Berth Quotes

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains. (Jonathan Raban)
Everything in nature lives according to some order so it seems unlikely that humans live outside this system, even if they try to resist their instincts. That's how we can be sure we're not animals, this refusal to abide by what we know is good for us. If an animal's instinct tells him to avoid something he has no trouble keeping a wide berth. We, on the other hand, run in the direction of danger if it offers a thrill or satisfies a curiosity. View quote
Chrissie Hynde
Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy-its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom-now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed "a revolt of the spirit against... a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism.”. View quote
Tony Judt
Pleasure assails a man through each and every sense that he has; and while he must face and grapple with work, to pleasure he must give the widest berth possible and have none but unavoidable dealings with her. And herein the strongest man is indeed strongest, one might almost say, who can keep the farthest away from pleasures; for it is impossible to dwell with pleasure or even to dally with her for any length of time without being completely enslaved. View quote
Dio Chrysostom
Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth. View quote
Max Beerbohm
His death which happened in his berth, At forty-odd befell: They went and told the sexton, and The sexton tolled the bell. View quote
Thomas Hood
Socialism knows that revolutionary upheavals and transformations proceed from the rock bed of material needs. With a full appreciation of and veneration for moral impulses that are balanced with scientific knowledge, it eschews, looks with just suspicion upon and gives a wide berth to balloon morality, or be it those malarial fevers that reformers love to dignify with the name of "moral feelings" View quote
Daniel De Leon
We had an opportunity to clinch a playoff berth and I think if that's not enough motivation I don't think you should be playing this game. View quote
Tina Thompson
Upper berth, lower berth, that's the difference between talent and genius. View quote
George Gershwin
Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew, And her conception of the joyous Prime. View quote
Edmund Spenser
As I walk through my beloved Krakowski Park and pass by a group of young people from which I can smell beer, I give them a wide berth. But when I feel the weed, I go boldly through their group and sometimes chat. Yes, the abuse of marijuana causes trouble with memory, concentration, but it is a short-lived condition. I'm not talking about extreme cases, but there are few of them. Less than after alcohol. Oneself should sometimes detach from reality to deal with it somehow. (Jerzy Vetulani)
But for Socrates, tragedy did not even seem to "tell what's true", quite apart from the fact that it addresses "those without much wit", not the philosopher: another reason for giving it a wide berth. Like Plato, he numbered it among the flattering arts which represent only the agreeable, not the useful, and therefore required that his disciples abstain most rigidly from such unphilosophical stimuli - with such success that the young tragedian, Plato, burnt his writings in order to become a pupil of Socrates. View quote
Friedrich Nietzsche