Quotes About Maxims

Reading constantly brings new things; the maxims add up, they don't need a particular arrangement, an organizing concept. In an era dominated by confusion, the maxim, like a small building block, remains something that continues to claim literary value.

Leibniz was somewhat mean about money. When any young lady at the court of Hanover married, he used to give her what he called a wedding present, consisting of useful maxims, ending up with the advice not to give up washing now that she had secured a husband. History does not record whether the brides were grateful.

These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science.

Proverbs are the literature of reason.

Morality comes from the top, such as parent to child. The first step, then, is to set down just laws and show that all of us must live by its maxims. You can never stop all wrongdoing, but if you don't punish it, then it proliferates until anarchy wears the robes of tolerance and understanding.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

These things happen in threes,' said Milly in her way of uttering bits of folk-wisdom; she was spooning tea into the heated teapot. She always mixed tea with maxims.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

Maxims are texts to which we turn in danger or sorrow, and we often find what seems to have been expressly written for our use.

And in spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

Most of us still believe to-day, that [history] is not merely concerned with the stringing together of facts in their correct order and the reconstruction of annals, but with something more. We must draw the moral . . . [W]e yet hold that history has its lessons, and that they can be discovered and taught. 'The experience of the past', as Stubbs wrote, 'can be carried into the present: study gives us maxims as well as dry facts.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

Search out the wisdom of nature, there is depth in all her doings; she seemeth prodigal of power, yet her rules are the maxims of frugality.

Proverbs are potted wisdom.

So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don't live up to their apparent billing.

Knowing how to apply maxims cannot be reduced to, or derived from, the acceptance of those or any other maxims.

The maxims of men reveal their characters.

The conduct of men depends upon their temperament, not upon a bunch of musty maxims.

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.... If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few, indeed, of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard have prevented a single foolish action.

Proverbs are potted wisdom.

In a letter to President Madison mainly about his sheep Jefferson concluded with a quotation from Horace's very Epicurean sixth epistle: Vive, vale, et siquid novisti rectius istis Candidus imperti sinon, his ulere mecum.73 That is, in the translation of the eighteenth-century English poet Christopher Smart, "Live: be happy. If you know of any thing preferable to these maxims, candidly communicate it: if not, with me make use of these.

It emphasized rationality and functionality by employing clean lines and forms. Among the maxims preached by Mies and Gropius were "God is in the details" and "Less is more.

Not every concept of ownership or possession is "arcane." Not every interest in property exists only in the desiccated atmosphere of ancient maxims and dusty books.

What flowers are to gardens, spices to food, gems to a garment, and stars to heaven; such are proverbs interwoven in speech.