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Saturday, August 15, 2009

Marquis de Lafayette Quotes




"Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country."

"If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the clergy."

"True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate"

"When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties."

"I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me."

"I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover, and with the conviction of a geometrician."

"The attraction of the American revolution transported me suddenly to my place."

Friday, July 11, 2008

Lin Yutang Quotes

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"Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother."

"In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them."

"It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action."

"The best that we can hope for in this life is that we shall not have sons and grandsons of whom we need to be ashamed."

"When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set."

"One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom."

"Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, 'It was a good show,' when the curtain falls."

"When you take a bath, you are civilized, when you don't take a bath, you are cultured."

"Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey."

"If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements."

"The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous."

"What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?"

"A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon from one to five ruined for him already."

"When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice."

"If the early Chinese people had any chivalry, it was manifested not toward women and children, but toward old people."

"By association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also."

"When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it."

"I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it."

"All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell."

"I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud."

"I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death."

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."

"Neckties strangle clear thinking."

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Henri Bergson Quotes


"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

"Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressive in it."

"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly."

"Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science."

"Homosapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable."

"Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division."

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause."

"To perceive means to immobilize. We seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself."

"The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity."

"Sex appeal is the keynote of our civilization."

"There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation."

"The motive power of democracy is love."

"Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality."

"An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis."

"Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn."

"The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind."

"Our laughter is always the laughter of a group."

"There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language."

"We regard intelligence as man's main characteristic and we know that there is no superiority which intelligence cannot confer on us, no inferiority for which it cannot compensate."

"In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically."

"It seems that laughter needs an echo."