Disposition Quotes - Page 17

• 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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• I have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable that he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Atheism, Facts, Lord

  Abraham Lincoln (1894). “The Table Talk of Abraham Lincoln”

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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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• Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.

  Joseph Addison

  Party, Character, Opportunity

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.46

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• It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse.

  Joseph Addison

  Vanity, Ill Will, Mind

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.675

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• If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch indeed who will not give them to him. Such a disposition is like lighting another man's candle by one's own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.

  William Penn

  Men, Two, Giving

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• For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

  Thomas Hobbes

  War, Fighting, Battle

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• To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another's society; so let us be content.

  L. Frank Baum

  Different, Spices, Variety Is The Spice Of Life

  L. Frank Baum (2008). “8 Books in 1: L. Frank Baum's "Oz" Series, Volume 2 of 2. Little Wizard Stories of Oz, Tik-Tok of Oz, The Scarecrow Of Oz, Rinkitink In Oz, The Lost Princess Of Oz,”, p.430, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• Peace ... was contingent upon a certain disposition of the soul, a disposition to receive the gift that only detachment from self made possible.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Self, Soul, Detachment

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