Touchstones Quotes - Page 3

• Sit not down without assurance. Get alone, and bring thy heart to the bar of trial; force it to answer the interrogatories put to it; set the qualifications of the saints on one side, and the qualifications of thy soul on the other side, and then judge what resemblance there is between them.

  Richard Baxter

  Religious, Mistake, Heart

  "The Saint's Everlasting Rest: Or, A Treatise on the Blessed State of the Saints in Heaven".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Compassion is the litmus test and culminating touchstone of a spirituality of Earth.

  James Conlon

  Compassion, Earth, Tests

  James Conlon (1994). “Earth Story, Sacred Story”, Twenty Third Publications

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are all the sons or daughters of immigrants - some more recent than others - but all dedicated to the triumph of an idea that serves as the touchstone of what it means to be an American. This America is the only America that we have hitherto known - if being conservative has anything to do with conserving the principles of our past, then no conservative has any business bashing legal immigration.

  Jack Kemp

  Daughter, Mean, Son

  6 Copy quote

• For me, reggae music and its aesthetic are touchstones in both simple and complex ways. Reggae's capacity to be a folk music that is created in a wholly modern context of the recording studio (and sometimes that is the sole performance space) is riddled with the kinds of contradictory impulses that we have come to expect from the post-modern. I revel in this, for it gives me, shall I say, permission.

  Kwame Dawes

  Simple, Space, Giving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.

  Ellen Goodman

  Parent, Missing, Traveler

  Ellen Goodman (2010). “Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times”, p.333, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• By 'socialism' I mean a classless society in which the State has disappeared, production is cooperative, and no man has political or economic power over another. The touchstone would be the extent to which each individual could develop his own talents and personality.

  Dwight Macdonald

  Mean, Men, Personality

  Dwight Macdonald (1953). “The Root is Man: Two Essays in Politics”

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's easy to forget history or give it a cliff notes. The cliff notes of history. But mainly, so much of what happens in 'Eyes on the Prize' happened in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi isn't really known for any other touchstone to the movement, other than Medgar Evers being killed. There were sit-ins and riots and atrocities.

  Tate Taylor

  Eye, Giving, Movement

  4 Copy quote

• Experience stands on its own dunghill in medicine, and reason yields it place. Medicine has always professed experience to be the touchstone of its operations.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Yield, Medicine, Reason

  4 Copy quote

• I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can't just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system.

  Barack Obama

  Opportunity, Thinking, Race

  "After the Great Recession". Interview with David Leonhardt, www.nytimes.com. April 28, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it.

  Henri Matisse

  Garden, Doors, Order

  7 Copy quote

• Adversity is the touchstone of character: it is not in success but in misfortune that hidden powers bear fruit.

  Alec-Tweedie

  Character, Adversity, Fruit

  Ethel Alec-Tweedie, Mrs Alec-Tweedie (1904). “Sunny Sicily: Its Rustics and Its Ruins”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The realization that The Art of Obscurity is my 25th solo album prompted me to do some deep thinking about where I am, where I’m going and what I still want to achieve from this life in music. In my heart I feel vital and passionate about the creative process and that my best work is the next one I finish. It doesn’t necessarily work out that clean, but for me, it can be the only touchstone.

  Iain Matthews

  Art, Thinking, Work Out

  5 Copy quote

• It [World of Warcraft] is a touchstone. It has established standards, it's established how you play an MMO. Every MMO that comes out, I play and look at it. And if they break any of the WoW rules, in my book that's pretty dumb.

  Greg Zeschuk

  Book, Play, Dumb

  6 Copy quote

• A child's hand in yours - what tenderness and power it arouses. You are instantly the very touchstone of wisdom and strength.

  Marjorie Holmes

  Strength, Mom, Mother

  10 Copy quote

• The Bible judges the church; the church does not judge the Bible. The Bible is the foundation for and the creator of the church; the church is not the foundation for or creator of the Bible. The church and its hierarchy must be evaluated by the believer with the biblical gospel as the touchstone or plumb line for judging all truth claims.

  Timothy Keller

  Biblical, Judging, Church

  4 Copy quote

• What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting.

  August Wilhelm von Schlegel

  Art, Portraits, Portraiture

  8 Copy quote

• ... the image of feeling created by artists, in every kind of art -- plastic, musical, poetic, balletic -- serves to hold the reality itself for our labile and volatile memory, as a touchstone to test the scope of our intellectual constructions.

  Susanne Katherina Langer

  Art, Memories, Reality

  4 Copy quote

• As the touchstone tries gold, so gold tries men.

  Chilon of Sparta

  Men, Trying, Gold

  10 Copy quote

• Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.

  Peter Drucker

  Top Management, Challenges, Innovation

  Peter Drucker (2013). “People and Performance”, p.149, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The touchstone of the Holy Spirit’s work in us is the answer to our Lord’s question: “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” Our Lord makes human destiny depend on that one thing, Who men say He is, because the revelation of Who Jesus is is only given by the Holy Spirit.

  Oswald Chambers

  Jesus, Son, Destiny

  Oswald Chambers (2015). “Bringing Sons Unto Glory: Studies in the Life of Our Lord”, p.33, Discovery House

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The source of each accordant strain
  Lies deeper than the Poet's brain.
  First from the people's heart must spring
  The passions which he learns to sing;
  They are the wind, the harp is he,
  To voice their fitful melody,--
  The language of their varying fate,
  Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,--
  The talisman which holds inwrought
  The touchstone of the listener's thought;
  That penetrates each vain disguise,
  And brings his secret to his eyes.

  Bayard Taylor

  Lying, Hate, Spring

  Bayard Taylor (1866). “The Poems”, p.111

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement. The artist... faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an offensive state.

  John F. Kennedy

  Art, Reality, Faithful

  5 Copy quote

• Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Death, Gold, Facts

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2001). “The House of the Seven Gables”, p.367, Applewood Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I am endeavoring to do is simply speak the truth, speak common-sense values, free market principles and the Constitution. For every question, the Constitution is my touchstone.

  Ted Cruz

  Common Sense, Principles, Constitution

  Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. June 29, 2015.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated

  Anais Nin

  Lying, Men, Mind

  23 Copy quote