Sway Quotes - page 6
Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference ... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm.
Jane Austen
Six hundred years before the birth of Christ absolutism held unbounded sway. Throughout the East it was propped by the unchanging influence of priests and armies. In the West, where there were no sacred books requiring trained interpreters, the priesthood acquired no preponderance, and when the kings were overthrown their powers passed to aristocracies of birth.
John W. Campbell
It seems that the majority of men are suggestible, half-awake children, willing to surrender their will to anyone who speaks with a voice that is threatening or sweet enough to sway them. Indeed, he who has a conviction strong enough to withstand the opposition of the crowd is the exception rather than the rule, an exception often admired centuries later, mostly laughed at by his contemporaries.
Erich Fromm
America is a faith, perhaps pancakes its sacrament. Opportunity comes to those who put away the disadvantages of family or circumstance and entrust themselves to the future. The point of the American story is simple enough for a child, particularly an immigrant child, to grasp: The past holds no sway in America.
Richard Rodriguez
My Lord Tomnoddy is thirty-four;
The Earl can last but a few years more.
My Lord in the Peers will take his place:
Her Majesty's councils his words will grace.
Office he'll hold and patronage sway;
Fortunes and lives he will vote away;
And what are his qualifications?-ONE!
He's the Earl of Fitzdotterel's eldest son.
Robert Barnabas Brough
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Joyce Kilmer
How oft in schoolboy-days, from the school's sway
Have I run forth to Nature as to a friend, -
With some pretext of o'erwrought sight, to spend
My school-time in green meadows far away!
Careless of summoning bell, or clocks that strike,
I marked with flowers the minutes of my day.
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman
You, who enjoy the breezes and love, laugh, and live in them:
With my golden fist I'll grip all you godly ones!
Just as I gave up love, everyone who lives will give it up too!
Distracted by gold, you will yearn only for gold!
On your beautiful mountain tops, clad in pleasure, you sway, and you despise [me,] the dark goblin, you eternal luxuriants!
Watch out!
Watch out!
Because when you fall into my power, your overdressed women, who despized my wooing, will be forced to my pleasure, without love.
Ha ha ha ha! Do you hear?
Watch out,
Watch out for the army of the night, when the hoarde of goblins rises from the silent depths into the daylight!
Richard Wagner
Even if the days of 1928 and early 1929 could be brought back again, the economic situation would be utterly indefensible on moral grounds. The greedy scramble for private gain and special privilege, the gambling spirit and the ruthless determination to gain wealth by means fair and foul, the callous indifference to how the other half lived or at most the throwing of a few crumbs of philanthropy, the bitter exploitation of the weak and the brutal suppression of the workers as they attempted to organize in defense of their minimum rights, the cruel assumption that there must always be a wide gulf between the rich and the poor, the willingness to send unnumbered victims to their doom on the battlefield in defense of vested interests-all these and countless other evils are inherent in the economic order which held sway in 1929. God forbid that we should have any desire to return to that living hell!
Kirby Page
The errors of the times of superstition and bigotry still hold some sway, and compel those who wish to preserve a regard to their respectability in society to an over strained demeanor; and this demeanor sometimes degenerates into hypocrisy, and is often the cause of great inconsistency. It is destructive of every open, honest, generous, and manly feeling. It disgusts many, and drives them to the opposite extreme. It is sometimes the cause of insanity. It is founded in ignorance.
While erroneous customs prevail in any country, it would evince an ignorance of human nature in any individual to offend against them, until he has convinced the community of their error.
Robert Owen
