Quality Quotes - Page 34

• Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Humanity, Characteristics, Signals

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.130, University of Georgia Press

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• The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does.

  Confucius

  Forgiveness, Men, Doe

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• Southerners have many fine qualities, charm and civility among them, and a sense of the tragic.

  Dean Koontz

  Civility, Charm, Fine

  Dean Koontz (2014). “The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd”, p.673, Bantam

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• A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.

  Bertrand Russell

  Oxygen, Water, Brain

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing has an unlikely quality. It is heavy.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Emptiness, Unlikely, Heavy

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• We haven’t met for many years, said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be. "Five years next November." The automatic quality set us all back at least another minute.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Years, Voice, Matter

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby: The Authentic Edition from Fitzgerald’s Original Publisher: The authentic edition from Fitzgerald’s original publisher”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• But there's this one difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver. Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they are lost, rendered worst than unavailing.

  Emily Bronte

  Differences, Gold, Tin

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.522, Penguin

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• It is not that I do not get angry. I don't give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Practice, Giving

  Mahatma Gandhi (1943). “He Follows Christ”

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• There are two kinds of beauty, one being of the soul and the other of the body, That of the soul is revealed through intelligence, modesty, right conduct, Generosity and good breeding, all of which qualities may exist in an ugly man; And when one's gaze is fixed upon beauty of this sort and not upon that of the body, Love is usually born suddenly and violently.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Love Is, Men, Two

  Miguel de Cervantes (2000). “Don Quixote”, p.1050, Modern Library

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• There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Halloween, Kids, Light

  Jonathan Lethem (2004). “The Fortress of Solitude”, p.46, Vintage

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• When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Women, Inspiration, Thinking

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). “The Poet at the Breakfast Table”, p.90, Reprint Services Corporation

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• It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure - in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals.

  Trevanian

  Fun, Opportunity, Justice

  Trevanian (2005). “Shibumi: A Novel”, p.137, Broadway Books

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• Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Honesty, People, Important

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• I like my smock. You can tell the quality of the artist by the quality of his smock. Actually, I just like to say smock. Smock smock smock smock smock smock.

  Bill Watterson

  Artist

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• I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero.

  Scott Adams

  Zero, Long, Mind

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• When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. (9)

  Pema Chodron

  Down And, Might, Way

  Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.10, Shambhala Publications

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• The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thought Provoking, Human Nature, Feeling Stuck

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.1062, Wordsworth Editions

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• A quality of justice A quantity of light A particle of mercy Makes the color of right

  Neil Peart

  Light, Color, Justice

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• What he would say, he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Real, Order, Romance

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.157, Vintage

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• The pleasure in complete domination over another person (or other animate creature) is the very essence of the sadistic drive. Another way of formulating the same thought is to say that the aim of sadism is to transform man into a thing, something animate into something inanimate, since by complete and absolute control the living loses one essential quality of life - freedom.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Essence, Way

  Erich Fromm (2011). “The Heart of Man”, p.29, Lantern Books

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• My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Book, Space, Waiting

  Allen Ginsberg (2001). “Howl and Other Poems: Pocket Poets Number 4”, p.32, City Lights Publishers

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• When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.

  Martin Buber

  Light, Space, Empathy

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• France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter - it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Country, Tired, Heart

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (1995). “The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection”, p.512, Simon and Schuster

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• For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, and the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society.

  Aristotle

  Determination, Animal, Men

  Aristotle, Hugh Griffith (2009). “Aristotle”, p.201, Collector's Library

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• ...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Consistency, Utilitarianism, Humans

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.11, Hackett Publishing

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