Spurs Quotes - Page 8

• Opposition is the very spur of love.

  Tobias Smollett

  Opposition

  10 Copy quote

• All real freedom springs from necessity, for it can be gained only through the exercise of the individual will, and that will can be roused to energetic action only by the force of necessity acting upon it from the outside to spur it to effort.

  Anna Brackett

  Spring, Real, Exercise

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a rule, he fights well who has wrongs to redress; but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also steadily before him a glorious result in prospect--a result in which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valor, remembrance and gratitude in the event of death.

  Lew Wallace

  Gratitude, Fighting, Remembrance

  Lew Wallace (2010). “Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ”, p.274, Cosimo, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unfruitful emotion is to be suspected. Feeling acts as an impulse, as a spur, as a spring, and when feelings are excited, and they put nothing forward, they are sometimes even dangerous to a man.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Spring, Men, Feelings

  Henry Ward Beecher, Truman Jeremiah Ellinwood (1871). “The original Plymouth pulpit”, p.349

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Spur not an unbroken horse; put not your plowshare too deep into new land.

  Walter Scott

  Horse, Land, Unbroken

  Sir Walter Scott “Works”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Men are naturally lazy, and require some great stimulus to goad their flagging ambitions and enable them to overcome the inertia which comes from ease and the consciousness of inherited wealth. Whatever lessens in a young man the feeling that he must make his way in the world cripples his chance of success. Poverty has ever been the priceless spur that has goaded man up to his own loaf.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Ambition, Men, Feelings

  Orison Swett Marden (2006). “Rising in the World, Or Architects of Fate”, p.429, Cosimo, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

  John Milton

  Sports, Thinking, Hair

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 64

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• You often feel like you are on a high wire with no net productions because you have to rely on spontaneity and come up with ideas on the spur of the moment - and then what happens is that there is electricity to it that gets caught.

  Nicolas Cage

  Ideas, Wire, Spur Of The Moment

  "National Treasure: Book of Secrets - Nicolas Cage interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sole impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs.... It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our impelling power; we have no other.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Emergencies, Approval

  Mark Twain (2016). “What Is Man? And Other Essays”, p.21, Xist Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set about the great ends of preserving and continuing the species.

  Charles Lamb

  Might, Kind, Reason

  Charles Lamb (1845). “The Essays of Elia: First Series - Second Series”, p.128

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

  David Hume

  Real, Passion, Government

  'Essays' (1741-2) 'Of Civil Liberty'

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Capitalism is the sorcerer's apprentice: it has summoned up powers which have spun wildly out of control and now threaten to destroy us.The task of socialism is not to spur on those powers but to bring them under rational human control.

  Terry Eagleton

  Tasks, Socialism, Rational

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Being seen as the best striker in Europe doesn't spur me on-it's helping my team to success. That's my only aim. I'm not a machine.

  Thierry Henry

  Team, Europe, Machines

  5 Copy quote

• By making college more affordable for all and more accessible for minority students, the first new higher education authorizing legislation in a decade will help strengthen our nation and America's middle class, and spur a new age of innovation and ingenuity in our country.

  Nancy Pelosi

  Country, College, Class

  "Pelosi: Higher Education Bill is Bipartisan Investment in College Affordability and in America's Middle Class". Press release, July 31, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's what we're all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand. We might just as well let the rest of it go, join the party, and dance our hearts out.

  Alan Arkin

  Party, Heart, Hands

  Alan Arkin (2011). “An Improvised Life: A Memoir”, p.191, Da Capo Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tottenham are trying tonight to become the first London team to win this cup. The last team to do so was the 1973 Spurs team.

  Mike Ingham

  Football, Team, Winning

  7 Copy quote

• Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Perfection, Gold

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.113

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some kind of pace may be got out of the eeriest jade by the near prospect of oats; but the thoroughbred has the spur in his blood.

  James Russell Lowell

  Oats, Blood, Pace

  7 Copy quote

• Advertising is the spur on the flank that keeps modern company-helping economy out of hand till the day common sense is restored, if ever it happens.

  Robert W. Sarnoff

  Hands, Common Sense, Helping

  4 Copy quote

• Who would ever care to do brave deed,
  Or strive in virtue others to excel,
  If none should yield him his deserved meed
  Due praise, that is the spur of doing well?
  For if good were not praised more than ill,
  None would choose goodness of his own free will.

  Edmund Spenser

  Yield, Brave, Care

  6 Copy quote

• The love of fame usually spurs on the mind.
  [Lat., Ingenio stimulos subdere fama solet.]

  Ovid

  Mind, Fame

  7 Copy quote

• Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation.

  Emma Goldman

  Struggle, Suffering, Vision

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.46, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not gives advantage to the danger; it is less folly not to endeavor the prevention of the evil thou fearest than to fear the evil which thy endeavor cannot prevent.

  Francis Quarles

  Fear, Evil, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• That which the French proverb hath of sickness is true of all evils, that they come on horseback, and go away on foot; we have often seen a sudden fall or one meal's surfeit hath stuck by many to their graves; whereas pleasures come like oxen, slow, and heavily, and go away like post-horses, upon the spur.

  Joseph Hall

  Horse, Fall, Oxen

  7 Copy quote