characteristic quotes
Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.
Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstonean extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisyand superstition and with one commanding characteristic.Whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying, or scribblingneveragentleman.Heisso vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a parliamentary Constitution is not favourable to such ambitions. Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.
All known religious beliefs, whether simple or complex, present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all things, real and ideal, of which men think, into two classes or opposed groups, generally designatedprofane and sacred.
Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as its hat.
It is characteristic of the design of scientific research that exquisite attention is devoted to methodological problems that can be solved, while the pretense is made that the ones that cannot be solved are really nothing to worryabout.
The essential characteristic of philosophy, which makes it a study distinct from science, is criticism. It examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life; it searches out any inconsistencies there may be in these principles, and it onlyaccepts them when, as the result of a critical inquiry, there is no reason for rejecting them.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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