Inclination Quotes - Page 20

• The ordinary manner of spending their time, is the only way of judging of people's inclination and genius.

  Ellin Devis

  People, Judging, Ordinary

  Ellin Devis (1801). “The accidence: or, First rudiments of English grammar. Designed for the use of young ladies”, p.130

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• The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man; insomuch, that if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living creatures; as it is seen in the Turks, cruel people, who, nevertheless, are kind to beasts, and give alms to dogs and birds.

  John Locke

  Dog, Men, Issues

  John Locke (1813). “The Conduct of the Understanding: With Sketches of the Lives of Locke and Bacon”, p.133

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• We see that God has implanted in all things a natural desire to exist with the fullest measure of existence that is compatible with their particular nature. To this end they are endowed with suitable faculties and activities; and by means of these there is in them a discernment that is natural and in keeping with the purpose of their knowledge, which ensures their natural inclination serving its purpose and being able to reach its fulfilment in that object towards which it is attracted by the weight of its own nature.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Mean, Desire, Purpose

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• I have nothing against a community that is made up of people who are Polish, or who are Czechoslovakians, or who are French Canadians or who are blacks trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods. This is a natural inclination... Government should not break up a neighborhood on a numerical basis. As soon as the Government does, the white folks flee.

  Jimmy Carter

  Government, White, People

  "THE CAMPAIGN: Candidate Carter: 1 Apologize'", content.time.com. April 19, 1976.

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• We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction.

  Rachel Carson

  Reality, Men, Vanity

  "Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson", edited by Linda Lear, (p. 91), 1999.

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• I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad Poets. What we call a Genius, is hard to be distinguish'd by a man himself, from a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he can not at first discover it any other way, than by giving way to that prevalent propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken.

  Alexander Pope

  Strong, Men, Thinking

  Alexander Pope (1961). “Poems: Pastoral poetry, and An essay on criticism”

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• The reality of today, different as it is from the reality of my society one hundred years ago, is and can be important if we have the energy and the inclination to challenge it, to go out and engage with its peculiarities, with the things that we do not understand. The real danger is the tendency to retreat into the obvious, the tendency to be frightened by the richness of the world and to clutch what we always have understood.

  Chinua Achebe

  Real, Years, Challenges

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.50, Penguin

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• Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Men, Rights, Hands

  "The Limits of State Action". Book by David Sidorsky. Chapter 2, 1792.

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• His manners were less pure, but his character was equally amiable with that of his father. Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation.

  Edward Gibbon

  Father, Character, Two

  Edward Gibbon, M. Guizot (François) (1853). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.224

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