Noble Quotes - Page 29

• The period of Prohibition - called the noble experiment - brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order the United States has known until today. I think there is a lesson here. Do not regulate the private morals of people. Do not tell them what they can take or not take. Because if you do, they will become angry and antisocial and they will get what they want from criminals who are able to work in perfect freedom because they have paid off the police.

  Gore Vidal

  Thinking, Order, Law

  Gore Vidal (1978). “Matters of fact and of fiction: essays, 1973-1976”, Vintage

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• It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

  Ben Jonson

  Done, Wrong Person, Spite

  Ben Jonson, William Gifford (1816). “The Works: In 9 Volumes. ... containing Underwoods, translations, &c. Discoveries. English grammar. Jonsonus viribus”, p.157

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• It is easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement.

  Ayn Rand

  Thinking, Self, Achievement

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.578, Penguin

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• Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Errors, Color, Years

  Letter to Eckermann, December 30, 1823.

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• It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Giving, Grace, Fruit

  Michel de Montaigne “Annotated Essays of Michel de Montaigne with English Grammar Exercises: by Michel de Montaigne (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, Powell Publications, LLC

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• If [the writer] achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift; is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine.

  Willa Cather

  Giving, Achieve, Fine Things

  Willa Cather (1992). “Stories, Poems, and Other Writings”

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• For my part I consider the earth very noble and admirable precisely because of the diverse alterations, changes, generations, etc. that occur in it incessantly.

  Galileo Galilei

  Generations, Earth, Etc

  Galileo Galilei (1967). “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, Second Revised Edition”, p.58, Univ of California Press

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• Every one of these hundreds of millions of human beings is in some form seeking happiness.... Not one is altogether noble nor altogether trustworthy nor altogether consistent; and not one is altogether vile.... Not a single one but has at some time wept.

  H. G. Wells

  Trustworthy, Form, Consistent

  H. G. Wells (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)”, p.10933, Delphi Classics

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• We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the pre-meditation of a long planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Country, War, Men

  Ernest Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on War”, p.304, Simon and Schuster

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• I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity.

  Edmund Burke

  Victory, Wish, Empires

  Mary Leadbeater, Edmund Burke, Melesina Chenevix St. George Trench, George Crabbe (1862). “The Leadbeater Papers: Unpublished letters of Edmund Burke, and the correspondence of Mrs. Richard Trench and Rev. George Crabbe”, p.126

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• Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.

  Jean Cocteau

  Rewards, Return, Wave

  "Diary of an Unknown". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1988.

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• Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Character, Comforting, Affection

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Madame Bovary”, p.114, Vintage

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• When you are very successful, you fly at the very high altitudes and up there you long for to be applauded by the Stars or by the Moon or by the God Himself, not by the people down on earth! In this case, I advice you this: Be humble; only then you will get the applause of the sublimes; only then, of the noble heights!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Stars, Humble, Successful

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• Noble spirits are heterodox.

  Kedar Joshi

  Spirit

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• My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.

  Seneca the Younger

  Teaching, Writing, Happy Life

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• For young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Mind, Young

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• We are not given any promises that, because of our noble intentions, everything will be okay. We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness. We [need] to transform our minds and actions for the sake of other people and for the future of the world.

  Pema Chodron

  Gratitude, People, Promise

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• Others make a point of trying to attain the precision and poise they see in those who have the ability to choose from a great number of horses those with [...] qualities found in only a very small number of horses. This leads to a circumstance in which these imitators of such studied poise mortify the spirit of a noble horse, and remove from it all of the goodness of temperament Nature has given it.

  Francois Robichon de La Gueriniere

  Horse, Small Numbers, Trying

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• Compassion is not a passion; rather a noble disposition of the soul, made ready to receive love, mercy, and other charitable passions.

  Dante Alighieri

  Passion, Soul, Mercy

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• A learned person will become noble only when he or she has put into real practice what has been learned, instead of mere words.

  Dalai Lama

  Real, Learned Person, Practice

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• One day, I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation... I'm here alone in my dark madness, all by myself with my deck of cards - and, of course, the whip God gave me.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Dark, Self

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• My two older brothers are both molecular biologists and neuroscientists, and I feel like representing them accurately is never done in movies, and I really wanted to at least capture the spirit of a Ph.D. student whose goal and aspiration is to increase the sum total of human knowledge. That is noble. That was really, really important, to capture the three-dimensionality of scientists. Scientists fall in love, scientists have the greatest sense of humor, scientists are passionate.

  Mike Cahill

  Falling In Love, Brother, Two

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Reaching into one's own pocket to assist his fellow man is noble and worthy of praise. Reaching into another person's pocket to assist one's fellow man is despicable and worthy of condemnation.

  Walter E. Williams

  Men, Pockets, Fellow Man

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• The task of history is to hold out for reprobation every evil word and deed, and to hold out for praise every great and noble word and deed.

  Tacitus

  Evil, Tasks, Deeds

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• "Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself.
  The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?

  William Bennett

  Mean, Heart, Honor

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