Sentiments Quotes
More Sentiments Quotes
The mention of Greece fills the mind with the most exalted sentiments and arouses in our bosoms the best feelings of which our nature is capable.
james monroe— Message to Congress (December 1822)
The moral sentiments that constrain economic life also promote it.
ted malloch— p. 13 (Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011))
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
George Sand— George Sand, The Haunted Pool (1890) ch. 2.
La plupart des institutions sociales paraissent avoir pour objet de maintenir l'homme dans une médiocrité d'idées et de sentiments qui le rendent plus propre à gouverner ou à être gouverné.
nicolas chamfort— Maximes et Pensées, #514Most social institutions seem to be designed to keep man in a state of intellectual and emotional mediocrity that makes him more fit to govern or be governed.Maxims and Considerations
I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores.
frans de waal— Natalie Angier (2001-01-14). Confessions of a Lonely Atheist. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved on 2008-07-20.
To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion.
isaac d'israeli— Modes of Salutation, and Amicable Ceremonies, Observed in Various Nations
Just study Buddhism. Don't follow the sentiments of the world.
dōgen— V, 9 (Shobogenzo Zuimonki (1238))
Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason. And so they look for, and always find, some theory which, a posteriori, makes their actions appear to be logical. If that theory could be demolished scientifically, the only result would be that another theory would be substituted for the first one, and for the same purpose.
vilfredo pareto— page 95
Man has no greater enemy than himself. I have acted contrary to my sentiments and inclination; throughout our whole lives we do what we never intended, and what we proposed to do, we leave undone.
petrarch— As quoted in An Examination of the Advantages of Solitude and of Its Operations (1808) by Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
J'ai à peindre…un caractère ambigu, un mélange de vertus et de vices, un contraste perpétuel de bons sentiments et d'actions mauvaises.
antoine françois prévost— The portrait I have to paint is of…an ambiguous character, a mixture of virtues and vices, a perpetual contrast between good impulses and bad actions.
— Avis de l'auteur, p. 30; translation p. 3.
But if any other course, in any one's opinion, be better than this, let him, even though he be a private soldier, boldly give us his sentiments; for the safety, which we all seek, is a general concern.
Xenophon— Bk. 3, ch. 2; p. 89.
Je ne puis peindre mon désespoir:;; nul mot de la langue humaine ne rendrait mes sentiments. J’étais enterré vif, avec la perspective de mourir dans les tortures de la faim et de la soif.
jules verne— To describe my despair would be impossible. No words could tell it. I was buried alive, with the prospect before me of dying of hunger and thirst.Ch. XXVII: Lost in the bowels of the earth
We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn; we should strive to transmit to them the best possessions, the truest thought, the noblest sentiments of the age in which we live.
felix adler— Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.
frances burney— The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 1, p. 8, journal entry, 1768.
Ma raison, il est vrai, dompte mes sentiments, Mais, quelque autorité que sur eux elle ait prise, Elle n'y règne pas, elle les tyrannise.
pierre corneille— My reason, it’s true, controls my feelings,
But whatever its authority,
It doesn’t rule them so much as tyrannize them.Pauline, act II, scene ii
Comme nos intérêts, nos sentiments diffèrent.
pierre corneille— As our self-interests differ, so do our feelings.Cornélie, act V, scene ii
Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus épurée.
Denis Diderot— There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (1760-11-03)
The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
samuel johnson— The Life of Gray.
Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit.
john maynard keynes— Robert Malthus, p. 148
Il est plus difficile de dissimuler les sentiments que l'on a que de feindre ceux que l'on n'a pas.
françois de la rochefoucauld— It is harder to hide the feelings we have than to feign the ones we do not have.Maxim 56 from the posthumously published 1693 edition of the Maximes.
A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.
— Abraham Lincoln, First inaugural address (March 4, 1861). Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4, p. 268, Rutgers University Press (1953, 1990)
The traveler who has contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome may conceive some imperfect idea of the sentiments which they must have inspired when they reared their heads in the splendor of unsullied beauty.
— Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776).
I distrust those sentiments that are too far removed from nature, and whose sublimity is blended with ridicule; which two are as near one another as extreme wisdom and folly.
— Raymond Deslaudes, Reflexions sur les Grands Hommes qui sont morts en Plaisantant
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
George Sand— George Sand, The Haunted Pool (1890) ch. 2
I find that to be a fool as to worldly wisdom, and to commit my cause to God, not fearing to offend men, who take offence at the simplicity of truth, is the only way to remain unmoved at the sentiments of others.
— p. 36; as cited in: Ruth Marie Griffith (2008) American Religions: A Documentary History. p. 137
The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this ME, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.
— Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Germany, Part III, Chapter II.
The finer sentiments of the mind, the operations of the understanding, the various agitations and passions, though really in themselves distinct, easily escape us, when surveyed by reflection; nor is it in our power to recall the original object, as often as we have the time to contemplate it. Ambiguity, by this means, is gradually introduced into our reasonings; similar objects are readily taken to be the same: the conclusion becomes at last very wide of the premises.
— David Hume, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), VII: The Idea of Necessary Connexion, Part I
But Adam Smith was a philosopher as well as well as an economist, famous in his time as much for his Theory of Moral sentiments as for The Wealth of Nations. And as he understood so well, society is more than the sum of its individual parts.
paul ormerod— Chapter 10, Economics Revisited, p. 212
Adam Smith’s image of competition in the marketplace was intended as an adjunct to his detailed description of human motivation in The Theory of Moral sentiments , in which the pursuit of profit is tempered at every juncture by sympathy and benevolence, and by the posture of the “impartial spectator” which is forced on us by our moral nature.
ted malloch— p. 108 (Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011))
