Browse 130 quotes about Amiable.
“When you see someone on top, look away and don't try to bring him down, because he may someday help you reach the top.”
“O fairest of all creation, last and best
Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!
How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,
Defaced, deflow'red, and now to death devote?”
Source: Paradise lost
“Ariel: "Why do such stories always sound so sad? Why can't people part on more amiable terms?"
Danny: "Human nature," he said. "When feelings change and a person is at their most insecure, it's a matter of personal survival, I think. It's not always meant to hurt, but it often does.”
Source: Ariel's Cottage
“Once upon a time there was a Queen who had a son so ugly and so misshapen that it was long disputed whether he had human form. A fairy who was at his birth said, however, that he would be very amiable for all that, since he would have uncommon good sense.”
Source: Classic Fairy Tales: Fairy Stories Every Child Should Know
“Am I becoming more and more in love with God as a holy God, or with the conception of an amiable Being who says, “Oh well, sin doesn’t matter much”?”
Source: Love: A Holy Command
“What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?.”
Source: The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
“The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“A man's errors are what make him amiable.”
“PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions. The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead. He is commonly dead.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“The grace that makes every grace amiable is humility.”
Source: A collection of the moral and instructive sentiments, maxims, cautions, and reflexions, contained in the histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison: Digested under proper heads, with references to the volume, ...
“The most lasting reputation I have is for an almost ferocious aggressiveness, when in fact I am amiable, indulgent, affectionate, shy and rather timid at heart.”
“Avoid wine and women - choose a freckly-faced girl for a wife; they are invariably more amiable.”
“Without a doubt, one of the things which keeps us from attaining perfection is our tongue. When one has reached the point of no longer committing faults in speech, he has surely reached perfection, as was said by the Holy Spirit. The worst defect in talking is talking too much. Hence, in speech be brief and virtuous, brief and gentle, brief and simple, brief and charitable, brief and amiable.”
“In short, the Gaon was a one-sided, severe ascetic, and would never have deserved the title of a good father, a good husband, an amiable man ... [T]here is no occasion at all for pitying Mrs. Gaon. ... Saints are happy in their suffering, and noble souls find their happiness in sacrificing themselves for these sufferers.”
“Galen Clark was the best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.”
Source: THE YOSEMITE COLLECTION of John Muir (Illustrated): The Yosemite, Our National Parks, Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park, A Rival of the Yosemite, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Yosemite Glaciers, Yosemite in Winter & Yosemite in Spring
“The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.”
Source: Excellence: Can We Be Equal And Excellent Too?
“For, what is order without common sense, but Bedlam's front parlor? What is imagination without common sense, but the aspiration to out-dandy Beau Brummell with nothing but a bit of faded muslin and a limp cravat? What is Creation without common sense, but a scandalous thing without form or function, like a matron with half a dozen unattached daughters? And God looked upon the Creation in all its delightful multiplicity, and saw that, all in all, it was quite Amiable.”
“Failure on the other hand is infectious. The world is full of charming failures (for all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others) and unless the writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them.”
Source: Enemies of promise and other essays: an autobiography of ideas
“I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever.”
Source: Frankenstein's Bride: Frankenstein Or the Modern Prometheus
“To believe practically that the poor and luckless are here only as a nusiance to be abraded and abated, and in some permissable manner made away with, and swept out of sight, is not an amiable faith.”
“Admonition never sinks so deeply on the heart as in the hour of trial; young, amiable as you are, life teems, I doubt not, with various blessings for you--blessings which you will know how to value properly, for early disappointment is the nurse of wisdom.”
Source: The Children of the Abbey: A Tale
“That wit is truly amiable, which gladdens and enlivens every thing, which shines with a lustre gentle, but not faint, and powerful, but not glaring.”
Source: Discourses on several important subjects: To which is added, Eight sermons preached at the Lady Moyer's lecture, in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London
“Where virtue is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and the instruments of seduction.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria
“There is a lot of amiable fantasy written about trout fishing, but the truth is that few men know much if anything about the habits of trout and little more about the manner of taking them.”
“When I remember thee in days to come, O Jerusalem, it will not be with pleasure. The musty deposits of 2,000 years of inhumanity, intolerance, and uncleanliness lie in the foul-smelling alleys... The amiable dreamer of Nazareth has only contributed to increasing the hatred... What superstition and fanaticism on every side!”
“Women are often expected to be more amiable or more pleasing or more submissive than men generally.”
“A female friend, amiable, clever, and devoted, is a possession more valuable than parks and palaces; and without such a muse, few men can succeed in life, none be contented.”
“It is a fact capable of amiable interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed towards a new acquaintance of their own sex, because she has points of inferiority.”
Source: The Mill on the Floss
“Unhappily the habit of being offensive 'without meaning it' leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it.”
Source: Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy
“The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art of pleasing is to seem pleased.”
Source: Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].
“The most amiable people are those who least wound the self-love of others.”
“Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable.”
Source: Works, including the whole contents of Bp. Hurd's edition: withletters and other pieces not found in any previous collection; and Macaulay's essay on his life and works
“A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison
“That you may be beloved, be amiable.”
“Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“Men of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is plain. Their birth, rank, title and its appendages are at best indivious and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy.”
Source: Essays on Men and Manners
“O fairest of creation, last and best Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defaced, deflow'red, and now to death devote? Paradise Lost”
“Our respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.”
Source: Works
“The confection made of Cacao called Chocolate or Chocoletto which may be had in diverse places in London, at reasonable rates, is of wonderful efficacy for the procreation of children: for it not only vehemently incites to Venus, but causes conception in women . . . and besides that it preserves health, for it makes such as take it often to become fat and corpulent, fair and amiable.”
“I believe I am quite amiable and affable and quite fair, and I've rarely worked with people who are the opposite. Moodiness scares me. What gets to me is unkindness. Madness. Unwarranted cruelty through words. People who scream and shout at work. I hate confrontation and violence. I've done it in the past and I don't want to do it again. I guess I want a perfect world.”
“It is an amiable part of human nature, that we should love our animals; it is even better to love them to the point of folly, than not to love them at all.”
“True conviction of sin--how difficult it is, when its appearances and modes of life are so fair, when it twines itself so cunningly about, or creeps so insidiously into, our amiable qualities, and sets off its internal disorders by so many outward charms and attractions.”
Source: The New Life
“Who has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the quality of the heart and mind? And from this cause am I of opinion that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will be regarded as a misfortune. It never can prevent people from being amiable and beloved in the highest degree.”
Source: New Sketches of Every-day Life: A Diary. Together with Strife and Peace
“The beauty of the person of Christ, as represented in the Scripture, consists in things invisible unto the eyes of flesh. They are such as no hand of man can represent or shadow. It is the eye of faith alone that can see this King in his beauty. What else can contemplate on the untreated glories of his divine nature? Can the hand of man represent the union of his natures in the same person, wherein he is peculiarly amiable? What eye can discern the mutual communications of the properties of his different natures in the same person?”
Source: Christologia Or, A Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ, God and Man: With the Infinite Wisdom, Love and Power of God in the Contrivance and Constitution Thereof ...
“It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion--the second, above it.”
“His manners were less pure, but his character was equally amiable with that of his father. Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations, and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“I love the Irish for their attachment to the faith and for many amiable and noble qualities, but they are deficient in good sense, sound judgement, and manly character.”
“To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.”
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Together with A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
“There are few instances of the exercise of particular virtues which seem harder to attain to, or which appear more amiable and engaging in themselves, than those of moderation and the forgiveness of injuries.”
Source: The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself
“King René of Anjou [(1409-80)]was a strange compound of amiable, great and trifling qualities. He was so excellent a sovereign as to acquire the surnom of the Good. He was brave in war, delighted in tournaments and wrote on them, instituted festivals and processions, partly religious and partly burlesque, was a fond husband, a romantic lover, a good painter for that age, and a true philosopher.”