to our good.

  Plato

  Knowledge, May, Masters

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• Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God.

  Martin Luther

  Order, Needs, Done

  Martin Luther (2012). “Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings”, p.864, Fortress Press

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• I have grounded my preaching upon the literal word; he that pleases may follow me; he that will not may stay.

  Martin Luther

  May, Follow Me, Preaching

  Martin Luther (2012). “The Table Talk of Martin Luther”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Helping Others, Thinking

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.100, Anchor

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• If I go
  Before I'm old
  Oh, brother of mine
  Please don't forget me if I go
  Bartender, please
  Fill my glass for me
  With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free
  After three days in the ground.

  Dave Matthews

  Brother, Jesus, Wine

  "Song: 'Bartender'". 2002.

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• Would you please publish the enclosed manuscript or return it without delay, as I have other irons in the fire.

  Elinor Glyn

  Fire, Iron, Delay

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• War may be the game of kings, but, like the games at ancient Rome, it is generally exhibited to please and pacify the people.

  Arthur Helps

  Kings, War, Rome

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

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• It would seem that in Paine's view the code of government should be that of the legendary King Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please.

  Albert J. Nock

  Hurt, Kings, Men

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 36), 1935.

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• Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.

  Tony Benn

  Please Me, Old Wounds, Energy

  "Mr Benn delays EEC meeting". "The Times" Newspaper, December 13, 1975.

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• ISIS is a formidable foe, but the counter forces to it have only just begun and if these forces, the Iraqi army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, American air power, the Syrian Free Army, work in a coordinated fashion, it will start losing ground. Also, please keep in mind that ISIS does not actually hold as much ground as the many maps flashed on television keep showing. Large parts of those territories that ISIS supposedly controls are vacant desert.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Fashion, Army, Air

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• If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Reading, Mean, Know Yourself

  "Aphorisms on Man" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, (c. 1788).

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• Mix and knead together all the state business as you do for your sausages. To win the people, always cook them some savory that pleases them.

  Aristophanes

  Winning, People, Together

  Aristophanes (2016). “The Knights”, p.16, Aristophanes

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• If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not.

  Aristophanes

  Cat, Men, Tails

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• Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span Where weeping Virtue parts with man; Where love without lust dwells, and bends What way we please without self-ends. An age of mysteries! which he Must live that would God's face see Which angels guard, and with it play, Angels! which foul men drive away.

  Henry Vaughan

  Angel, Men, Self

  Henry Vaughan, Henry Francis Lyte (1871). “The Poetical Works of Herbert and Vaughan: With a Memoir”, p.241

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• Let the corporations do as they please -- pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets -- and it is none of the federal government's business to interfere with the will of heaven.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Government, Heaven, Corporations

  Lewis H. Lapham (1997). “Waiting for the Barbarians”, p.17, Verso

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• My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please!

  Ernest Bevin

  Able, Tickets, Damn

  In 'Spectator' 20 April 1951, p. 514

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• I have way too many commitments. I get pulled in too many directions and I never seem to be able to satisfy anybody. People get turned on by knowing a celebrity, even my friends and family. They feel that there's something exciting about me, but in reality there's no substance to it. People in airports just hold on to me expecting something and it seems that I always come up empty. It's frustrating because I'm trying to please everybody, and ya just can't do that ... at least I can't.

  Tim Allen

  Commitment, Reality, Airports

  "An interview with Tim Allen". Interview to Laugh Factory Magazine, www.timallen.com. 1994.

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• I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you're not going to alienate and hurt him, and I'm firmly against that, just as I disapprove of people who dress with that in mind - dye their hair blue and stick safety pins through their noses and so on.

  John Ashbery

  Hurt, Thinking, Hair

  "John Ashbery, The Art of Poetry No. 33". Interview with Peter A. Stitt for The Paris Review, Issue 90, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 1983.

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• The more we can be raised above the petty vexations and pleasures of this world into the eternal life to come, the more shall we be prepared to enter into that eternal life whenever God shall please to call us hence.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  World, Vexation, Eternity

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1863). “Sermons Preached Before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales: During His Tour in the East in the Spring of 1862 with Notices of Some of the Localities Visited”, p.95

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• While women once acquired relationship skills to "hook," "snare," or "catch" a husband who would provide access to economic security and social status, the position of contemporary women has not changed that radically. Much of our success still depends on our attunement to "male culture," our ability to please men, and our readiness to conform to the masculine values of our institutions.

  Harriet Lerner

  Husband, Women, Skills

  Harriet Lerner (2009). “The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman's Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships”, p.6, Harper Collins

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• You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to set down what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Fall, Writing, Cities

  Ford Madox Ford (1962). “The Bodley Head Ford Madox Ford: The good soldier. Selected memories. Poems”

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