Potency Quotes

• Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Capacity, Faculty, Accomplish

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• If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.

  Ralph Ellison

  Political, Politics, Revive

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• Fashion is a potency in art, making it hard to judge between the temporary and the lasting.

  Edmund Clarence Stedman

  Fashion, Art, Judging

  Edmund Clarence Stedman (1885). “Poets of America”

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• The art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency.

  Thomas Paine

  Art, Years, Black

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• Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Lying, Power

  "The Art of Loving".

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• For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

  John Milton

  Life, Book, Soul

  'Areopagitica' (1644) p. 4

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• As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion - and I worried about it.

  William Westmoreland

  Senior, Public Opinion, Vietnam

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• The art of publicity is a black art.

  Learned Hand

  Art, Black, Publicity

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• In the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

  Erich Fromm

  Lying, Expression, Generosity

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.29, Open Road Media

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• Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

  Erich Fromm

  Inspirational, Motivational, Lying

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.29, Open Road Media

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• The horse, the horse! The symbol of surging potency and power of movement, of action.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Horse, Inspiration, Movement

  D. H. Lawrence, Mara Kalnins (2002). “Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation”, p.102, Cambridge University Press

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• If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

  George Crumb

  Art, Looks, Elements

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• The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency---half tiger,half poet.

  Yehudi Menuhin

  Half, Poet, Phenomenon

  Yehudi Menuhin (1986). “Life class: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist”, Vintage

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• Sometimes we are devils to ourselves When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, Presuming on their changeful potency.

  William Shakespeare

  Evil, Temptation, Sometimes

  William Shakespeare (1867). “Works. The Text Carefully Restored According to the First Editions: With Introductions, Notes Original and Selected, and a Life of the Poet”, p.472

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• Use almost can change the stamp of nature.

  William Shakespeare

  Use, Habit, Easiness

  William Shakespeare (1851). “Dictionary of Shakespearian quotations: Exhibiting the most forcible passages illustrative of the various passions, affections and emotions of the human mind”, p.158

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• Between the desire And the spasm, Between the potency And the existence, Between the essence And the descent, Falls the Shadow.

  T. S. Eliot

  Fall, Essence, Shadow

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.75, Faber & Faber

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• Giving is the highest expression of potency.

  Erich Fromm

  Expression, Giving, Charity

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.

  Stephen Covey

  Power, Choices, Decision

  Stephen R. Covey (2013). “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

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• In all technai or arts (medicine perhaps most of all), there is a self-exhilaration on the part of the practitioner (the intoxication of the ego with its own potency) which is infectious: the patient enjoys a placebo-effect which redounds to the ego of the "artist."

  Kenny Smith

  Art, Philosophy, Self

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• Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Doe, World, Violence

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

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• The true liberation of eroticism lies in accepting the fact that there are a million facets to it, a million forms of eroticism, a million objects of it, situations, atmospheres, and variations. We have, first of all, to dispense with guilt concerning its expansion, then remain open to it's surprises, varied expressions, and mingle it with dreams, fantasies, and emotion for it to attain its highest potency.

  Anais Nin

  Dream, Lying, Expression

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• Ignoring the mind is a beautiful sadhana. This is what many of the sages did. They ignored the mind out of existence. It loses its influence and its potency when it is ignored.

  Mooji

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Wisdom

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• There is no essential difference between sticking pins into a wax image of an enemy and burning candles in front of a wax image of the Virgin. You may think that both these practices are gross superstition, but you can hardly think that one is real and potent and deny reality and potency to the other.

  Dion Fortune

  Real, Thinking, Practice

  Dion Fortune (2016). “Psychic self-defense: The Classic Instruction Manual for Protecting Yourself Against Paranormal Attack”, p.13, Dion Fortune

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• The Word is the master key for the whole world, inasmuch as through its potency the doors of the hearts of men, which in reality are the doors of heaven, are unlocked.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Heart, Reality, Men

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• I worry sometimes that we're apt to confuse forgiveness with forgetfulness. The potency of forgiveness comes precisely from the fact that it must be done while being goaded by an unhappy memory.

  Patrick Gale

  Memories, Worry, Unhappy

  Patrick Gale (2010). “Rough Music”, p.359, Ballantine Books

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