Quotes by Statesmen - Page 12

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.
Francis Bacon
Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Moreover I hate everything which merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is not easy in this world for one person to understand the next one.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling .... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.
Edmund Burke
The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure, it's a little like making love, the physical act of love.
Francis Bacon
I know that these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and give no promise of a storm; to express what I complain of in apt metaphor, I am distressed, not by a tempest, but by sea-sickness.
Seneca
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
All That Is Needed For Evil To Succeeded, Is For Good People To Do Nothing
Edmund Burke
I am the spirit that negates.And rightly so, for all that comes to beDeserves to perish wretchedly;'Twere better nothing would begin.Thus everything that that your terms, sin,Destruction, evil represent—That is my proper element.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.t
Daniel Webster
Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
For Fate/ The willing leads, the unwilling drags along.
Seneca
And there, next to me, as the east wind blows in early fall, a season open to great migrations, are those lives, threading the air and waters of the sea, that come out of an incomparable darkness, which is also my own.
John Hay
If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give Me up to the Devil this very minute.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[how can anyone] be silly enough to think himself better than other people, because his clothes are made of finer woolen thread than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned it into anything better than a sheep.
Thomas More
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In matters of religion and matrimony I never give advice, because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
All force strives forward to work far and wideTo live and grow and ever to expand;Yet we are checked and thwarted on each sideBy the world's flux and swept along like sand:In this internal storm and outward tideWe hear a promise, hard to understand:From the compulsion that all creatures binds,Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.
Seneca
However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him.
Seneca
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
Seneca
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
Bernard M. Baruch
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Seneca
The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.
Seneca
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
Seneca
An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.
Otto von Bismarck
By Fortune's adverse buffets overborneTo solitude I fled, to wilds forlorn,And not in utter loneliness to live,Myself at last did to the Devil give!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But what they find most amazing and despicable is the insanity of those who all but worship the rich, to whom they owe nothing and who can do them no harm; they do so for no other reason except that they are rich, knowing full well that they are so mean and tightfisted that they will certainly never give them one red cent during their whole lives.
Thomas More
Or can it be thought that they who heap up an useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is to bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is somewhat different from the former, and who hide it, out of their fear of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the earth, or rather the restoring to it again, it being thus cut off from being useful, either to its owner or to the rest of mankind? And yet the owner having hid it carefully, is glad, because he thinks he is now sure of it. It if should be stole, the owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after the theft, of which he knew nothing, would find no difference between his having or losing it; for both ways it was equally useless to him.
Thomas More
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them
Seneca
They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal. That a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal...
Thomas More
The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.
Seneca
If you look on wealth as a thing to be valued your imaginary poverty will cause you torment.
Seneca
The rich will make temples for Siva. What shall I, a poor man, do? My legs are pillars, the body the shrine, the head the cupola of gold.
Basava
Oh, what darkness does great prosperity cast over our minds!
Seneca
It is the sign of a weak mind to be unable to bear wealth.
Seneca
One man to live in pleasure and wealth, whiles all other weap and smart for it, that is the part not of a king, but of a jailor.
Thomas More
Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool
Seneca
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Edmund Burke
Once we are lost unto ourselves, everything else is lost to us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Once you have rid yourself of the affliction there, though, every change of scene will become a pleasure. You may be banished to the ends of the earth, and yet in whatever outlandish corner of the world you may find yourself stationed, you will find that place, whatever it may be like, a hospitable home. Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.
Seneca
The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.
Seneca
So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is superfluous, what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting. All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re travelling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.
Seneca
All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.
Seneca
The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time.
Seneca
We are all pilgrims who seek Italy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything is just how I imagined it, yet everything is new
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
Seneca
But there are times," said Charlotte, "when it is necessary and an act of friendship to write nothing rather than not to write.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?
Thomas More
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The general root of superstition : namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
Francis Bacon
When a human awakens to a great dream and throws the full force of his soul over it, all the universe conspires in your favor.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whilst I could not think of any man whose spirit was, or needed to be, more enlarged than the spirit of a genuine merchant. What a thing it is to see the order which prevails throughout his business! By means of this he can at any time survey the general whole, without needing to perplex himself in the details. What advantages does he derive from the system of book-keeping by double entry? It is among the finest inventions of the human mind; every prudent master of a house should introduce it into his economy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can
Gaius Julius Caesar
A man dies as often as he loses his friends.
Francis Bacon
Only air and light and the love of friends! Let no man lose heart who still has these.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe