Vigor Quotes - Page 6

• In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American -- on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.

  Wallace Stevens

  Hands, Giving, Gold

  Wallace Stevens, Holly Stevens (1966). “Letters of Wallace Stevens”, p.90, Univ of California Press

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• A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awake his vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty. And there is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Discipline, Growing

  Michel de Montaigne (1872). “All the Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne”, p.865

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• The soul, like the body, acquires vigor by the exercise of all its faculties. In the midst of the world, in overcoming difficulties, in conquering selfishness, indolence, and fear--in all the occasions of duty, it employs, and reveals by employing, energies that render it efficient and robust--that broaden its scope, adjust its powers, and mature it with a rich experience.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Exercise, Soul, Selfishness

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• Happiness requires courage, stamina, persistence, fortitude, perseverance, bravery, boldness, valor, vigor, concentration, solidity, substance, backbone, grit, guts, moxie, nerve, pluck, resilience, spunk, tenacity, tolerance, will power, chutzpah, and a good thesaurus.

  Peter McWilliams

  Perseverance, Persistence, Bravery

  Peter McWilliams (1997). “Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned about Life in School--but Didn't”, Mary Book / Prelude Press

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• The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. The boys have gone hog-wild with liberty, yet the short flat terms used over and over, both in dialogue and narrative, add neither vigor nor clarity; the effect is not of shock but of something far more dangerous — tedium.

  Dorothy Parker

  Beautiful, Thinking, Boys

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• The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Passion, Yield, Evil

  henry ward beecher (1858). “life thoughts,”, p.76

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• Let us bequeath our children more than the gadgets that surround us. If bicycling can be restored to the daily life of all Americans, it can be a vital step toward rebuilding health and vigor in all of us.

  Paul Dudley White

  Children, Gadgets, Rebuilding

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• Age - That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Life, Time, Age

  Ambrose Bierce (1906). “The Cynic's Word Book”, p.14, Lulu.com

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• When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete... Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws, everything is sterile and dead.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Wise, Law, People

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just's remarks on autumn 1792, as quoted in "Oeuvres Completes de Saint-Just", Volume 1, edited by Charles Vellay, 1908.

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• The spirits increase, vigor grows through a wound.

  Aulus Gellius

  Spirit, Increase, Grows

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• If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we'd have a pretty average record. It wasn't hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along, you pounced on them with vigor.

  Charlie Munger

  Money, Opportunity, Average

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• Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "Breeds pestilence.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Desire, Energy, Pestilence

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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• ...when a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Stronger, Made, Brevity

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling.

  Laura Hillenbrand

  Fate, Men, Emotional

  Laura Hillenbrand (2010). “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption”, p.148, Random House

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• Ah, afflicted one, your disabilities were meant to unite with God's enablings, your weakness to mate His power. God's grace is at hand -sufficent-- and at its best when human weakness is most profound. Appropriate it and learn that those who wait on God are stronger in their weakness than the sons of men in their stoutest health and vigor.

  F.B. Meyer

  Son, Men, Hands

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• We need spirited, energetic and strong young people whose hearts are filled with life, enthusiasm, zeal and dynamism; whose souls are full of ambition, aspiration and vigor and have great goals, rising and aspiring to reach them until they eventually arrive at their destination.

  Hassan al-Banna

  Wisdom, Strong, Islamic

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• After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

  Annie Dillard

  Eye, Fire, Flames

  "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek". Book by Annie Dillard, 1974.

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• In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Order, Break Through

  John Stuart Mill (2003). “Mill's On Liberty”, p.81, Agora Publications, Inc.

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• I think one of the great, great problems...is confusing people to the point where they become immobile. In fact, the more things people can find out for themselves, the more vigor the organization is going to have.

  Cesar Chavez

  Thinking, Organization, People

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• Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Those that walk with vigor, three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.

  Samuel Johnson

  Perseverance, Years, Space

  Samuel Johnson (1856). “Rasselas”, p.29

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• The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Heart, Government, Law

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.75, Courier Corporation

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• The Hermit was known to be pretty sniffy about disciples who returned in failure. There was a wall of the institute layered with their skins- an ingenious display that encouraged vigor in his students, as well as nicely keeping out the drafts.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Wall, Skins, Students

  Jonathan Stroud (2005). “Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three: Ptolemy's Gate”, Disney-Hyperion

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• In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Order, Cities

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.157, Vintage

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• But I do say that, if you will regularly devote 15 minutes a day, preferably before breakfast, for 60 days to the simple set of exercises that I devised for conditioning men in the navy, I guarantee that you will enjoy increased physical buoyancy and mental vigor.

  Gene Tunney

  Exercise, Simple, Men

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• A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Adventure, Past

  Alfred North Whitehead (1975). “Whitehead's American Essays in Social Philosophy”, Greenwood Publishing Group

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