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will quotes

  • For by the will of the gods Fate hath held sway since ancient days.

    -Aeschylus
    Persae, l.102 (translated by H  Weir Smyth).

  • Candida me docuit nigras odisse puellas. Odero si potero. Si non, invitus amabo. A white girl instructed me to hate black girls. I shall hate them if I can. If not, I shall love themagainst my will.

    -Anonymous
    c.1c  AD  Graffito found in Pompeii. In Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I V,1520.

  • If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subjected to the inconsistent, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of men, be the perfect condition of slavery? and if the essence of freedom consists, as our masters say it does, in having a standing rule to live by? And why is slavery so much condemnedandstroveagainst inonecase, andsohighly applauded, and held so necessary and so sacred in another?

    - Mary Astell
      Some Reflections upon MarriageOccasion'd by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine's Case which is also consider'd, preface (1706 edn).

  • L'amour a son instinct, il sait trouver le chemin du coeur comme le plus faible insecte marche a'   sa fleur avec une irre  sistible volonte   qui ne s'e  pouvante de rien. Love has its own instinct. It knows how to find the road to the heart just as the weakest insect moves towarditsflowerbyanirresistiblewillwhichfearsnothing.

    - Honore   de Balzac
      La Femme de trente ans.

  • Nos beaux sentiments ne sont-ils pas les poe  sies de la volonte  ? Aren't our best feelings poetry of the will?

    - Honore   de Balzac
      Le Pe'  re Goriot.

  • John Stuart Mill, By a mighty effort of will, Overcame his natural bonhomie And wrote'Principles of Political Economy'.

    - Edmund Clerihew Bentley
      Biography for Beginners,'John Stuart Mill'.

  • Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 7:21.

  • And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said,Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew12:49^50.

  • Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Luke 22:42.

  • To will is present with me; but how to perform that which isgood I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Romans 7:19.

  • Not with eyeservice, asmenpleasers; but astheservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Ephesians 6:6^7.

  • He that complies against his will Is of his own opinion still.

    - Samuel Butler
      Hudibras, pt.3, canto 3, l.547.

  • You committed holy rapes upon our will.

    -Thomas Carew
      'An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul's, Dr.  John Donne'.

  • Idonot likebeingmoved:for thewill isexcited;andaction Is a most dangerous thing: I tremble for something factitious, Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process; We are so proneto thesethings with our terrible notions of duty.

    - Arthur Hugh Clough
      Amours de Voyage, canto 2, pt.11.

  • He holds him with his glittering eye The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years'child: The Mariner hath his will. The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'The Rime of the  Ancient Mariner', pt.1.

  • You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still; Your chilly stars I can forgo, This warm kind world is all I know.

    -William originally  WilliamJohnson Cory
      Ionica, Poems,'Mimnermus in Church'.

  • E'n la sua voluntade e'   nostra pace. In His will is our peace.

    -Dante Alighieri originally Durante
    c.1320  Divina Commedia,'Paradiso', canto 3, l.85.

  • 'Youarefettered,'said Scrooge, trembling.'Tell mewhy?' 'I wear the chain I forged in life,'replied the Ghost.'I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.'

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
      A Christmas Carol, stave1.

  • Some weigh their pleasure by their lust, Their wisdom by their rage of will, Their treasure is their only trust; And cloake'  d craft their store of skill. But all the pleasure that I find Is to maintain a quiet mind.

    - Sir Edward Dyer
      'In Praise of a Contented Mind'.

  • Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      'Ash Wednesday'.

  • Nobody can't do nothing never at all for Irelandyou can't help people against their will; that's what it comes tolet it go, let it go.

    - Edward Augustus Freeman
      Letter to Edith Thompson, 29  Jan.

  • 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.

  •    Idealism isthe noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

    - Aldous Leonard Huxley
    Quoted in his NewYork Herald Tribune obituary, 24 Nov1963.

  • If civil authorities legislate for or allow anything that is contrary to that order and therefore contrary to the will of God, neither the laws made or the authorizations granted can be binding on the consciences of the citizens, since God has more right to be obeyed than man.

    -PopeJohn XXIII originally Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli
      Pacem in Terris,10  Apr.

  • We know our will is free, and there's an end on't.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark,16 Oct. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • Ich solle niemals anders verfahren, als so, dass ich auch wollen k o« nne, meine Maxime solle ein allgemeines Gesetz werden. I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

    - Immanuel Kant
      Grundlagen zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork to a Metaphysic of Morals), ch.1 (translated by H  J Paton).

  •   If a man in truth will the Good then he must be willing to suffer for the Good.

    - So«  ren Aabye Kierkegaard
      Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing (translated by D Steere, 1938).

  • To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and, finally, it isthe subversion of good order, of all equityand justice.

    -John Knox
      First Blast of the Trumpet against theMonstrous Regiment of Women.

  • I cannot tell where you should look for me, if you send out any pinnace to seek me; because I live at the devotion of the wind and seas. And thus fare you well; desiring God to send us a merry meeting in this world, if it be his good will and pleasure.

    - SirJames Lancaster
    c.1594  Letter to the East India Company written on the homeward voyage when the two English ships ran into storms off the Cape of Good Hope. Lancaster's ship lost her rudder. Unwilling torisk theother ship, Lancaster orderedher captain to sail straight home, taking the letter with him.  A voyage with three tall ships, the Penelope, admirall, the Marchant Royall, vice- admiral, and the Edward Bonaventure, rear-admiral, to the East Indies† Begun By M. George Raymond, in the yeere1591, and performed by M.  James Lancaster; and written from the mouth of Edmund Barker of Ipswich (his lieutenant in the sayd voyage) by M. Richard Hakluyt.

  • [Travel] preservesmy young noblemanfromsurfeiting of hisparents,andweanshimfroma dangerousfondness of his mother. It teacheth him wholesome hardship† Whereas the country gentleman that never travelled, can scarce go to London without making his will, at least without wetting his handkerchief.

    - Richard Lassels
    c.1650  The Voyage of Italy, or a Compleat Journey through Italy (published1670).

  • I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me When we came.

    -Arabia
      Seven Pillars of  Wisdom, dedication.

  • To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfilment, making the fulfilment onlya step to a further one.The vaster the power gained the vaster theappetite for more.

    - Ursula ne  e Kroeber Le Guin
    The Lathe of Heaven, ch.9.

  •    Give it because it isright.Give it because it is just.Give it because it isgood for Ireland and good for the United Kingdom.Give it because it brings peace and good will, but do not give it because you are bullied byassassins.

    - David, 1st Earl Lloyd George (of Dwyfor)
      Speech on an Irish settlement, Caernarvon, 9 Oct.

  • Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary rule of another man.

    -John Locke
    Second Treatise on Civil Government (published anonymously1690).

  • A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      'My LostYouth', in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, vol.6,  Aug. Collected in The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems, 1858. In his diary Longfellow notes that these lines are from an 'old Lapland song'.

  • The Lord survives the rainbow of his will.

    - RobertTraill Spence,Jr Lowell
      'The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket', last line.

  • It lies not in our power to love, or hate, For will in us is overruled by fate. When two are stripped, lo ere the course begin We wish that one should lose, the other win; And one especially do we affect Of two gold ingots, like in each respect. The reason no man knows, let it suffice, What we behold is censured by our eyes. Where both deliberate, the love is slight; Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

    - Christopher Marlowe
      Hero and Leander (published1598), pt.1, l.167^76.

  • Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert,Tom and Charley, The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter? All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

    - Edgar Lee Masters
      Spoon River Anthology,'The Hill'.

  • Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms.

    - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
      De Stijl, vol.6.

  • The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

    -John Stuart Mill
      On Liberty.

  •    What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield.

    -John Milton
      Satan addressing the fallen angels. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.105^8.

  • For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone, By his permissive will, through heav'n and earth.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.3, l.681^4.

  • Courage is a moral quality; it is not a chance gift of nature, like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives; the fixed resolve not to quit, an act of renunciation that must be made not once but many times by the power of the will.

    - Richard John McMoranWilson, 2nd Baron Moran
      The Anatomy of Courage.

  • But plots come fromGod knows where. They can't be summoned at will.Theycome reluctantly, unexpectedly, stealthily, when you have given up hope of them ever paying you a visit.

    - SirJohn Clifford Mortimer
      'A Plot at Last', in Brown and Munro (eds)  Writers Writing (1993).

  • Sie schafft immer dieWelt nach ihrem Bilde, sie kann nicht anders; Philosophie ist dieser tyrannischeTreib selbst, der geistigsteWille zur Macht, zur 'Schaffung der Welt'. It [philosophy] alwayscreatestheworld inits ownimage, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, themost spiritual will topower, to'creationof the world'.

    - FriedrichWilhelm Nietzsche
      Jenseits von Gut und Bo«  se (Beyond Good and Evil), section 9 (translated by R  J Hollingdale).

  • Ein Charakter ist ein vollkommen gebildeter Willen. A character is a perfectly cultivated will.

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

  • Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroysmy property, and kills or threatenstokill me or those that are in it, and to'bind me in all cases whatsoever'to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?

    -Thomas Paine
      The Crisis, introduction, Dec.

  • All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire.

    -Vilfredo Pareto
    Quoted in Arthur Livingstone (ed) The Mind and Society (1935).

  • With all my will, but much against my heart, We two now part.

    - Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
      To the Unknown Eros, bk.1, no.16,'A Farewell'.

  • Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power†but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.

    - Octavio Paz
      Alternating Current.

  • This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and 'Lord have mercy uponus'writ therewhich was a sad sight to me, being the first of that kind that to my remembrance I ever saw.

    - Samuel Pepys
      Diary entry,7 Jun.The houses were afflicted with bubonic plague, which lasted in London until the summer of1666.

  • Every unjust man is unjust against his will.

    -Plato
    Leges,731c (translated byTrevorJ Saunders,1970).

  • When Winter scourged the meadow and the hill And in the withered leafage worked his will, Then water shrank, and shuddered, and stood still, Then built himself a magic house of glass, Irised with memories of flowers and grass, Wherein to sit and watch the fury pass.

    - Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
      'Ice'.

  • We have the menthe skillthe wealthand above all, the will† We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

    - Franklin D(elano) Roosevelt
      'Fireside chat'radio broadcast, 29 Dec.

  • Those who dare to interpret God's will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another.War springs from the love and loyalty that should be offered to God being applied to some God substituteoneofthemostdangerousbeing nationalism.

    - Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, Baron Runcie
      Sermon atThanksgiving Service after the FalklandsWar, St Paul's Cathedral, 26 Jul.

  • The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless?no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them, Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Prometheus Unbound, act 3, sc.4, l.193^204.

  • The settled will of the Scottish people.

    -John Smith
      Of the creation of a Scottish parliament, in a speech at the Scottish Labour Conference,11 Mar.

  • Perhaps it is God's will to lead the people of South Africa through defeat and humiliation to a better future and a brighter day.

    -Jan Christian Smuts
      Speech at theVereeniging peace talks, 31 May.

  • What I had not foreseen Was the gradual day Weakening the will Leaking the brightness away

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'What I Expected,Was'.

  • The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspen good for staves, the cypress funeral. The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepeth still, The willow worn of forlorn paramours, The ewe obedient to the benders will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platan round, The carver holme, the maple seldom inward sound.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto1, stanzas 8^9. plantan=plane tree; holme=holly.

  • Nought so of love this looser dame did skill, But as a coal to kindle fleshly flame, Giving the bridle to her wanton will, And treading underfoot her honest name.

    - Edmund Spenser
      Of Malecasta.The Faerie Queen, bk.3, canto1, stanza 50.

  • 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.

  • Earth hath not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will; Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

    -William Wordsworth
      Of London.'Composed uponWestminster Bridge', complete poem. (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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