Relation Quotes - Page 30

• We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavors in it, may also become clearer.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Wise, Distance, Character

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.13, Lulu.com

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• Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex; many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is part of our nature and not worth fretting about.

  Gore Vidal

  Sex, Enjoy, Humans

  Gore Vidal, Donald Weise (1999). “Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking, Collected Sex Writings”

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• The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.

  Agnes Repplier

  Common, Interest, Mutability

  Agnes Repplier (1924). “Under dispute”

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• Human relations, I mess them up, and they let me down.

  Juliana Hatfield

  Let Me, Mess, Humans

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• War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.

  Thomas de Quincey

  War, Men, Ineffable

  Thomas De Quincey (1863). “De Quincey's Works ...: Miscellanies: chiefly narrative”, p.286

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• Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are; because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Judging, Want

  W. Somerset Maugham (2010). “The Summing Up”, p.69, Random House

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• Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn't want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine.

  Willa Cather

  Powerful, Past, Long

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

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• It's harder to confess the sin that no one believes in Than the crime that everyone can appreciate. For the crime is in relation to the law And the sin is in relation to the sinner.

  T. S. Eliot

  Believe, Law, Appreciate

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Complete Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.346, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Arbitrary, Scholar, Linguistics

  Roy Blount, Jr. (2009). “Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory”, p.10, Macmillan

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• To write books is to have a certain relation with original sin. For what is a book if not a loss of innocence, an act of aggression, a repetition of our Fall?

  Emile M. Cioran

  Book, Fall, Writing

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• Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

  Madeleine Albright

  Differences, Diplomats, Wells

  "Madeleine Albright: An Exclusive Interview". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 15, 2010.

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• I've always felt, as a writer, that radicals are fascinating because they're relations, they have a place in the American family. They're the relatives everyone wishes would go away. They're the embarrassments to decorum and good taste.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Wish, Going Away, Radicalism

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• Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

  Thomas Szasz

  Pills, Moral, Bitter

  Thomas Szasz (2017). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.156, Routledge

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• The worldly relations of men and women often form an equation that cancels out without warning when some insignificant factor has been added to either side.

  William McFee

  Men, Sides, Warning

  William McFee (1916). “Casuals of the Sea: The Voyage of a Soul”

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• What is the use of such terrible diligence as many tire themselves out with, if they always postpone their exchange of smiles with Beauty and Joy to cling to irksome duties and relations?

  Helen Keller

  Joy, Use, Tire

  Helen Keller (2007). “My Religion”, p.175, Book Tree

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• Amity itself can only be maintained by reciprocal respect, and true friends are punctilious equals.

  Herman Melville

  True Friend, Reciprocal, Amity

  Herman Melville (2006). “Selected Poems (Melville, Herman)”, p.138, Penguin

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• When any one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Horse, Character, House

  Oliver Goldsmith (1828). “The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale ...”, p.7

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• Woman is determined not by her hormones or by mysterious instincts, but by the manner in which her body and her relation to the world are modified through the action of others than herself.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Women, World, Body

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

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• Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Men, Enemy, Different

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.207, Simon and Schuster

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• The relation between parents and children is essentially based on teaching.

  Gilbert Highet

  Children, Teaching, Parent

  GILBERT HIGHET (1950). “THE ART OF TEACHING”

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• It's proper and appropriate to remind the Chinese about what they get out of solid relations with the United States.

  John Breaux

  Chinese, United States, Appropriate

  "Bush responds to letter from Chinese pilot's wife". www.cnn.com. April 8, 2001.

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• Snake's poison is life to the snake; it is in relation to man that it means "death.

  Rumi

  Mean, Men, Snakes

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• Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, Assuming, Burden

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• In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron B-52s.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, Radio, Pressure

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• The greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Order, Needs, Contemporary

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