"Aphorism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... go. It can only be conjectured that Soliman, having discovered how unpopular that appointment had been amongst his high officers, did not care to risk the experiment the second time; and in consequence employed Sinan. To this officer the aphorism of Seignelay applies in its fullest force. He was as brave a man as ever drew a sword in the service of his master; he was, however, a hesitating and incompetent leader, with one eye ever fixed on that distant palace on the shores of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... rich, so there is no virtue in dying poor. That a millionaire should desert his money-bags at his death is not a reproach to him if they be honestly filled. He has small chance of emptying them while he is on the earth. But Mr Carnegie has a reason for his aphorism. He aspires to be a philosopher as well as a millionaire, and he has decided that a posthumous bequest is of no value, moral or material. "Men who leave vast sums," says he, "may fairly be thought men who would not have left ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... appear to us to be unquestionable; and so far it must be admitted to have an immense advantage over any of its predecessors. But it is quite another matter to affirm absolutely either the truth or falsehood of Mr. Darwin's views at the present stage of the inquiry. Goethe has an excellent aphorism defining that state of mind which he calls 'Thatige Skepsis'—active doubt. It is doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief; and we commend this state of mind to students of species, with respect to Mr. Darwin's or any ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... spring-time of youth is past, there are occasions when the mind is peculiarly susceptible to the force of a pithy maxim, which may tend to the reforming of one's way of life. There is commonly more practical wisdom in a striking aphorism than in a round dozen of "goody" books—that is to say, books which are not good in the highest sense, because their themes are overlaid with commonplace and ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... canon of his work; it might come in anywhere and so might everything else that he wrote. From the beginning his craftsmanship was perfect; from the beginning he took his subject-matter from others as he found it and worked it up into aphorism and epigram till each line shone like a cut jewel and the essential commonplaceness and poverty of his material was obscured by the glitter the craftsmanship lent to it. Subject apart, however, he was quite sure of his medium from the beginning; it was not long ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... appeal of a "just war." Under any governmental auspices, as the modern world knows governments, the keeping of the peace comes at its best under the precept, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." But the case for peace is more precarious than the wording of the aphorism would indicate, in as much as in practical fact the "big stick" is an obstacle to soft speech. Evidently, in the light of recent history, if the peace is to be kept it will have to come about irrespective ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... himself—this, of all catastrophes which could befal an evil man, was the deepest, lowest, and most savouring of hell, which the purest of the Grecian moralists could reason out for himself,—under which third hypothesis many an uneasy misgiving would vanish away, and Mr. Carlyle's broad aphorism might be accepted by ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Four balls pierced Antequera, who fell dying from his horse into the arms of two accompanying priests. Thus the most turbulent of all the Governors of Paraguay ceased troubling, and the executioner, after having cut off his head, exhibited it to the people from the scaffold, with the usual moral aphorism as ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham |
