Disposition Quotes - Page 16

• It is worth thought what kind of mind or condition or disposition is open to flattery; for poison would not be spread if the rats ate it not.

  James Vila Blake

  Mind, Poison, Rats

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• The greatest human virtue bears no proportion to human vanity. We always think ourselves better than we are, and are generally desirous that others should think us still better than we think ourselves. To praise us for actions or dispositions which deserve praise is not to confer a benefit, but to pay a tribute. We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable, and which we are desirous to strengthen by a new suffrage; we have always hopes which we suspect to be fallacious, and of which we eagerly snatch at every confirmation.

  Samuel Johnson

  Heart, Thinking, Vanity

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.216

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• Perhaps the most eloquent of the hard virtues is courage, the disposition to encounter adversity head-on and strive to overcome it.

  Ted Malloch

  Adversity, Overcoming, Encounters

  "Doing Virtuous Business: The Remarkable Success of Spiritual Enterprise". Book by Ted Malloch, 2011.

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• A frequent intercourse and intimate connection between two persons make them so like, that not only their dispositions are moulded like each other, but their very face and tone of voice contract a certain analogy.

  Pope Agapetus I

  Two, Voice, Connections

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• I see a generation comprised of all ages, inclusive of men and women, awakening to the extraordinary qualities hidden within. The power to accomplish remarkable feats and live an exceptional life is not defined by an individual's family, education, or occupation; it's a disposition of the heart. Unless it's suppressed, there is an innate desire to rise above the norm. I encourage you to step into the unknown, embrace the divine empowerment, and live your extraordinary life.

  John Bevere

  Heart, Men, Age

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• There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, Two, History

  Edward Gibbon (2015). “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V1: the History Focus”, p.348, 谷月社

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• (Because) the notion of absolute truth is difficult to sustain outside the context of religion, ethical conduct is not something we engage in because it is somehow right in itself but because, like ourselves, all others desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. Given that this is a natural disposition, shared by all, it follows that each individual has a right to pursue this goal. Accordingly, I suggest that one of the things which determines whether an act is ethical or not is its effect on others' experience or expectation of happiness.

  Dalai Lama

  Goal, Expectations, Suffering

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• I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterwards that they were right and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions.

  Alexei Panshin

  People, Facts, Ethical

  Alexei Panshin (1982). “Rite of passage”, Pocket

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• The object of punishment is to... lift the man up; to stamp out his bad nature and wicked disposition.

  Isaac Parker

  Men, Wicked, He Man

  Letter to U.S. Attorney General Augustus Hill Garland, May 27, 1885.

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• There is no security in a good disposition if the support of good principles--that is to say, of religion, of Christian faith--be wanting. It may be soured by misfortune, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support.

  Robert Southey

  Christian, Support, Principles

  Robert Southey (1872). “The Doctor, &c”

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• The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the strategems of surprise, are to be learned by practice.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Character, Writing

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.223

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• The last point for consideration is the supposed disposition of the people to interfere with the rights of property. So essential does it appear to me, to the cause of good government, that the rights of property should be held sacred, that I would agree to deprive those of the elective franchise against whom it could justly be alleged that they considered it their interest to invade them.

  David Ricardo

  Wisdom, Rights, Government

  David Ricardo, John Ramsay McCulloch (1846). “The Works of David Ricardo ...”, p.554

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• The workmen in a factory may have a shadowy, unknown absentee "employer" - the thousands of individual owners of stock - whom "management" represents and tries to please by extra dividends. The workman's livelihood is at the disposition of strangers who make a single demand of their representatives: higher profits.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Trying, Demand

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• One of the most evil dispositions possible is that which satirizes and turns everything to ridicule. God abhors this vice, and has sometimes punished it in a marked manner

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Evil, Vices, Sometimes

  Saint Francis de Sales, Catholic Way Publishing (2015). “Introduction to the Devout Life”, p.248, Catholic Way Publishing

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• I have this wholesome disposition in a lot of my characters. A certain earnestness.

  Matt Lauria

  Character, Certain, Earnestness

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• In going abroad we change the climate not our dispositions.

  Horace

  Climate

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• The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Health, Dark, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher (1866). “Royal truths”, p.37

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• We know much of a writer by his style. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornament.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Style, Mind, Ornaments

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• A good disposition I far prefer to gold; for gold is the gift of fortune; goodness of disposition is the gift of nature. I prefer much rather to be called good than fortunate.

  Plautus

  Ego, Gold, Goodness

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 326-29, Poenulus, I. 2. 90, 1922.

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• In misfortune if you cultivate a cheerful disposition you will reap the advantage of it.

  Plautus

  Cheerful, Advantage, Reap

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• There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Character, Men, Judging

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.5

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• But the conceit of one's self and the conceit of one's hobby are hardly more prolific of eccentricity than the conceit of one's money. Avarice, the most hateful and wolfish of all the hard, cool, callous dispositions of selfishness, has its own peculiar caprices and crotchets. The ingenuities of its meanness defy all the calculations of reason, and reach the miraculous in subtlety.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Self, Hobbies, Peculiar

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1866). “Character and Characteristic Men”, p.47

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• The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

  William Hazlitt

  Anger, Fire, Spirit

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• There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinking, Talking, Proof

  William Hazlitt (1859). “Table talk”

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• I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.

  Joseph Addison

  Sex, Light, Evil

  Joseph Addison, Richard Hurd, Henry George Bohn (1873). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison”, p.263

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