Sole Quotes - Page 15

• An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Time, Truth, Philosophy

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.226, 谷月社

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• We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Hypocrite, Political, World

  Speech, Springfield, Ill., 4 Oct. 1854

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• For such is man: a Theological Dogma might be refuted to him a thousand times - provided however, that he had need of it, he would again and again accept it as true. Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will. Fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the entire sensory-intellectual system.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Intellectual, Atheism

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• Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Fear, Exercise, Men

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: 'binding back', 'binding' to the unknowable, transcending reason, transcendent being). But the church is no longer adequate as a means of affording experience of the transcendental, and of making religion real - and so art has been transformed from a means into the sole provider of religion: which means religion itself.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Real, Mean

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• In opposition... to all the suggestions of the devil, the sole, simple, and sufficient answer is the word of God. This puts to flight all the powers of darkness.

  Charles Hodge

  Christian, Simple, Darkness

  Charles Hodge (1856). “A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians”, p.389

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• It is senseless to argue with someone whose sole purpose in life is to not be convinced of anything.

  Jon Campbell

  Purpose, Arguing, Argument

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• The war for our Union, with all the constitutional issues which it settled, and all the military lessons which it gathered in, has throughout its dilatory length but one meaning in the eyes of history. It freed the country from the social plague which until then had made political development impossible in the United States. More and more, as the years pass, does the meaning stand forth as the sole meaning.

  William James

  Country, War, Military

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• Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.

  Blaise Pascal

  Vanity, Sea, Curiosity

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• There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Hate, Men, America

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• If we once get above our Bibles and cease making the written Word of God our sole rule both as to faith and practice, we shall soon lie open to all manner of delusion and be in great danger of making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience.

  George Whitefield

  Lying, Practice, Danger

  George Whitefield (1772). “The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A...: Containing All His Sermons and Tracts which Have Been Already Published: with a Select Collection of Letters... Also, Some Other Pieces on Important Subjects, Never Before Printed; Prepared by Himself for the Press; to which is Prefixed, an Account of His Life, Compiled from His Original Papers and Letters”, p.27

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• The manner in which things exist and take place, constitutes what is called the nature of things; and a careful observation of the nature of things is the sole foundation of all truth.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Nature, Truth, Foundation

  Jean Baptiste Say (1827). “A treatise on political economy: or, The production, distribution and consumption of wealth”, p.21

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• Chance alone is at the source of every innovaton, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty is at the root of the prodigious edifice that is evolution... It today is the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. Stating life began by the chance collision of particles of nucleic acid in the "prebiotic soup."

  Jacques Monod

  Science, Squares, Roots

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• ... the more I learned, the more conscious did I become of the fact that I was ridiculous. So that for me my years of hard work at the university seem in the end to have existed for the sole purpose of demonstrating and proving to me, the more deeply engrossed I became in my studies, that I was an utterly absurd person

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Hard Work, Years, Purpose

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• I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect; the value of all values.

  Milan Kundera

  Self, Feelings, Suffering

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• As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition' or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people.

  Philip Larkin

  Believe, Guiding Principles, People

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• I have encountered a few "creationists" and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were really mad or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind?

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Religious, Nice, Intelligent

  "Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids". Essay by Arthur C. Clarke for journal "Science" (pp. 1532-1533), June 5, 1998.

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• Infiniti ads are part of an exciting new trend called "Advertising Whose Sole Purpose Is to Irritate You."

  Dave Barry

  Humorous, Purpose, Trends

  Dave Barry (1994). “The World According to Dave Barry”, Outlet

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• You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.

  Blaise Pascal

  Believe, Air, Feet

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• Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Fundamentals, Crafts

  Ezra Pound, Forrest Read (1967). “Pound/Joyce; the Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce: With Pound's Essays on Joyce”, p.249, New Directions Publishing

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• If man--if each one of us--abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each one of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as I have described it, and the determinates will be transformed into inevitabilities.

  Jacques Ellul

  Responsibility, Men, Civilization

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• O love, what strange and wonderful fits: one sole thing, one beauty alone, can give me life and deprive me of wits.

  Gaspara Stampa

  Giving, Sensual, Strange

  Gaspara Stampa, “Rime 28”

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• Are you happy in your misery? Resting peaceful in desolation? It’s the final tie that binds us The sole source of my consolation" “blue

  Gayle Forman

  Blue, Ties, Peaceful

  Gayle Forman (2011). “Where She Went”, p.99, Penguin

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• L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle. "It means that love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.

  Cassandra Clare

  Powerful, Moving, Mean

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.1454, Simon and Schuster

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• If they are really persuaded that the army is annually established by me, that I have the sole disposal of posts and honours, that I employ this power in the destruction of liberty and the diminution of commerce, let me awaken them from their delusion.

  Robert Walpole

  Army, Liberty, Awakening

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