Mean Quotes - Page 525

All the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass It nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry and morality It has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters whichever way it is directed.

It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end.

Legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.

The people are not always well-informed, but is better that they have misconceptions that make them restless than that they be lethargic-for lethargy in the people means death for republics.

If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.

The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.

You are so to put forth the power that God has given you; you are so to give, and sacrifice to give, as to earn the eulogium pronounced on the woman, "She hath done what she could." Do it now. It is not a safe thing to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of a cold world. If you intend to do a mean thing, wait till tomorrow; if you are to do a noble thing, do it now,--now!

Vibrancy is so universally desirable, so totemic in its powers, that even though we aren't sure what the word means, we know the quality it designates must be cultivated. The vibrant, we believe, is what makes certain cities flourish.

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.

Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration.

Force, force, everywhere force; we ourselves a mysterious force in the centre of that. "There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it: how else could it rot?" [As used in his time, by the word force, Carlyle means energy.]

Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.

To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow.

Piety does not mean that a man should make a sour face about things, and refuse to enjoy in moderation what his Maker has given.

Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free.

'Genius' which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all.

We are to take no counsel with flesh and blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes; to know that we know nothing, that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems, that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, "It is good and wise,--God is great! Though He slay me, yet I trust in Him." Islam means, in its way, denial of self. This is yet the highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth.

If Hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero?

Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections - if he has any - against faith.

Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight.

He who knows himself well is mean and abject in his own sight, and takes no delight in the vain praise of men.

He is not far off; He is there, very close. He is looking at us, and He is begging this sorrow, this agony from us. He needs it for souls and for our soul... Alas, it does pain Him to give us sorrows to drink, but He knows this is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself and to become God's ourselves.

God would not make me wish for something impossible and so, in spite of my littleness, I can aim at being a saint. It is impossible for me to grow bigger, so I put up with myself as I am, with all my countless faults. But I will look for some means of going to heaven by a little way which is very short and very straight, a little way that is quite new[...] It is your arms, Jesus, which are the lift to carry me to heaven, And so there is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must stay little and become less and less.

He longs to give us a magnificent reward. He knows that suffering is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves divine.

Today I can announce a raft of reforms that we estimate could save over 2.5 million police hours every year. That's the equivalent of more than 1,200 police officer posts. These reforms are a watershed moment in policing. They show that we really mean business in busting bureaucracy.