Lessening Quotes

He who receives an idea from me receives instruction for himself without lessening mine as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me. (Thomas Jefferson)
In this dim world of clouding cares, We rarely know, till wildered eyes See white wings lessening up the skies, The angels with us unawares. View quote
Gerald Massey
No good government can ever want more than two things for its support: 1st, Its own excellence; and, 2dly, a people sufficiently instructed, to be aware of that excellence. Every other pretended support, must ultimately tend to its subversion, by lessening its dependence upon these. View quote
James Mill
A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it's lessening the tension. View quote
Jack Vance
The idea that education will lead to a lessening of bigotry is just factually incorrect. View quote
Reza Aslan
The issue is whether the ultimate civil authority of the United States can tolerate actions in contempt of constitutional lines of authority. Any lessening of civil power over military power must inevitably lead away from democracy. View quote
Harold Russell
I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.. [a] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit I agree with you... View quote
Thomas Jefferson
The great weight of the ship may indeed prevent her from acquiring her greatest velocity; but when she has attained it, she will advance by her own intrinsic motion, without gaining any new degree of velocity, or lessening what she has acquired. View quote
William Falconer
My hope is that the difference in the three generations' attitudes may signal a lessening of anti-Semitism in Austria. View quote
Eric Kandel
As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence. (H. P. Lovecraft)
You are quite correct in saying that I banned the export of monkeys on a humanitarian basis and not because the number was lessening. View quote
Morarji Desai
Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime, Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time; Near and more near your beamy cars approach, And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; - Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield, Frail as your silken sisters of the field! Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush, Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall, And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all! - Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same. View quote
Erasmus Darwin
Self-denial surely means somethings far greater than some slight and insignificant lessening of our self-indulgences! View quote
James Hudson Taylor
Time's horses gallop down the lessening hill. View quote
Richard Le Gallienne
Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the United States. View quote
Henry Kissinger
"How... how can”-savagely, he slashed an arm down before him in absolute negation of all he saw-"such be? How could God allow it?” "God? You fool-there is no God!” The words struck Faust like a great bronze clapper, shattering the crusted certainties of a lifetime, reverberating, setting up echoes that washed back and forth through his being in slowly lessening waves, leaving no atom unshaken, no belief untouched. There was no God. He knew this for the truth, recognized it as such on an almost physical level, for it summed up everything he had ever thought or reasoned. It resolved a thousand doubts. It left no question unanswered. There was no God! Everything was possible now. Nothing was forbidden. View quote
Michael Swanwick
[Judy, 8, is watching TV] He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything. View quote
John Updike
I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own, scarcely to be shared with others or even made plausible to them. View quote
George F. Kennan
I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own, scarcely to be shared with others or even made plausible to them. I habitually read special meanings into things, scenes and places - qualities of wonder, beauty, promise, or horror - for which there was no external evidence visible or plausible to others. My world was peopled with mysteries, seductive hints, vague menaces, "intimations of immortality." View quote
George F. Kennan
Everything that happened, good or bad, would subtract something from the lessening store of useful energy, till a time arrived when nothing could happen any more, and the universe, frozen into eternal repose, would for ever be as if it were not. (Arthur Balfour)
In teaching man, experimental science results in lessening his pride more and more by proving to him every day that primary causes, like the objective reality of things, will be hidden from him forever and that he can only know relations. View quote
Claude Bernard
In some units it may suppress the motor discharge altogether, in some it may merely slow the motor discharge thus lessening the wave frequency of the contraction and so the tension. View quote
Charles Scott Sherrington
But no clouds in a red sky promised daylight's return, nor in lessening shadows did a long twilight gleam with reflected sun. Black night that no ray can pierce comes ever denser from earth, veiling the heavens. View quote
Statius
For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans. View quote
Kevin Spacey