Commencement Quotes - Page 5

• Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.

  Thomas Thomson

  Astrology, Magic, Superstitions

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• Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God. What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Secret, Delight, Might

  Aurobindo Ghose, Sri Aurobindo (1989). “The Supramental Manifestation, and Other Writings”, Lotus Press (WI)

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• The closing period of the fifteenth century witnessed the slow but sure increase of the churches of the Brethren. Although far from being unmolested, they yet enjoyed comparative rest. At the commencement of the sixteenth century their churches numbered two hundred in Bohemia and Moravia.

  Ezra Hall Gillett

  Two, Church, Increase

  Ezra Hall Gillett (1864). “The Life and Times of John Huss: Or, The Bohemian Reformation of the Fifteenth Century”, p.570

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• You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Evil, Disaster, Rejoice

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.15

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• The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever-new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing.

  William Booth

  Party, Self, Careers

  William Booth (2014). “In Darkest England and the Way Out”, p.51, Cambridge University Press

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• From the very commencement the student should set out to witness the progress and effects of sickness and ought to persevere in the daily observation of disease during the whole period of his studies.

  Robert James Graves

  Progress, Disease, Students

  Introductory Lectures (1850)

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• They who once engage in iniquitous designs miserably deceive themselves when they think that they will go so far and no farther; one fault begets another, one crime renders another necessary; and thus they are impelled continually downward into a depth of guilt, which at the commencement of their career they would have died rather than have incurred.

  Robert Southey

  Thinking, Careers, Design

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• Axiome: la haine du bourgeois est le commencement de la vertu. Axiom: Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Hatred, Bourgeois, Axioms

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• We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement - each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.

  Aristotle

  Littles, Our Actions, Habit

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.80

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• Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!"

  Maximilien Robespierre

  Sleep, Hands, Support

  Last speech to the National Convention, www.bartleby.com. July 26, 1794.

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• George W. Bush gave a commencement speech at Southern Methodist University this weekend. It was pretty inspirational. He said, 'As I like to tell the 'C' students, you too can be president.' Even George W. Bush has George W. Bush comedy material in his act.

  Jimmy Fallon

  Weekend, Southern, President

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• Zealous in the commencement, careless in the end.

  Tacitus

  Zealous, Ends, Careless

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• It is the beginning of the end.
  [Fr., C'est le commencement de al fin.]

  Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

  Als, Ends, Fins

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• The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.
  [Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.]

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Love, Two, Fonts

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• That dog is mine said those poor children; that place in the sun is mine; such is the beginning and type of usurpation throughout the earth.
  [Fr., Ce chien est a moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est la ma place au soleil. Voila le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.]

  Blaise Pascal

  Dog, Children, Earth

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• Play is a sacred thing, a divine ordinance, for developing in the child a harmonious and healthy organism, and preparing that organism for the commencement of the work of life.

  J. G. Holland

  Children, Play, Healthy

  J. G. HOLLAND (1866). “PLAIN TALKS ON FAMILIAR SUBJECTS”, p.88

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• The commencement of coal mining at Parsa Kente is a milestone event in coal mining sector.

  Gautam Adani

  Events, Coal, Milestone

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• I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it.

  Jimmy Cliff

  Artist, Helping, Jamaican Music

  Source: www.gq.com

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• Donald Trump had a university. Well, the state attorney general decided that the Donald Trump University was an unlicensed sham. And I thought, you know you're at a bad university when your commencement speaker is Whitey Bulger.

  David Letterman

  Education, Comedy, States

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• Unusual commencement advice: Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen
  would be it.

  Mary Schmich

  Class, Advice, Gentleman

  Chicago Tribune, 1 June 1997. This column became widely misattributed as a commencement address by Kurt Vonnegut to the MIT Class of 1997

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• President Bush delivered a commencement speech at a university in Wisconsin. A very inspirational speech. Apparently Bush told the students, 'You can do anything in life if your parents work hard enough.'

  Conan O'Brien

  Hard Work, Parent, President

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• As an innovation... the establishment of Free Schools was the boldest ever promulgated, since the commencement of the Christian era... Time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, as beneficient as it was disinterested. It was one of those grand mental and moral experiments... The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by our efforts to perpetuate and improve what they established. The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering.

  Horace Mann

  Christian, Wise, Gratitude

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• One may decide that the nipple most nearly resembles a newly ripened raspberry (never, be it noted, the plonk of water on a pond at the commencement of a drizzle, a simple bladder nozzle built on the suction principal gum bubble, mole, or birth ward, bumpy metal button, or the painful red eruption of a swelling), but does one care to see his breakfast fruit as a sweetened milky bowl of snipped nips? no.

  William H. Gass

  Simple, Water, Eruption

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• Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe.

  Lydia Sigourney

  Spiders, Steel, Links

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• It is always easy enough to take up arms, but very difficult to lay them down; the commencement and the termination of war are notnecessarily in the same hands; even a coward may begin, but the end comes only when the victors are willing.

  Sallust

  War, Hands, May

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