Aught Quotes - page 4
I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.
Abraham Lincoln
No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.
Abraham Lincoln
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Behold this sea, that sapphire sky!
Where nature does so much for man,
Shall man not set his standard high,
And hold some higher, holier plan?
Some loftier plan than ever planned
By outworn book of outworn land?Where God has done so much for man,
Shall man for God do aught at all?
The soul that feeds on books alone -
I count that soul exceeding small
That lives alone by book and creed,-
A soul that has not learned to read.
Joaquin Miller
Rest for ever (heart) enough
Hast thou throbbed. Nothing is worth
Thy agitations, nor of sighs is worthy
The earth. Bitterness and vexation
Is life, never aught besides, and mire the world.
Quiet thyself henceforth. Despair
For the last time. To our race fate
Has given but death.
Henceforth despise Thyself, nature, the foul
Power which, hidden, rules to the common bane,
And the infinite vanity of the whole.
Giacomo Leopardi
Even as bad actors cannot sing alone, but only in chorus: so some cannot walk alone. Man, if thou art aught, strive to walk alone and hold converse with yourself, instead of skulking in the chorus! at length think; look around thee; bestir thyself, that thou mayest know who thou art! (103).
Epictetus
My father was as proud of his eloquence as MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO could be for his life, and and for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength - and his weakness, too. - His strength - for he was by nature eloquent - and his weakness - for he was hourly a dupe to it; and provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one - (bating the case of a systematic misfortune)- he had all he wanted.- A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune was as five - my father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him.
Laurence Sterne
A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew:
Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face;
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee,
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the bust whisper, circling round,
Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned;
Yet he was kind; or if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too.
Oliver Goldsmith
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
