Providence Quotes - Page 19

• What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity, and continuation in the whole, for ... I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery; and therefore if we could correct the world to our fancies, and with the best intentions imaginable, probably we should only produce more misery and confusion.

  Horace Walpole

  Believe, Men, Order

  Horace Walpole (1904). “The letters of Horace Walpole: fourth earl of Orford”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• O SON OF MAN! My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. Hasten thereunto that thou mayest become an eternal light and an immortal spirit. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Son, Men, Fire

  5 Copy quote

• Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.

  Frank Herbert

  Destiny, Thinking, Support

  "Whipping Star". Book by Frank Herbert, "From The Wreave Commentary"; p. 136, 1969.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Providence seems to look after the chumps of this world; and, personally, I'm all for it.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Looks, World, Chumps

  "Aunts Omnibus".

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• You are equipped with strong bodies and educated minds. Add to these an unshakable faith in a divine providence and you have the tools by which you may build a successful life. Make each day your masterpiece and live so nobly that you may witness honestly each day: Whatever came to your hands this day, you did it to the best of your ability

  Harold B. Lee

  Strong, Successful, Hands

  9 Copy quote

• My Calamity is my providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy.

  Bahá'u'lláh

  Fire, Light, Vengeance

  6 Copy quote

• Men have been led in dark paths, through the providence and dispensation of God. Why, surely it is not to be objected to a man, for who can love to walk in the dark? But providence doth often so dispose.

  Oliver Cromwell

  Dark, Men, Path

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill, Oliver Cromwell (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.64, Cambridge University Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

  Robert E. Lee

  Mean, Men, Thinking

  Letter to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Marshall, September 1870.

  249 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities.

  George Mason

  Country, Tyrants, Heaven

  "The Journal of the Debates in the Convention which Framed the Constitution of the United States, May-September, 1787", Volume 2, as recorded by James Madison, 1908.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• Providence was well aware what lay ahead for me, and my Capuchin training was to prepare me for it.

  Abbe Pierre

  Training, Wells, Lays

  4 Copy quote

• ...as soon as we examine suicide from the standpoint of religion we immediately see it in its true light. We have been placed in this world under certain conditions and for specific purposes. But a suicide opposes the purpose of his creator; he arrives in the other world as one who has deserted his post; he must be looked upon as a rebel against God. God is our owner; we are his property; his providence works for our good.

  Immanuel Kant

  Suicide, Suicidal, Light

  14 Copy quote

• A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Inspirational, Mean, Opportunity

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know-we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.

  George W. Bush

  Faith, Way, Loving God

  Second Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered January 28, 2003

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Responsibility, Organization, Unity

  14 Copy quote

• I can express no better hope for my country than that the kind Providence which smiled upon our fathers may enable their children to preserve the blessings they have inherited.

  Franklin Pierce

  Country, Children, Father

  George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, James Knox Polk, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama (2017). “Inaugural Speeches from the Presidents of the United States - Complete Edition”, p.110, e-artnow sro

  64 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of a thousand intellects.

  Samuel Johnson

  Knowledge, Science, Understanding

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.199, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Faith, Astrology, Left Alone

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• When Providence favors, you can make a safe voyage on a twig.

  Publilius Syrus

  Favors, Safe, Voyages

  4 Copy quote

• Among the innumerable Footsteps of Divine Providence to be found in the Works of Nature, there is a very remarkable one to be observed in the exact Balance that is maintained, between the Numbers of Men and Women; for by this means it is provided, that the Species may never fail, nor perish, since every Male may have its Female, and of a proportionable Age.

  John Arbuthnot

  Mean, Men, Numbers

  "The Correspondence of Dr. John Arbuthnot".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Giving, Alarms, Unnecessary

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2001). “The Scarlet letter”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

  Jonathan Swift

  Death, Evil, Dying

  Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott (1824). “Sermons (cont.) Tracts in defence of Christianity. Tracts in support of the Church establishment. Tracts on the test act. Essays, periodical and miscellaneous”, p.56

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• The power, indeed, of every individual is small, and the consequence of his endeavours imperceptible, in a general prospect of the world. Providence has given no man ability to do much, that something might be left for every man to do. The business of life is carried on by a general co-operation; in which the part of any single man can be no more distinguished, than the effect of a particular drop when the meadows are floated by a summer shower: yet every drop increases the inundation, and every hand adds to the happiness or misery of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Summer, Men, Hands

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.291

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.

  George Santayana

  Wisdom, Men, Intelligence

  George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.50, Рипол Классик

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred...unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Moving, Commitment, Misunderstood

  267 Copy quote

• Fate! There is no fate. Between the thought and the success God is the only agent. Fate is not the ruler, but the servant of Providence.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Fate, Agents, Servant

  9 Copy quote