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strength quotes

  • The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

    - Maya originally MayaJohnson Angelou
      I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, ch.29.

  • There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.

    - Maya originally MayaJohnson Angelou
      Television interview, 21 Nov. Collected in Conversations with Maya  Angelou (1989).

  •   Le bonheur engloutit nos forces, comme le malheur e  teint nos vertus. Happiness engulfs our strength, just as misfortune extinguishes our virtues.

    - Honore   de Balzac
    La Peau de chagrin.

  • Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans de  go u" t. Lord! give me the strength and the courage To see my heart and my body without disgust.

    - Charles Baudelaire
      Les Fleurs du mal,'Un Voyage   a' Cyth e' re'.

  • It is beginning to dawn on people that the influence of a nation is not measured by the size of its military budget, but by its industrial strength.

    -Tony (Anthony Neil Wedgwood) Benn
      In The Independent,18  Apr.

  • Pam, I adore you, Pam, you great mountainous sports girl, Whizzing them over the net, full of the strength of five: That old Malvernian brother, you zephyr and khaki shorts girl, Although he's playing for Woking, Betjeman Can't stand up to your wonderful backhand drive.

    - SirJohn Betjeman
      Old Lights for New Chancels,'PotPourrifrom a SurreyGarden'.

  • As thy days, so shall thy strength be.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Deuteronomy 33:25.

  • Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valleyand rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 39:19^21.

  • God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 46:1^2.

  • Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 73:23^6.

  • Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 84:6^7.

  • The days of our years arethreescore years and ten; and if by reasonof strengththey be fourscore years, yet istheir strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 90:10.

  • If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs 24:10.

  • Inreturning and rest shall ye be saved; inquietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Isaiah 30:15.

  • And Isaid,My strengthand my hope isperished fromthe L: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDLamentations 3:18^19.

  • And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent emptyaway.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke1:46^53.

  • My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians12:9.

  • Behold,I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 3:8.

  • Ocome, let ussing untothe Lord; let usheartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and shew ourselves glad in him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God; and a great King above all gods. In his hand are all the corners of the earth; and the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is the Lord our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Psalm 95:1^7.

  • I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentleman, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be:Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a flip.

    - Charlotte Bronte« 
      Jane Eyre ch.17.

  •    Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evilnot the strength to choose between the two.

    -JohnWilliam Cheever
      Collected in The Journals,'The Late Forties and Fifties'.

  •    I remember my youth and the feeling that it will never come back any morethe feeling that I could last for ever, outlast thesea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effortto death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expiresand expires, too soon, too soonbefore life itself.

    - Sir William Neil pseudonym Cassandra Connor
      'Youth'.

  • It is only when you get to see and realize what India isthat she is the strength and the greatness of Englandthat you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves.

    - Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (of Kedleston)
      Speech at Southport,15 May.

  • Strength and beautyare the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

    -Democritus
    Fragment quoted in H Diels and W Kranz (eds) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol.2 (1952), no.294.

  • Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

  • Yo soy un artista. El placer de la carne le resta fuerzas a mi vocacio n  picto  rica, prefiero sentir que los jugos de mi sexo fluyen hacia un cuadro, lo irrigan, lo fertilizan, lo realzan; ca  strame el goce de la carne, satisfa  ceme el goce del arte. Iamanartist.The pleasure ofthefleshrobsstrengthfrom myartistic vocation, I prefer to feel my sexual juices flow toward a painting, wash over it, fertilize it, realize it; the delights of the flesh castrate me, the delights of art satisfy me.

    - Carlos Fuentes
      Terra nostra,'El cronista'.

  • Eighteen is a good time for suffering.One has all the necessary strength, and no defences.

    - Sir William (Gerald) Golding
      The Pyramid.

  • Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

    - Oliver Goldsmith
      The Vicar of  Wakefield, ch.13.

  • Is there no way to beget In my limbs their former heat? Aeson had (as Poets fain) Baths that made him young again: Find that Medicine (if you can) For your dry-decrepit man: Who would but fain his strength renew, Were it but to pleasure you.

    - Robert Herrick
      'To His Mistress'.

  • Let others drink thee freely; and desire Thee and their lips espous'd; while I admire, And love thee; but not taste thee. Let my Muse Fail of thy former helps; and only use Her inadult'rate strength: what's done by me Hereafter, shall smell of the lamp, not thee.

    - Robert Herrick
      'His Fare-well to Sack'.

  • Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there isno place for industry; becausethe fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

    -Thomas Hobbes
    Leviathan, pt.1, ch.13.

  • A Free Man is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.

    -Thomas Hobbes
    Leviathan, pt.2, ch.21.

  • I look forward to†a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint; its wealth with our wisdom; its power with our purpose.

    -John F(itzgerald) Kennedy
      Last major public speech,  Amherst College, 26 Oct.

  •    But surely Adam cannot be excused; Her fault though great, yet he was most to blame; What weakness offered, strength might have refused, Being lord of all, the greater was the shame.

    - Aemilia Lanyer
    Salve Deus Ex Judaeorum,'Eve's  Apology in Defense of Women'.

  • We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that ourearlier ambitions faded in its glare.

    -Arabia
      Seven Pillars of  Wisdom, ch.1.

  • We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of humannaturesostriking, and sogrotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stockinghalf Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison inone pocket, and a quire of bad verses in the other.

    -1st Baron
      Of Frederick the Great. Historical Essays.'Frederic the Great', in the Edinburgh Magazine,  Apr.

  • Thereisnostrengthinunbelief.Eventheunbeliefof what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.

    - George MacDonald
    The Marquis of Lossie (published1906).

  • Let us roll all our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one ball: And tear our pleasures with rough strife, Through the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'To His Coy Mistress' (published1681), closing lines.

  • And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, soTruth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

    -John Milton
      Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

  • His trust was with the eternal to be deemed Equal in strength, and rather than be less Cared not to be at all; with that care lost Went all his fear.

    -John Milton
      Of Moloch. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.46^9.

  • So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature: This is old age; but then thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change To withered weak and grey.

    -John Milton
      Michael to  Adam. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.11, l.535^40.

  • O impotence of mind, in body strong! But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom, vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall By weakest subtleties, not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.52^7.

  •   The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe you do.

    - Edward (Edgar) R(oscoe) Murrow
      Harvest of Shame, CBS  T V documentary on migrant labour, 25 Nov, concluding words.

  • Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true lifethe true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudityof youth, disdaining rivalry; saneand healthyand vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new- found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

    - Frank Benjamin Franklin Norris
      Of Chicago. The Pit, ch.2.

  • War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      Nineteen Eighty-Four, pt.1, ch.1.

  • God is our refuge and our strength, in straits a present aid; Therefore, although the earth remove, we will not be afraid.

    -Scottish Metrical Psalms
      Psalm 46:1^2.

  • And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most on poetry.

    - Sir Philip Sidney
      The Defence of Poetry.

  • Man's strength is but little, and futile his concerns.

    -Simonides of Ceos
    Lyrica Graeca Selecta, (ed. D L Page), no.354.

  • Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Atlanta in Calydon, chorus,'Before the beginning of years'.

  • There lies the port; the vessel, puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheadsyou and I are old: Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices.Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows: for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides: and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and hearth: that which we are, we are: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.44^70.

  • O fall'n at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!

    -Tennyson
      'Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington', stanza 4, l.38^9.

  • Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.

    - Anthony Trollope
      CanYou Forgive Her?, ch.24.

  • King of comforts, King of life, Thou hast cheered me, And when fears and doubts were rife, Thou hast cleared me. Not a hook in all my breast But thou fill'st it, Not a thought in all my rest But thou kill'st it. Wherefore with my utmost strength I will praise thee, And as thou giv'st line, and length, I will raise thee.

    - Henry Vaughan
      Silex Scintillans,'Praise'.

  • The Soviet Union remains a superpower in the military and nuclear senseonly its economy is in difficulty. People want me to lead the troops out or to chuck them over the border, but I have neither the strength nor the will to do it.

    - Lech Walesa
      In TheTimes,17 Apr. English poet  and Sinologist.  He was  a distinguished translator of Chinese andJapanese literature.

  • For thou wert still the poor man's stay, The poor man's heart, the poor man's hand; And all the oppressed, who wanted strength, Had thine at their command.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Rob Roy's Grave', l.109^12 (published1807).

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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