Former Quotes - Page 9

• My ambition was to embrace those general qualities that Ernest Hemingway, a former newspaperman, once said should be present in all good books: 'the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.'

  Pete Hamill

  Book, Ambition, Weather

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• Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with the former.

  Charles Dickens

  Selfish, Heart, Character

  Charles Dickens (1867). “Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].”, p.54

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• Family violence is a criminal act; perpetrators, while often former victims themselves, need to accept culpability.

  Leslie Morgan Steiner

  Criminals, Needs, Violence

  "Commentary: Rihanna may not be alone" by Leslie Morgan Steiner, www.cnn.com. February 18, 2009.

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• If there were a reason for preferring the Christian religion to natural religion, it would be because the former offers us, on the nature of God and man, enlightenment that the latter lacks. Now, this is not at all the case; for Christianity, instead of clarifying, gives rise to an infinite multitude of obscurities and difficulties.

  Denis Diderot

  Christian, Men, Giving

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• We really have no choice but to pray and encourage a return to an America steeped in Judeo-Christian values. It is either that or taking our chances in a society with no values at all. For all Americans the former carries certain risks, but the latter spells certain doom. For now, we should not be deflected by theological debate from the life-saving tasks awaiting us. There is work to be done. We must ensure that America will continue to be part of God's plan for the world.

  Daniel Lapin

  Christian, America, Choices

  Rabbi Daniel Lapin (2012). “America's Real War”, p.526, Multnomah

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• Humanity and bestiality: when will the former finally be uttered with the flavor of hate and the latter with the flavor of love? Does a lion tear his fellow lion to pieces?

  Karl Kraus

  Hate, Humanity, Tears

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

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• The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavernis where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Prayer, Religion, Church

  Henry David Thoreau (1868). “Excursions”, p.108

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• We must endeavor to forget our former love for them [the British] and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

  Thomas Jefferson

  War, Enemy, Forget

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• The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Eye, College

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.109

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• Some of the offers that have come to me would never have come if I had not been President. That means these people are trying to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a former President of the United States. I can't make that kind of use of the office.... I can't do anything that might take away from the Presidency any of its dignity, or any of the faith people have in it.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Mean, Office, People

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• Nearly all literature, in one sense, is made up of guide-books. Old ones tell us the ways our fathers went, through the thoroughfares and courts of old; but how few of those former places can their posterity trace, amid avenues of modern erections; to how few is the old guide-book now a clew! Every age makes its own guide-books, and the old ones are used for waste paper.

  Herman Melville

  Father, Book, Age

  Herman Melville (1963). “Works: Redburn, his first voyage”

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• Computer Science: A study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter.

  Stan Kelly-Bootle

  Astrology, Numerology, Study

  Stan Kelly-Bootle (1995). “The Computer Contradictionary”, p.44, MIT Press

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• There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.

  Karl Marx

  Party, Hands, Decay

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.368, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Howard Dean was endorsed by former Vice President Al Gore and now he is getting advice from Al Gore. And I'm thinking, who better to give advice than the guy who couldn't even get elected with the most votes?

  David Letterman

  Thinking, Giving, Guy

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• A layman will no doubt find it hard to understand how pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by 'mere' words. He will feel that he is being asked to believe in magic. And he will not be so very wrong, for the words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic. But we shall have to follow a roundabout path in order to explain how science sets about restoring to words a part at least of their former magical power.

  Sigmund Freud

  Believe, Order, Magic

  Sigmund Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1953). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: A case of hysteria, Three essays on sexuality, and other works”

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• When it happeneth that a man signifieth unto us two contradictory opinions whereof the one is clearly and directly signified, andthe other either drawn from that by consequence, or not known to be contradictory to it; then (when he is not present to explicate himself better) we are to take the former of his opinions; for that is clearly signified to be his, and directly, whereas the other might proceed from error in the deduction, or ignorance of the repugnancy.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Ignorance, Men, Errors

  Thomas Hobbes, John Charles Addison Gaskin (1999). “The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico ; with Three Lives”, p.77, Oxford University Press, USA

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• [Necessity is] the sum of all things, which being now existent, conduce and concur to the production of that action hereafter, whereof if any one thing now were wanting, the effect could not be produced. This concourse of causes, whereof every one is determined to be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes, may well be called (in respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal causes of all things, God Almighty) the decree of God.

  Thomas Hobbes

  May, Causality, Causes

  Thomas Hobbes (1839). “Of Liberty and Necessity; a treatise, wherein all controversy concerning predestination, election, free will, grace, merits, reprobation, etc. is fully decided and cleared. New edition”, p.11

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• Battles, revolutions, pestilence, famine, and death, are never the effect of those natural causes, which we experience. Prodigies,omens, oracles, judgments, quite obscure the few natural events, that are intermingled with them. But as the former grow thinner every pagewe soon learn, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case, but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvellous, and that, though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning, it can never be thoroughly extirpated.

  David Hume

  Battle, Oracles, May

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• It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian, or person wholly unknown to me. It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.

  David Hume

  World, Littles, Ruins

  A Treatise upon Human Nature bk. 2 (1739)

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• Discard your former slave-master's names and be willing and ready to accept one of Allah's Pure and Righteous Names that He Alone will give our people from His Own Mouth! A good name is, indeed, better than gold.

  Elijah Muhammad

  Names, People, Giving

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• It is because everything is relative
  That we shall never see in that sphere of pure wisdom and
  Entertainment much more than groping shadows of an incomplete
  Former existence so close it burns like the mouth that
  Closes down over all your effort like the moment
  Of death

  John Ashbery

  Death, Wisdom, Effort

  John Ashbery, Lee Harwood, Tom Raworth (1971). “John Ashbery, Lee Harwood, Tom Raworth”, Not Avail

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• They have the idea that non-commutative algebra should remind one of commutative algebra, but the former is more sophisticated. I believe that non-commutative algebra is just as simple, but it is different.

  Israel Gelfand

  Believe, Science, Simple

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• In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Success, Jobs, Order

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• There is yet another kind of matrimonial dialect (which naturally succeeds this of talking at each other), which may very properlybe styled The Language Contradictory.... In the former, however plain the object of satire may be exhibited to the whole company, yet there always remains some little covering.... But in this last method, the defiance becomes more open and the impetuosity with which these contradictions are uttered (although the subjects of them are often of the most indifferent nature) evidently prove that they arise from passion.

  Sarah Fielding

  Marriage, Passion, Talking

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• Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pain, Vanity, Light

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