Steadily Quotes
More Steadily Quotes
The work . . . is steadily growing and spreading – especially in that most important department, native help. . . . The future hope of China doubtless lies in them. I look on all us foreign missionaries as platform work round a rising building; the sooner it can be dispensed with the better; or rather, the sooner it can be transferred to other places, to serve the same temporary purpose, the better for the work sufficiently forward to dispense with it, and the better for the places yet to be evangelized.
james hudson taylor— (A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 373.)
He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
thomas jefferson— Letter to William Canby (18 September 1813).
I see mysteries and complications wherever I look, and I have never met a steadily logical person.
— 1959 The Face of War, introduction.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
shirley jackson— Ch. 1 (The Haunting of Hill House (1959))
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole: The mellow glory of the Attic stage; Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
Matthew Arnold— 1849 Of Sophocles. The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'To a Friend'.
Zwei Dinge erfu« llen das Gemu« t mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je o« fter und anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit besch a« ftigt: der bestirnte Himmel u« ber mir, unddas moralische Gesetz in mir. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within.
Immanuel Kant— 1788 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason) (translated by T K Abbott).
Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amount of effort.
— 1942 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, p.67.
It is the necessary nature of a political in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change? The best carriage horses are those which can most steadily hold back against the coach as it trundles down the hill.
Anthony Trollope— 1874 Phineas Redux, ch.4.
"I ever give a thought to another, you may well spare it, for those fancies are here and gone like a flash of lightning, while my love for you burns on steadily, and for ever, like the sun."
anne brontë— Arthur to Helen (Ch. XXVII : Misdemeanour)
The phenomenon develops calmly, but it is invisible, unstoppable. One feels, one sees it born and grow steadily; and it is not in one's power to either hasten it or slow it down. Any person, brought into the presence of this fact, stops for a few moments and remains pensive and silent; and then generally leaves, carrying with him forever a sharper, keener sense of our incessant motion through space.
léon foucault— On his pendulum experiment, as quoted in Pendulum : Léon Foucault and the Triumph of Science (2003) by Amir D. Aczel
More apparent to Teamster members than any moral lapses were the tangible gains that had been steadily realized under Hoffa since his advent to power.
jimmy hoffa— Arthur A. Sloane, Hoffa, p. 127
Moreover, the human condition, if that is what it is, has been getting steadily worse in the Corporate State; more and more life-denying just as life should be opening up.
charles a. reich— Chapter IX : The New Generation, p. 220
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
sydney smith— Volume I, ch. 10.
...the 'size' of science has doubled steadily every 15 years. In a century this means a factor of 100. For every single scientific paper or for every single scientist in 1670, there were 100 in 1770, 10,000 in 1870 and 1,000,000 in 1970.
john ziman— John M. Ziman (1976). The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society. Cambridge University Press. p. 56-57. ISBN 0-521-09917-X.
Invariably will you find perseverance exemplified as the radical principle in every truly great character. It facilitates, perfects, and consolidates the execution of the plan conceived, and renders profitable its results when attained. By continuing to advance steadily in the same way, light constantly increases, obstacles disappear, efficient habits are confirmed, experience is acquired, the use of the best means is reduced to easy action, and success becomes more sure.
— Elias Lyman Magoon, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 450.
I believe this thought, of the possibility of death — if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going.
Lewis Carroll— In Sylvie and Bruno (1889), Preface
Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?"
Robert Penn Warren— National Observer (1967-02-06)
In Britain and indeed the entire West, today, we are part way through a process – artificially imposed by a dogmatic liberal ruling class - that is steadily destroying the very possibility of preserving our racial and cultural differences, and the unique nations to which they have given rise.
nicholas john griffin— Nick Griffin, The BNP: Anti-asylum protest, racist sect or power-winning movement?
His public service extended over many years and over a wide range of official duty. He was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.
rutherford b. hayes— Benjamin Harrison, Executive Order (18 January 1893).
It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.
thomas jefferson— Letter to Arthur Campbell (1797).
To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong
— Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 305–319
Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the OLD for the NEW faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a “sacred right of self-government.” These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon ; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other.
— Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854), Online text Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas (16 October 1854); published in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1894) Vol. 2
I believe this thought, of the possibility of death if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going.
Lewis Carroll— In Sylvie and Bruno (1889), Preface
Any act often repeated soon forms a habit:;: and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. At first it may be but as the spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.
— A Dictionary of Thoughts, p. 212.
After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. ...Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression.
Andrew Dickson White— Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Ch.1, p. 57 (1896)
Conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future.
— Theodore Roosevelt, "Rural Life", in The Outlook (August 27, 1910), republished in American Problems (vol. 16 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), chapter 20, p. 146.
We believe above all else that those who hold in their hands the power of government must themselves be independent and this kind of independence means the wisdom, the experience, the courage to identify the special interests and the pressures that are always at work, to see the public interest steadily, to resist its subordination no matter what the political hazards.
— Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois, speech before the Colorado Volunteers-for-Stevenson dinner, Denver, Colorado, September 5, 1952.—Speeches of Adlai Stevenson, p. 23 (1952).
In Western Europe, the pattern of three meals was common from the sixteenth century, but industrialization shortened the time spent on meals for the working classes whereas the bourgeois devoted much more time to the table and steadily delayed the times of their meals.
— B. W. Higman, in "How Food Made History (8 August 2011)", p.1924
All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me, Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
— Walt Whitman, in Song of Myself (1855; 1881), § (44)
