"Maxim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of all morality. But what is true for one is true for all. Each man is a member of a rational order, and possesses the inalienable independence and the moral dignity of being an end in himself. Hence the formula of all duty is, 'Act from a maxim at all times fit to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... here for long,' Mrs. Rawson answered; 'but you mustn't think, ma'am, that I'd lay any under claim for the trouble she's been to me, only what is fair. "Fair is fair all the world over," has been my maxim ever since I started letting apartments. But perhaps, ma'am, you'll be wanting a room in my house. If you do there's the drawing-room floor, which would suit you nicely. But you can't be day nurse and night nurse yourself.' ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... chooses later and brings from their obscurity to thrust them into the light for their own sake." Thus fortune served Montaigne to perfection, and even in his administration of affairs, in difficult conjunctures, he never had to belie his maxim, nor to step very far out of the way of life he had planned: "For my part I commend a gliding, solitary, and silent life." He reached the end of his magistracy almost satisfied with himself, having accomplished what he had promised ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... put his learning to good use. He observed the wise maxim of Leonardo da Vinci, "Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker." He was not one of those learned men, of whom there are many examples—a recent and conspicuous instance was the late Lord Acton—whose minds are so choked with the accumulations of the knowledge they have absorbed ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
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