Infirmity Quotes - Page 6

• Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Prejudice

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• If there is a chronic infirmity by which every teacher ought to be afflicted, it is, indeed, hope.

  George Steiner

  God, Faith, Hope

  George Steiner (2010). “No Passion Spent”, p.224, Faber & Faber

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• So long as thou are ignorant be not ashamed to learn. Ignorance is the greatest of all infirmities, and when justified, the chiefest of all follies.

  Izaak Walton

  Ignorance, Long, Ignorant

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• For years I've wanted to live according to everyone else's morals. I've forced myself to live like everyone else, to look like everyone else. I said what was necessary to join together, even when I felt separate. And after all of this, catastrophe came. Now I wander amid the debris, I am lawless, torn to pieces, alone and accepting to be so, resigned to my singularity and to my infirmities. And I must rebuild a truth-after having lived all my life in a sort of lie.

  Albert Camus

  Inspirational, Lying, Years

  Albert Camus (2008). “Notebooks, 1951-1959”, Ivan R Dee

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• The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy, walk and be healthy. "The best of all ways to lengthen our days" is not, as Mr. Thomas Moore has it, "to steal a few hours from night, my love;" but, with leave be it spoken, to walk steadily and with a purpose. The wandering man knows of certain ancients, far gone in years, who have staved off infirmities and dissolution by earnest walking,-hale fellows close upon eighty and ninety, but brisk as boys.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Boys, Night

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• The cause of laziness is physiological; it is an infirmity of the constitution, and its victim is as much to be pitied as a sufferer from any other constitutional infirmity. It is even worse than many other diseases; from them the patient may recover, while this is incurable.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Laziness, May, Disease

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• Poverty, many can endure with dignity. Success, how few can carry off, even with decency and without baring their innermost infirmities before the public gaze!

  Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham

  Poverty, Dignity, Endure

  Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1902). “Success”

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• We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves. When we see the martyr to virtue, subject as he is to the infirmities of a man, yet suffering the tortures of a demon, and bearing them with the magnanimity of a God, do we not behold a heroism that angels may indeed surpass, but which they cannot imitate, and must admire.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Humility, Angel, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.212

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• Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway,
  The passion and infirmity of age.

  James Anthony Froude

  Passion, Age, Bears

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• Gracefulness cannot subsist without ease; delicacy is not debility; nor must a woman be sick in order to please. Infirmity, and sickness may excite our pity, but desire and pleasure require the bloom and vigor of health.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Order, Sick, Grace

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1783). “Emilius and Sophia: Or, A New System of Education”, p.186

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• Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest us with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Depressing, Art, Grief

  Thomas De Quincey (1862). “Confessions of an English Opium-eater: And, Suspiria de Profundis”, p.182

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• It is impossible not to be moved by the verve, courage and elan with Churchill attacked his last and ultimately invincible enemy, old age and infirmity. As in all his campaigns, he assailed his adversary with endless high spirits, expert advice, ample helpings of brandy and champagne, and the loving and long-suffering support of his wife.

  David Cannadine

  Long, Wife, Advice

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• Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings... Those whom the appearance of virtue or the evidence of genius has tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer, in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Curiosity, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.163, Univ of California Press

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• Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

  John Milton

  Sports, Thinking, Hair

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 64

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• Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Weakness, Admiration

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.82

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• Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like silkworms, and is suffocated in it. A mouse in a pitch barrel...thinks it notices from a distance some sort of glimmer of imaginary light and truth; but while running toward it, it is crossed by so many difficulties and obstacles, and diverted by so many new quests, that it strays from the road, bewildered.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Running, Distance, Men

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• True humility is a Christian grace and one of the fruits of the Spirit, originating in a deep consciousness of sin past and present, and leading us to discover our nothingness in the view of God, our insufficiency for any thing that is good, and prompting us, as we feel our infirmities, to strive after higher and yet higher attainments.

  James McCosh

  Christian, Humility, Past

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Dictionary by Gilbert, Josiah Hotchkiss, p. 329, 1895.

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• I do not know whether it is the view of the Court that a judge must be thick-skinned or just thick-headed, but nothing in my experience or observation confirms the idea that he is insensitive to publicity. Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame a good public name is, as Milton said, the "last infirmity of noble mind", it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Views, Names, Ideas

  "Craig v. Harney, 331 U. S. 367, 396". Judicial opinion, 1947.

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• Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die. But, once realise what the true object is in life — that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds' — but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man — and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!

  Lewis Carroll

  Death, Character, Men

  Lewis Carroll (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (Illustrated)”, p.265, Delphi Classics

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• Rich men are to bear the infirmities of the poor. Wise men are to bear the mistakes of the ignorant. Strong men are to bear with the feeble. Cultured people are to bear with the rude and vulgar. If a rough and coarse man meets an ecstatically fine man, the man that is highest up is to be the servant of the man that is lowest down.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Wise, Mistake, Men

  "Morning and Evening Exercises: Selected from the Published and Unpublished Writings of The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher".

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• The believer is sensible of his infirmities, for it is supposed that he is wrestling under them. He sees, he feels, that he is not man enough for his work; that his own hands are not sufficient for him, nor his own back for his burden; this is what drives him out of himself to the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And thus he lies open to the help of the Spirit, while proud nature in unbelievers is left helpless.

  Thomas Boston

  Jesus, Lying, Wrestling

  Thomas Boston (1844). “Select Works of Thomas Boston: With a Memoir of His Life and Writings”, p.522

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• The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple.

  Victor Hugo

  Simple, Doctors, Oil

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• But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace - the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors - makes all infirmities occasions of glory.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Attitude, Mistake

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• What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Attention, Absurd

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.243

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• The gospel of Jesus Christ has the divine power to lift you to great heights from what appears at times to be an unbearable burden or weakness. The Lord knows your circumstances and your challenges. He said to Paul and to all of us, 'My grace is sufficient for thee.' And like Paul we can answer: 'My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me'(2 Corinthinans 12:9)".

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Jesus, Perfect, Grace

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