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  • The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise isgone! it isgone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

    - Edmund Burke
      Reflections on the Revolution in France.

  • Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

    - Edmund Burke
      Reflections on the Revolution in France.

  • We can do worse than remember the principle which both gives us a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our mindsHold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.

    - Sir Herbert Butterfield
      Christianity and History.

  • I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.

    - Charles Robert Darwin
      The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, ch.3.

  • I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

    - Charles Robert Darwin
      Letter to  J Fiske, 8 Dec.

  • The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^3  Bleak House, ch.39.

  • Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

    - Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
      Coningsby, bk.2, ch.5.

  • It is a commercial paper, a paper of business, and it is conducted on principles of trade and business. It floats with the tide: it sails with the stream. It has no other principle.

    -William Hazlitt
      Of  The Times. In the Edinburgh Review, May.

  • It takes up no falling cause; fights no uphill battle; advocatesnogreat principle; holdsout a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is 'ever strong upon the stronger side'.

    -William Hazlitt
      Of  The Times. In the Edinburgh Review, May.

  • Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.

    - Simon Heffer
    Constitution of Germany.

  • On the principle laid down by Gilbert and Sullivan that when everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody; if everybody is abnormal, we don't need to worry about anybody.

    - Robert M Hutchins
      Farewell address to students at the University of Chicago.

  • Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.

    -JosephWood Krutch
      The Twelve Seasons,'February'.

  • To me the'female principle' is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power Lehmann-Haupt structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.

    - Ursula ne  e Kroeber Le Guin
    'Is Gender Necessary?', in  Anderson and McIntyre (eds)  Aurora (1976).

  • The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to producethe reverse of happiness.

    -John Stuart Mill
      Utilitarianism, ch.2.

  • DerTod ist das romantisierende Prinzip unsers Lebens. DerTod istdas Leben. Durch denTod wird das Leben verst a« rkt. Death is the romantic principle of Life. Death islife. Through death life is intensified.

    -Novalis pseudonym of  Friedrich von Hardenberg
      Schriften, II, Fragmente.

  • Labour is the Father and active principle of Wealth, as lands are the Mother.

    - Sir William Petty
      Treatise ofTaxes.

  • 'Form follows profit' is the aesthetic principle of our times. Thus, design skill is measured today by the architect's ability to build the largest possible enclosure for the smallest investment in the quickest time.

    - Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers
      22nd annualWalter Neurath lecture. Collected in Architecture: a ModernView.

  • L'homme n'est rien d'autre que ce qu'il se fait.Tel est le premier principe de l'existentialisme. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

    -Jean-Paul Sartre
      L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism,1948) (translated by Philip Mairet).

  • Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing, sir.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Waiter to Fergus Crampton.You Never CanTell, act 2.

  • There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supportshiskingon loyal principles and cuts off hishead on republican principles.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      The Man of Destiny.

  • I am a snob, not only in fact, but on principle.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      StJohn Hotchkiss. Getting Married.

  • The vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. 786 The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    A Defence of Poetry.

  • I hate liberality. Nine times out of ten it is cowardiceand the tenth time, lack of principle.

    - HenryAddington, 1stViscount Sidmouth
    Attributed.

  • The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditiona desire which†comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.

    - Adam Smith
      An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.2, ch.3.

  • I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinctnobody is that. Doubtless some people say theyare, but this world isgrievously given to lying.

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
      Notebook, ch.31, Feb^Mar.

  • People and provinces must not be bartered about from sovereign to sovereign as if they were chattels, or pawns in a game. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

    - (Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
      Address to Congress,11 Feb.

  • 'To every Form of being is assigned,' Thus calmly spake the venerable Sage, 'An active Principle:howe'er removed From sense and observation, it subsists In all things, in all natures.'

    -William Wordsworth
      'The Excursion', bk.9, l.1^5.

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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