Pursuit Quotes - Page 17

• The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Excellence, Distinction, Vocation

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• One must espouse some pursuit, taking it kindly at heart and with enthusiasm.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Heart, Enthusiasm

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.

  Will Durant

  Civilization, Stoicism, Pleasure

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• Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch that mind.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Happiness, Freedom, Meditation

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2001). “Freedom, Love, and Action”, p.60, Shambhala Publications

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• As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Country, Heart, Simple

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.102

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• The pleasantest part of a man's life is generally that which passes in courtship, provided his passion be sincere, and the party beloved kind with discretion. Love, desire, hope, all the pleasing emotions of the soul, rise in the pursuit.

  Joseph Addison

  Party, Passion, Men

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1852). “The Spectator”, p.296

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• Men of different tastes have different pursuits.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Different, Taste

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• I do not find fault with equality for drawing men into the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, but for absorbing them entirely in the search for the pleasures that are permitted.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Drawing, Faults

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• Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains. When men find themselves forever barred from this delightful fruition, they are lost to all industry, and grow careless of all their worldly affairs. Thus they become bad subjects, bad relations, bad friends, and bad men.

  Henry Fielding

  Pain, Bad Friend, Men

  Henry Fielding (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry Fielding (Illustrated)”, p.1840, Delphi Classics

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• Friends given by God in mercy and in love;
  My counsellors, my comforters, and guides;
  My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy;
  Companions of my young desires; in doubt
  My oracles; my wings in high pursuit.
  Oh! I remember, and will ne'er forget
  Our meeting spots, our chosen sacred hours;
  Our burning words, that utter'd all the soul,
  Our faces beaming with unearthly love;--
  Sorrow with sorrow sighing, hope with hope
  Exulting, heart embracing heart entire.

  Robert Pollok

  Friends, Grief, Heart

  Robert Pollok, “The Course Of Time. Book V.”

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• It is legitimate to have one's own point of view and political philosophy. But there are people who make anger, rather than a deeply held belief, the basis of their actions. They do not seem to mind harming society as a whole in the pursuit of their immediate objective. No society can survive if it yields to the demands of frenzy, whether of the few or the many.

  Indira Gandhi

  Philosophy, Party, Yield

  Indira Gandhi (1977). “Education, individual, and society: selected addresses”

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• Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury; the time spent engaged in it is not time that could be better spent in more formal educational pursuits. Play is a necessity.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Children, Educational, Play

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2004). “Exuberance: The Passion for Life”, p.69, Vintage

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• The pursuit of knowledge is an intoxicant, a lure that scientists and explorers have known from ancient times; indeed, exhilaration in the pursuit of knowledge is part of what has kept our species so adaptive.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Knowledge, Exhilaration, Ancient

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2004). “Exuberance: The Passion for Life”, p.180, Vintage

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• Where no interest is takes in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.

  Madame de Stael

  Meditation, Mind, Criticism

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• Much serious thought has been devoted to the subject of chocolate: What does chocolate mean? Is the pursuit of chocolate a right or a privilege? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will?

  Sandra Boynton

  Mean, Chocolate, Doe

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• Riches are always over estimated; the enjoyment they give is more in the pursuit than the possession.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Money, Giving, Riches

  Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1835). “Traits of American Life”, p.212

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• the engrossing pursuit of Americans is wealth.

  Sarah Josepha Hale

  Money, United States, Wealth

  Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1835). “Traits of American Life”, p.2

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• The leaders we revere and the businesses that last are generally not the result of a narrow pursuit of popularity or personal advancement, but of devotion to some bigger purpose. That's the hallmark of real success. The other trapping of success might be the by product of this larger mission, but it can't be the central thing.

  Barack Obama

  Motivational, Success, Leadership

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• A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Government, Periods, Interest

  Barbara Tuchman (2015). “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”, p.10, Crux Publishing Ltd

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• The search of the Holy Grail or the voyage towards a new continent never enlisted so much energy and so much faith as does this pursuit of youth by old age. It is a race not of the fleet but of the most credulous.

  Elisabeth Marbury

  Race, Holy Grail, Age

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• any pursuit of happiness contrary to the common good is doomed to failure.

  Alice Hegan Rice

  Happiness, Common, Contrary

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• There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape ignorance; we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the goals from which and to which we tend; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life is only a traveling from grave to grave.

  Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

  Ignorance, Two, Goal

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• [On the United States:] We are a wildly energetic people in our pursuit of pleasure, let alone in our pursuit of money, and we are very odd to look at as we go about our lives.

  Martha Gellhorn

  People, United States, Looks

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• Documenting one's life in the midst of living it is a strange pursuit.

  Rosanne Cash

  Strange, Midst, Autobiography

  Rosanne Cash (2010). “Composed: A Memoir”, p.8, Penguin

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• The pursuit of God is not a part-time, weekend exercise. If it is, chances are you will experience a part-time, weekend freedom. Abiding requires a kind of staying power. The pursuit is relentless. It hungers and thirsts. It pants as the deer after the mountain brook. It takes the kingdom by storm...The pursuit of God is a pursuit of passion. Indifference will not do. To abide in the Word is to hang on tenaciously. A weak grip will soon slip away. Discipleship requires staying power. We sign up for duration. We do not graduate until heaven.

  R. C. Sproul

  Passion, Exercise, Weekend

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