Home / Topics / May Quotes

May Quotes

Browse 29779 quotes about May.

May Quotes

“Judge not of actions by their mere effect; Dive to the center, and the cause detect. Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, And smallest virtues from a mighty source.”

May Action Courses Causes Virtue Effects Judging Source Spring Mere Deeds Smallest Spring May

Author:Alexander Pope

“There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.”

Firsts May Reason Happens Moving Literature Speak Understanding Pleasure Teach Higher Function Mere Affection Sail Oar Rudders

Book:Leaders in literature

Source: Leaders in literature

“In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.”

Knows May Ends Matter Done Enough Use Steps Virtue Mere Deeds Practicals Endeavor

Book:The Nicomachean ethics

Source: The Nicomachean ethics

“But conversation, choose what theme we may, And chiefly when religion leads the way, Should flow, like waters after summer show'rs, Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.”

Ifs Way Should May Shows Water Conversation Summer Flow Mere Raised Theme Mechanic

Author:William Cowper

“You know how often the turning down this street or that, the accepting or rejecting of an invitation, may deflect the whole current of our lives into some other channel. Are we mere leaves, fluttered hither and thither by the wind, or are we rather, with every conviction that we are free agents, carried steadily along to a definite and pre-determined end?”

Knows May Ends Whole Accepting Know How Our Lives Streets Wind Mere Currents Conviction Determined Agents Definite Invitations Rejecting Free Agents

Book:Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)

Source: Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Delphi Classics)

“The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.”

May Self Interest Economic Expression Type Capitalism Mere Greed Range Petty Self Interest Admirable Self Expression Economic Systems

Author:Felix Frankfurter

“Collecting at its best is very far from mere acquisitiveness; it may become one of the most humanistic of occupations, seeking to illustrate by the assembling of significant reliques, the march of the human spirit in its quest for beauty.”

Humans May Spirit Mere Seeking Significant March Occupation Quests Human Spirit Collecting Collectors Humanistic Assembling

Author:Arthur Davison Ficke

“If the creatures with fur/feathers/fins are our brothers in a lower stage of development then their very weakness and inability to protest, demands that man should refrain from torturing them for the mere possibility of obtaining some knowledge which he believes may be to his own interest.”

“None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer. Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.”

Source: JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays

“We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may "conquer" them.”

May Order Mere Conquer

Book:THE ABOLITION OF MAN

Source: THE ABOLITION OF MAN

“Railing in other men may be a crime, But ought to pass for mere instinct in him: Instinct he follows and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transprose.”

Knows Men Writing May Crime Ought Mere Instinct Verses

Book:Poetical Works: With Life, Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes

Source: Poetical Works: With Life, Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes

“Hamlet 's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.”

Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions

“It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation.”

Men May Certain Mathematics Faults Mere Being True Occupation Mathematician Exclusive Shortcomings

Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss

“It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom , as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.”

People Ifs World May Whole Consciousness Gone Clear This World Shots Mere Cease Whole World Void Me Alone Phantoms

Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky