Diminish Quotes - Page 21

• When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

  Adam Smith

  Complaining, Decay, Prosperity

  Adam Smith (2007). “The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.60, Harriman House Limited

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• Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue.

  William James

  Life, Happiness, Movement

  William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.105, Harvard University Press

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• Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.

  Maya Angelou

  Time, Children, War

  Maya Angelou (2011). “Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now”, p.10, Bantam

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• Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you; this will diminish his enthusiasm

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Enemy

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• Silence kills the soul; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing.

  Marlon Riggs

  Gay, Justice, Diversity

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• Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.

  Mark Twain

  Dark, Doors, Sobriety

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.383, Courier Corporation

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• In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

  Science, Animal, Giving

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• Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.

  Herbert Spencer

  Science, Humanity, Growth

  Herbert Spencer (1873). “Social Statics; Or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, & the First of Them Developed”, p.79

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• These fiery trials are designed to make you stronger, but they have the potential to diminish or even destroy your trust in the Son of God and to weaken your resolve to keep your promises to Him. These trials are often camouflaged, making them difficult to identify. They take root in our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, our sensitivities, or in those things that matter most to us. A real but manageable test for one can be a fiery trial for another.

  Neil L. Andersen

  Real, Adversity, Son

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• Envying another's beauty will diminish your own. But when you praise beauty in others your own beauty deepens.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Attitude, Praise

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• Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly.

  Thomas Huxley

  Beautiful, Men, Evil

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.80, Cambridge University Press

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• Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex wonderfully unfathomable world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?

  Tim Minchin

  Beautiful, Men, Attention

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• For you deal here above all with human life, and human life is sacred; no one may dare make an attempt upon it. Respect for life, even with regard to the great problem of the birth rate, must find here in your Assembly its highest affirmation and its most rational defense. Your task is to ensure that there is enough bread on the tables of mankind, and not to encourage an artificial control of births, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.

  Pope Paul VI

  Numbers, Order, Birth Rate

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• Remember: courage, unused, diminishes. Commitment, unexercised, wanes. Love, unshared, dissipates.

  Tony Robbins

  Motivational, Relationship, Commitment

  Tony Robbins (2012). “Awaken The Giant Within”, p.139, Simon and Schuster

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• If you wish to grow thinner, diminish your dinner

  Henry Sambrooke Leigh

  Fitness, Food, Weight Loss

  Henry Sambrooke Leigh (1869). “Carols of Cockayne”, p.186

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• Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Courage, Desperate, Cowardice

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• To those who scare peace loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends.

  John Ashcroft

  America, Giving, People

  "Ashcroft: Critics of new terror measures undermine effort", December 7, 2001.

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• What you think upon grows. Whatever you allow to occupy your mind you magnify in your life. Whether the subject of your thought be good or bad, the law works and the condition grows. Any subject that you keep out of your mind tends to diminish in your life, because what you do not use atrophies. The more you think of grievances, the more such trials you will continue to receive; the more you think of the good fortune you have had, the more good fortune will come to you.

  Emmet Fox

  Gratitude, Thinking, Law

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• The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter.

  H. L. Mencken

  Marriage, Wedding, Men

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.

  Arthur Ashe

  Fear, Winning, Greatness

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• One must not be mean with affections; what is spent of the funds is renewed in the spending itself. Left untouched for too long, they diminish imperceptibly or the lock gets rusty; they are there all right but one cannot make use of them.

  Sigmund Freud

  Mean, Emotional, Long

  Sigmund Freud, Ernst L. Freud (1960). “Letters of Sigmund Freud”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• As relationships progress, the time you spend smooching diminishes. Where kissing was once an enjoyable entree unto itself, it becomes a mere appetizer couples hasten through on the way to the main course.

  Jenna McCarthy

  Couple, Kissing, Progress

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• We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart's capacity for joy.

  John Piper

  Heart, Free Gifts, Buying Things

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• There is a diabolical trio existing in the natural man, implacable, inextinguishable, co-operative and consentaneous, pride, envy, and hate; pride that makes us fancy we deserve all the goods that others possess; envy that some should be admired while we are overlooked; and hate, because all that is bestowed on others, diminishes the sum we think due to ourselves.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hate, Pride, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1828). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those who Think”, p.216

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