Naught Quotes - page 5
It is impious to say that evil has its origin from God, because naught contrary is produced by the contrary. Life does not generate death, nor is darkness the beginning of light, nor is disease the maker of health, but in the changes of conditions there are transitions from one condition to the contrary.
Basil of Caesarea
Men talk too much of gold and fame,
And not enough about a name;
And yet a good name's better far
Than all earth's glistening jewels are.
Who holds his name above all price
And chooses every sacrifice
To keep his earthly record clear,
Can face the world without a fear.Who never cheats nor lies for gain,
A poor man may, perhaps, remain,
Yet, when at night he goes to rest,
No little voice within his breast
Disturbs his slumber. Conscience clear,
He falls asleep with naught to fear
And when he wakes the world to face
He is not tainted by disgrace.
Edgar Guest
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve.
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
James Thomson (poet)
Then cricket sing thy song, or answer mine
Thine whispers blame, but mine has naught but praises
It matters not. - Behold the autumn goes,
The Shadow grows,
The moments take hold of eternity;
Even while we stop to wrangle or repine
Our lives are gone
Like thinnest mist,
Like yon escaping colour in the tree: -
Rejoice! rejoice! whilst yet the hours exist
Rejoice or mourn, and let the world swing on
Unmoved by Cricket-song of thee or me.
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman
Nothing like alms: great is the virtue of this practice, when the alms is poured forth from pure stores; for it is like a fountain discharging mud, when it issues from unjust stores, but when from just gains, it is as a limpid and pure stream... This fountain is better than that in Paradise (Genesis 2:10); a fountain, not dividing into four heads, but reaching unto Heaven itself: this gives birth to that river which springs up into eternal life (John 4:14): on this let Death light, and like a spark it is extinguished by the fountain: such, wherever it drops, are the mighty blessings it causes. This quenches, even as a spark, the river of fire: this so strangles that worm, as naught else can do. (Mark 9:44) He that has this, shall not gnash his teeth... Better to possess such a fountain, than to have fountains running with gold.
John Chrysostom
And hold Humanity one man, whose universal agony
Still strains and strives to gain the goal, where agonies shall cease to be.
Believe in all things; none believe; judge not nor warp by "Facts" the thought;
See clear, hear clear, tho' life may seem Mâyâ and Mirage, Dream and Naught.
Abjure the Why and seek the How: the God and gods enthroned on high,
Are silent all, are silent still; nor hear thy voice, nor deign reply.
The Now, that indivisible point which studs the length of infinite line
Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine.
Richard Francis Burton
Take heed, therefore, wicked prelates, blind leaders of the blind; indurate and obstinate hypocrites, take heed .... Ye will be the chiefest in Christ's flock, and yet will not keep one jot of the right way of his doctrine ...ye keep thereof almost naught at all, but whatsoever soundeth to make of your bellies, to maintain your honour, whether in the Scripture, or in your own traditions, or in the pope's law, that ye compel the lay-people to observe; violently threatening them with your excommunications and curses, that they shall be damned, body and soul, if they keep them not. And if that help you not, then ye murder them mercilessly with the sword of the temporal powers, whom ye have made so blind that they be ready to slay whom ye command, and will not hear his cause examined, nor give him room to answer for himself.
William Tyndale
Perversity, she thought. Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years? Could the human race, quite out of hand and with no sufficient reason, have turned its back upon everything that had built humanity? Or was it, perhaps, no more than second childhood, a shifting of the burden off one's shoulders and going back to the selfishness of the child who romped and frolicked without thought of consequence or liability?
Clifford D. Simak
Fuller's finest wartime moment was the promulgation of his Plan 1919. Believing World War I would continue into 1919, he suggested victory with a single penetrating, surprise, mass tank attack aimed not at killing lots of German soldiers but at reaching and killing the enemy "brain”-the rear-area command-and-communications infrastructure-and thus paralyzing the body. But Fuller's most meaningful tactical concept came to naught, as the war ended in November 1918. Had it continued, Fuller today might be as widely known as Guderian, Montgomery and Patton.
J. F. C. Fuller
Many of us affect a tone of irony about gadgets, as if we lived always in realms above and dealt with trifles only during rare descents from sublime thoughts. The truth is that more and more of the important things in life turn on pinpoints. Our frustrations begin in trivialities - a telephone out of order, a car that will not start, a claim check whose number has been misread. The thing in cellophane that cannot be got at - plain to the sight but sealed like an egg - is the modern version of the torture of Tantalus. Catastrophes we will deal with like heroes, but the bottle top that defies us saps our morale, like the tiny arrows of the Lilliputians that maddened Gulliver and set his strength at naught.
Jacques Barzun
All outer events notwithstanding, the forces of Light are in the ascendant and steadily inculcate a new and higher rhythm and purpose in men's lives. This being so, naught can disturb the plan for the rehabilitation of the world. The outer signs of turmoil and violence, of hatred and fear, are but the death-throes of a dying civilization under the impact of the new. When the smoke of battle has cleared humanity will find itself entering into a dispensation unlike aught known before, into, as Maitreya has said, "a simpler life where no man lacks, where no two days are alike, where the Joy of Brotherhood manifests through all men".
Benjamin Creme
