Noble Quotes - Page 14

• The trade of chemist (fortified, in my case, by the experience of Auschwitz), teaches you to overcome, indeed to ignore, certain revulsions that are neither necessary or congenital: matter is matter, neither noble nor vile, infinitely transformable, and its proximate origin is of no importance whatsoever. Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals into us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.

  Primo Levi

  Animal, Air, Overcoming

  Primo Levi (1995). “The Periodic Table”

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• In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love--a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal--masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject.

  Edward Hirsch

  Spiritual, Passion, Europe

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• Companies must have a noble cause, and it's the leaders job to transform that noble cause into such an inspiring vision, that it will attract the most talented people in the world to want to join it.

  Steve Jobs

  Jobs, People, Leader

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• Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.

  Francois Rabelais

  Men, Long, Honor

  "Gargantua (The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, Book II)". Book by Francois Rabelais, 1534.

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• Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it.

  Francois Rabelais

  Men, Thinking, Done

  Francois Rabelais “Gargantua and Pantagruel: Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and his Son Pantagruel”, Library of Alexandria

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• As the base rhetorician uses language to increase his own power, to produce converts to his own cause, and to create loyal followers of his own person - so the noble rhetorician uses language to wean men away from their inclination to depend on authority, to encourage them to think and speak clearly, and to teach them to be their own masters.

  Thomas Szasz

  Men, Thinking, Followers

  "Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry". Book by Thomas Szasz, May 1, 1990.

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• Next to the ministry I know of no more noble profession than the law. The object aimed at is justice, equal and exact, and if it does not reach that end at once it is because the stream is diverted by selfishness or checked by ignorance. Its principles ennoble and its practice elevates.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Ignorance, Law, Practice

  William Jennings Bryan, Mary Baird Bryan (1900). “The Life and Speeches of Hon. Wm. Jennings Bryan”

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• Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  War, Fighting, Thinking

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• Why can't a woman be more like a man? Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; Eternally noble, historically fair; Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat. Why can't a woman be like that?

  Alan Jay Lerner

  Winning, Men, Squares

  'My Fair Lady' (1956) 'A Hymn to Him' (music by Frederick Loewe)

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• There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.

  Paul Gauguin

  Ordinary, Tone, Harmony

  1885 Letter to Emile Schuffenecker

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• I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

  Paul Newman

  Attitude, Thinking, Exceptional

  "Paul Newman's Road To Glory". Interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly, July 1, 2002.

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• Who would have believed that the daughters of that mighty city would one day be wandering as servants and slaves on the shores of Egypt and Africa, or that Bethlehem would daily receive noble Romans, distinguished ladies, brought up in wealth and now reduced to beggary? I cannot help them all, but I grieve and weep with them, and am completely absorbed in the duties which charity imposes on me. I have put aside my commentary on Ezekiel and almost all study. For today we must translate the precepts of the Scriptures into deeds; instead of speaking saintly words, we must act them.

  St. Jerome

  Daughter, Grieving, Egypt

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• Count not the cost of honour to the dead!The tribute that a mighty nation paysTo those who loved her well in former daysMeans more than gratitude for glories fled;For every noble man that she hath bred,Lives in the bronze and marble that we raise,Immortalised by art's immortal praise,To lead our sons as he our fathers led.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Gratitude, Art, Father

  Henry Van Dyke (2018). “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke”, p.158, BoD – Books on Demand

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• For kindness begets kindness evermore,
  But he from whose mind fades the memory
  Of benefits, noble is he no more.

  Sophocles

  Kindness, Mind, Benefits

  "Ajax". Play by Sophocles, Lines 522-524,

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• Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation not chains, but chains of mail, -- strength and defense, though something of an incumbrance.

  John Ruskin

  Wise, Law, Liberty

  John Ruskin (1900). “Complete Works”

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• To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table.

  John Ruskin

  People, Feelings, Mind

  "Modern Painters". Book by John Ruskin. Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI, 1856.

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• In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will force you to it; but never try to be a prophet.

  John Ruskin

  Imagination, Trying, Prophet

  John Ruskin (1873). “Modern Painters”, p.18

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• There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see I think that is enough to say about them.

  Margaret Fuller

  Book, Thinking, Want

  Margaret Fuller, Robert N. Hudspeth (2001). “My Heart is a Large Kingdom: Selected Letters of Margaret Fuller”, p.79, Cornell University Press

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• The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.

  Samuel Smiles

  People, Ignorant

  Samuel Smiles (1861). “Self-help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct”, p.17

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• Woman is the symbol to man of the uncleanness of bodily existence, of which he purifies himself by putting her to noble uses. She thus has for him a double, contradictory significance; she is the subject of his bawdry and the subject of his romance.

  Laura Riding

  Men, Romance, Use

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• The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced.

  Ayn Rand

  Russia, Roots, Anxiety

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.71, Penguin

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• This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits who are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth

  Brigham Young

  Wife, Waiting, Doctrine

  Journal of Discourses, 4:56, September 21, 1856.

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• Only power can get people into a position where they may be noble.

  Alfred Kazin

  People, May, Position

  Quoted in M Korda Power in the Office (1976).

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• I do not know whether it is the view of the Court that a judge must be thick-skinned or just thick-headed, but nothing in my experience or observation confirms the idea that he is insensitive to publicity. Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame a good public name is, as Milton said, the "last infirmity of noble mind", it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Views, Names, Ideas

  "Craig v. Harney, 331 U. S. 367, 396". Judicial opinion, 1947.

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• Children who wish to become good and great men or good and noble women, should try to know well all the people whom they meet. Thus they will find that there is no one who has not much of good; and when they see some great folly, or some meanness, or some cowardice, or some fault or weakness in another person, they should examine themselves carefully. Then they will see that, perhaps, they too have some of the same fault in themselves - although perhaps it does not come out in the same way - and then they must try to conquer that fault.

  Bram Stoker

  Children, Men, People

  Bram Stoker (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Bram Stoker (Illustrated)”, p.2484, Delphi Classics

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