Maxims Quotes - Page 14

• Must I remind you that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link?

  Jerome Cady

  Strength, Stronger, Links

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• [H]ow do I pity those who (assuming the name of friends) surround themselves with maxims importing the wisdom of doubt and suspicion, 'til they impose on themselves that very hard task of laboring through life without ever knowing a human creature to whom they can make the proper use of language and freely speak the dictates of their hearts!

  Sarah Fielding

  Friendship, Heart, Names

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• I am so far from thinking the maxims of Confucius and Jesus Christ to differ, that I think the plain and simple maxims of the former, will help to illustrate the more obscure ones of the latter, accommodated to the then way of speaking.

  Matthew Tindal

  Jesus, Simple, Thinking

  Matthew Tindal (1730). “Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, The Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature. |. ...”, p.342

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• Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Successful, Self, Active

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• The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Animal, Thinking, Boredom

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• In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Experience, World, Deeds

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

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• The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Money, Law, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.381

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• There are cases where examinations are admitted, namely, before the coroner, and before magistrates in cases of felony. That appears to me to go rather in support of the general rule than in destruction of it. Every exception that can be accounted for is so much a confirmation of the rule that it has become a maxim, Exceptio probat regulam.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Support, Examination, Confirmation

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• It is a maxim in our law that a plaintiff must shew that he stands on a fair ground when he calls on a Court of justice to administer relief to him.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Law, Justice, Relief

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• Maxims and aphorisms, let us remember that wisdom is the true salt of literature, and the books that are most nourishing are richly stored with it, and that is the main object to seek in reading books.

  John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

  Reading, Book, Literature

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• Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Loss, Giving, Culture

  Friedrich Schiller (2015). “Aesthetical Essays of Schiller: Top Classic of German”, p.34, 谷月社

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• Let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the information of others.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Trust, Knowledge, Independence

  "Manners and speech or maxims extracted from Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son". Book by Lord Chesterfield, 1884.

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• There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Political, Enemy, One Day

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• The faults of a brilliant writer are never dangerous on the long run; a thousand people read his work who would read no other; inquiry is directed to each of his doctrines; it is soon discovered what is sound and what is false; the sound become maxims, and the false beacons.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Running, Long, People

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• A magazine editor recently asked me to sit down on my 40th birthday and write an article on the most important things I had learned in my first 40 years. I told him that the chief thing I had learned was that the copybook maxims are true, but that too many people forget this once they go out into the heat and hustle and bustle of the battle of life and only realize their truth once one foot is beginning to slip into the grave. The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

  B. C. Forbes

  Writing, Men, Years

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• There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say; before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Simplicity, Trying, Razors

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Patricia Ann Turrisi (1997). “Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism”, p.162, SUNY Press

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• It is a maxim of cryptology that what one man can devise, another can unravel. This principle keeps armies of tax lawyers and accountants employed, but adds nothing to our national productivity.

  Walter Wriston

  Army, Men, Principles

  1986 Risk and Other Four-Letters Words.

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• Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.

  Richard Whately

  Use, Coins, Ethical

  Richard Whately (1856). “Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley”, p.158

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• The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Beautiful, Two, History

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• Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Intuition, Suffering

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1302, Delphi Classics

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• Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Purity, Individual, Grammar

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.265, Harvard University Press

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• Begin thinking of death and you are no longer sure of your life. It's a Hebrew proverb.

  Leo Gordon

  Life, Death, Thinking

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• What, can the devil speak true?

  William Shakespeare

  Truth, Devil, Speak

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 107

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• Use almost can change the stamp of nature.

  William Shakespeare

  Use, Habit, Potency

  William Shakespeare (1851). “Dictionary of Shakespearian quotations: Exhibiting the most forcible passages illustrative of the various passions, affections and emotions of the human mind”, p.158

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• We have to reformulate moral standards. Human beings have to impose limits on themselves when it comes to their actions and desires. There is a beautiful and very radical notion in the bible: Man is made in the image of God, no matter how sick, poor or damaged he is. We should try to transpose this maxim to our secular and constitutional self-image.

  Gotz Aly

  Beautiful, Men, Self

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