YourDictionary

Dictionary Home » Famous Quotes » providence

providence quotes

  • It is not for me,Your Honour, to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence.

    - F(rederick) E(dwin) Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead
    In reply to a judge's testy inquiry 'What do you suppose I am on theBenchfor, Mr Smith?'. Quoted in 2ndEarlof Birkenhead F. E.: The Life of F. E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead (1959), ch.9.

  • Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

    -William Cowper
      Olney Hymns,'Light Shining out of Darkness'.

  • I have always felt that whatever Divine Providence permitted to occur I was not too proud to report.

    - Charles Anderson Dana
      The Art of Newspaper Making,'The Modern  American Newspaper'.

  • If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, doyou suppose Providence would have cast my lot inan island?

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
      Miss Pross.  A  Tale of  Two Cities, bk.1, ch.4.

  • Ich gehe mit traumwandlerischer Sicherheit denWeg, den mich dieVorsehung gehen heiÞt. I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.

    - Adolf Hitler
      Speech in Munich,14 Mar, in Max Domarus (ed) Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen1932^1945 (1962), p.606.

  •    If then his providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labour must be to pervert that end, And out of good still to find means of evil.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.162^5.

  • And chiefly thou O spirit, that does prefer Before all temples th'upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great argument I mayassert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. 580

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.16^25.

  • Some natural tears theydropped, but wiped themsoon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.12, l.645^9.

  • God of our Fathers, what is man! That thou towards him with hand so various, Or might I say contrarious, Temperst thy providence through his short course, Not evenly, as thou rul'st The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute, Irrational and brute.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.667^73.

  • There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the most popular one is Providence.

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
    c.1897  Quoted in Albert Bigelow Paine (ed) MarkTwain's Notebook (1935).

  • To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for the blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.

    -John Hoyer Updike
      Polk. Buchanan Dying, act 2.

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.

Learn more about providence

link/cite print suggestion box