Surest Quotes
More Surest Quotes
A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.
andré maurois— Ariel (1923)
The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.
henry l. stimson— The Bomb and the Opportunity (March 1946)
The passion of hatred is so durable and so inveterate that the surest prognostic of death in a sick man is a wish for reconciliation.
— Les haines sont si longues et si opiniâtres que le plus grand signe de mort dans un homme malade, c'est la réconciliation
— Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688), De l'Homme 108.
All students, members of the faculty, and public officials in both Mississippi and the Nation will be able, it is hoped, to return to their normal activities with full confidence in the integrity of American law. This is as it should be, for our Nation is founded on the principle that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny.
— John F. Kennedy's Radio and Television Report to the Nation on the Situation at the University of Mississippi (30 September 1962).
The city’s architecture is the surest sign that Goa evolved independently of the rest of India. In the small old quarters of Fontainhas and Sao Tomé, winding alleyways are lined with Portuguese-style houses, boasting distinctive red-tiled roofs, wooden window shutters and rickety balconies decorated with bright pots of petunias.
— Lonely Planet, in “Introducing Panaji”
We have a saying in the House of Commons; that old ways are the safest and surest ways.
Sir Edward Coke— 1628 Speech, London, 8 May.
The surest way notto be remembered istotalk aboutthe way you want to be.
Norman Kingsley Mailer— 1968 Interview in Playboy, Aug.
There are three roads to ruinwomen, gambling and technicians.The most pleasant is women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.
— 1968 In the SundayTelegraph.
An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating.
Marie Stopes— 1918 Married Love, ch.5.
Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.
ralph waldo emerson— Poetry and Imagination
Who peppered the highest was surest to please.
Oliver Goldsmith— Line 112. (Act IV)
The way to secure success, is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it; the surest hindrance to it is to have too high a standard of refinement in our own minds, or too high an opinion of the discernment of the public.
william hazlitt— "On the Qualifications Necessary for Success"
Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweethearts, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.
john webster— Westward Hoe, Act II, scene ii. See also Wine, Friendship.
Success, the mark no mortal wit, Or surest hand, can always hit: For whatsoe'er we perpetrate, We do but row, we're steer'd by Fate, Which in success oft disinherits, For spurious causes, noblest merits.
— Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto I, line 879.
The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
wystan hugh auden— "Reading", p. 6
A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.
mark twain— Roughing It (published 1872).
The surest way to hit a woman’s heart is to take aim kneeling.
Douglas William Jerrold— Douglas Jerrold's Wit, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Regrettably, one of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.
Pauline Kael— "Zeitgeist and Poltergeist; or, Are Movies Going to Pieces?" (December 1964), from I Lost It at the Movies (1965)
The surest pledge of a deathless name Is the silent homage of thoughts unspoken.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— The Herons of Elmwood, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The surest plan to make a Man Is, think him so.
james russell lowell— No. 2. (Series II (1866))
It is not uncommon for ignorant and corrupt men to falsely charge others with doing what they imagine that they themselves, in their narrow minds and experience, would have done under the circumstances of a given case, and the surest check, often the only check, on such perjury, is to recognize the impossibility that men of larger instruction and resources and experience could have been guilty of such conduct.
— John H. Clarke, Valdez v. United States, 244 U.S. 432, 450 (1917).
The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.
— Demosthenes, as quoted in The World's Laconics: Or, The Best Thoughts of the Best Authors (1853) by Everard Berkeley, p. 34
The surest way to hit a woman's heart is to take aim kneeling.
— Douglas Jerrold, Douglas Jerrold's Wit, The Way to a Woman's Heart.
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to displease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.
Oliver Goldsmith— Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation (1774), line 109.
The Common lawes of the Realme should by no means be delayed for the law is the surest sanctuary, that a man should take, and the strongest fortresse to protect the weakest of all, lex et tutissima cassis.
edward coke— Edward Coke, Institutes of the Laws of England, Second Part, vol. 1 (1642), Notes to Ch. XXIX of the Charter [Magna Carta], paragraph 1391 [1]
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff of a dunce, he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to displease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please.
— Oliver Goldsmith, in Retaliation (1774), line 109
The surest way to be deceived is to think oneself more clever than others.
— François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665–1678), Maxim 127
The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.
— François de La Rochefoucauld, in The Atlanta Co-Ed Murder, p.165
