Famous Quotes & Sayings

Demosthenes

He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred and to talk of it, is little different from reproach.

Democritus

Our sins are more easily remembered than our good deeds.

Denis Johnson

Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.

Denis Diderot

His hands would plait the priest's guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.

Debra Winger

I was the all-American face. You name it, honey - American Dairy Milk, Metropolitan Life insurance, McDonald's, Burger King. The Face That Didn't Matter - that's what I called my face.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There is no kindness more cruel than the kindness which consigns another person to their sin.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The basis of all good human behavior is kindness.

Eduardo Galeano

The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show.

Eduardo Galeano

In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it.

Edward Abbey

King Arthur and his armored goons of the Round Table functioned as the Politburo of a slave state: Camelot. Of all who have written on the Matter of Arthur, from Malory to White, only Mark Twain understood this. But Mark Twain was a great writer.

Edward Abbey

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

Atul Gawande

I chose surgery because I thought that perhaps this would make me more like the kind of person I wanted to be.

Aristotle

Actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed.

Aristotle

. .we would have to say that hereditary succession is harmful. You may say the king, having sovereign power, will not in that case hand over to his children. But it is hard to believe that: it is a difficult achievement, which expects too much virtue of human nature.

Aristotle

Even if you must have regard to wealth, in order to secure leisure, yet it is surely a bad thing that the greatest offices, such as those of kings and generals, should be bought. The law which allows this abuse makes wealth of more account than virtue, and the whole state becomes avaricious.

Aristotle

Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

Aristotle

These, then, are the four kinds of royalty. First the monarchy of the heroic ages; this was exercised over voluntary subjects, but limited to certain functions; the king was a general and a judge, and had the control of religion The second is that of the barbarians, which is a hereditary despotic government in accordance with law. A third is the power of the so-called Aesynmete or Dictator; this is an elective tyranny. The fourth is the Lacedaemonian, which is in fact a generalship, hereditary and perpetual.

Aristotle

A king ruleth as he ought, a tyrant as he lists, a king to the profit of all, a tyrant only to please a few.

Aristotle

It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness to others.

Ben Hecht

They're a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time - and they're phonies, all of them. And I head the list...their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.

Ben Jonson

A good king is a public servant.

Ben Jonson

Poets are far rarer birds than kings.

Where are the Muslim people's sponsors? Where are its kings? Where are its leaders? The Muslim people is calling upon you, Jerusalem is appealing to you, will anyone answer?

Alexis Arguello

I could do what a lot of people are doing and that's sign the best Nicaraguan fighters and then sell them to Don King, but there's no way I'll do that.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Can it be believed that the democracy which overthrew the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?

Alexis de Tocqueville

When a monarchy gradually transforms itself into a republic, the executive power there preserves titles, honors, respect, and even money long after it has lost the reality of power. The English, having cut off the head of one of their kings and chased another off the throne, still go on their knees to address the successors of those princes. On the other hand, when a republic falls under one man's yoke, the ruler's demeanor remains simple, unaffected, and modest, as if he had not already been raised above everybody.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.

Alexandra Stoddard

Be kind to yourself, to others and everything around you.

Alexandre Dumas

Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

Alexandre Dumas

In this world, all--men, women, and kings--must live for the present. We can only live for the future for God

Albert Schweitzer

All the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind.

Albert Schweitzer

Kindness works simply and perseveringly; it produces no strained relations which prejudice its working; strained relations which already exist it relaxes. Mistrust and misunderstanding it puts to flight, and it strengthens itself by calling forth answering kindness. Hence it is the furthest reaching and the most effective of all forces.