Constancy Quotes - Page 4

• Many are really virtuous who cannot explain what virtue is . . . But the powers themselves in reality perform their several operations with sufficient constancy and uniformity in persons of good health whatever their opinions be about them . . .

  Francis Hutcheson

  Reality, Ethics, Opinion

  Francis Hutcheson (1769). “An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections”, p.7

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• By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

  Edmund Burke

  Moving, Fall, Race

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.405, Penguin

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• We often in our misfortunes take that for constancy and patience which is only dejection of mind; we suffer without daring to holdup our heads, just as cowards let themselves be knocked on the head because they have not courage to strike back.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Depression, Patience, Mind

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• Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love Is, Objects, Confined

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• Constancy in love is of two sorts: One is the effect of new excellencies that are always presenting themselves afresh, and attractour affections continually; the other is only from a point of honor, and a taking of pride not to change.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love, Pride, Two

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• The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.

  Andre Gide

  Perseverance, Men, Hands

  Andre Gide (2017). “Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality”, p.289, Routledge

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• Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Eye, Mind, May

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• If my sense of security lies in my reputation or in the things I have, my life will be in a constant state of threat and jeopardy-a fear that these possessions may be lost, stolen, or devalued. If I'm in the presence of someone of greater net worth, fame, or status, I feel inferior. If I'm in the presence of someone of lesser net worth, fame or status, I feel superior. My sense of self-worth constantly fluctu-ates. I don't have any sense of constancy, anchorage, or persistent selfhood. I am constantly trying to protect and insure my assets, properties, securities, position, or reputation.

  Stephen Covey

  Lying, Self Worth, Trying

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• Nothing makes a woman more esteemed by the opposite sex than chastity; whether it be that we always prize those most who are hardest to come at, or that nothing besides chastity, with its collateral attendants, truth, fidelity, and constancy, gives a man a property in the person he loves, and consequently endears her to him above all things.

  Joseph Addison

  Sex, Men, Opposites

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.323

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• Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Love, Heart, Quality

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• In this world of illusion, where at the end of the examination, we find everything to be of little importance, of little worth, if there is a sign of reality, of something one can depend upon, and in which one can recognize a sign of eternity, it is in the constancy of friendship.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Reality, World, Examination

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• Though youth be past, and beauty fled,
  The constant heart its pledge redeems,
  Like box, that guards the flowerless bed
  And brighter from the contrast seems.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Heart, Past, Bed

  Sarah Josepha Hale (1850). “Dictionary of poetical quotations”, p.82

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• Man's history is woven into waterways, for not only did he live beside them, but he used them as highways for hunting, exploration, and trade. Water assured his welfare, its absence meant migration or death, its constancy nourished his spirit. A mountain, a desert, or a great forest might serve his need of strength, but water reflects his inner needs.

  Sigurd F. Olson

  Men, Hunting, Water

  Sigurd F. Olson (2012). “Wilderness Days”, p.44, U of Minnesota Press

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• He is like to be mistaken who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds, wherein (to derogate from none) the true, heroic English gentleman hath no peer.

  Thomas Browne

  Honesty, Men, Choices

  Sir Thomas Browne (1835). “Sir Thomas Browne's Works: Repertorium. A letter to a friend. Christian morals. Certain miscellany tracts. Unpublished papers”, p.79

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• In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mistake, Suffering, Coward

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• The constancy of the wise is only the art of keeping disquietude to one's self.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Wise, Art, Self

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• They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.

  William Law

  Christian, Perseverance, Prayer

  William Law (1728). “A Practical Treatise Upon Christian Perfection”, p.445

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• beauty is like piety--you cannot run and read it; tranquility and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed.

  Herman Melville

  Beauty, Running, Tranquility

  Herman Melville (2017). “The Complete Works of Herman Melville: Adventure Classics, Sea Tales, Philosophical Works, Short Stories, Poetry & Essays: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, John Marr and Other Sailors…”, p.2763, e-artnow

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• I am as true as truth's simplicity,
  And simpler than the infancy of truth.

  William Shakespeare

  Truth, Simplicity, Infancy

  'Troilus And Cressida' (1602) act 3, sc. 2, l. [176]

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• At the end of every day of every year, two things remain unshakable, our constancy of purpose and our continuous discontent with the immediate present.

  Roberto Goizueta

  Years, Two, Purpose

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• My life will always have dirty dishes. If this sink can become a place of contemplation, let me learn constancy here.

  Gunilla Brodde Norris

  Dirty, Contemplation, Dishes

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• Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Taken, Knowledge, Understanding

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• The slaves of custom and established mode,
  With pack-horse constancy we keep the road
  Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells,
  True to the jingling of our leader's bells.

  William Cowper

  Horse, Leader, Bells

  William Cowper (1785). “Poetical Works: With Notes and a Memoir”, p.207

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• Either the material order is the whole of being, wherein all transcendence is an illusion, or it is the phenomenal surface - mysterious, beautiful, terrible, harsh, and haunting - of a world of living spirits.... One should... be able to recognize that it is only the latter view that has ever had the power - over centuries and in every realm of human accomplishment - to summon desire beyond the boring limits marked by mortality, to endow the will with constancy and purpose, and to shape imagination towards ends that should not be possible within the narrow economies of the flesh.

  David Bentley Hart

  Beautiful, Views, Order

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• Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues--constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness--are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.

  Edmund Burke

  Fall, Political, Quality

  William Pitt (Earl of Chatham), Edmund Burke, Thomas Erskine Baron Erskine, Jean Gabriel Peltier (1834). “Celebrated Speeches of Chatham, Burke, and Erskine: To which is Added the Arguement of Mr. Mackintosh in the Case of Peltier”, p.87

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