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Modern Quotes

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Modern Quotes

“Modern society includes three types of men who can never think very highly of the world--the priest, the physician, and the attorney-at-law. They all wear black, too, for are they not in mourning for every virtue and every illusion?”

Thinking Men World Law Three Black Virtue Modern Type Illusion Mourning Priests Physicians Attorney Modern Society

Author:Honore de Balzac

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

“I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.”

Thinking Children Littles Enjoy Company Virtue Too Much Modern Negative Importance Educational Merit Interfere Theorists

Book:In praise of idleness: and other essays

Source: In praise of idleness: and other essays

“Sanity -- that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.”

Want Literature Virtue Modern Ancient Variety Spite Sanity Defects Ancient Literature

Book:On the Classical Tradition

Source: On the Classical Tradition

“The modern world is reversing the old virtues of authority. They aimed deliberately to make men unworldly. They did not aim to found society on a full use of the earth's resources; they did not aim to use the whole nature of man; they did not intend him to think out the full expression of his desires. Democracy is a turning point upon those ideals in a pursuit, at first unconsciously, of the richest life that men can devise for themselves.”

Thinking Men World Firsts Whole Use Earth Desire Found Virtue Democracy Modern Expression Authority Resources Ideals Aim Pursuit Modern World Turning Points Nature Of Man

Author:Walter Lippmann

“Extol Jewish virtue, modern Zionism and the Israeli Defense Forces.”

Literature Force Virtue Modern Defense Israeli Zionism

Author:Geraldo Rivera

“Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude; they are not unfriendly; they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion.”

Needs Cities Compassion Practice Kindness Virtue Modern Offers Towns Neighbor Urban Anonymity Unlearn Unfriendly Gregariousness

Book:The province of the heart

Source: The province of the heart

“What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue.”

Ends Values Virtue Modern Mankind Materials Standards Constant Advertising Appeals Material Things Elevating Standards And Values

Book:Singing Waters

Source: Singing Waters

“There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo.”

“The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.”

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest numbers of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best. All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.”

Source: The Works of John Adams: Controversial papers of the Revolution (continued) Works on government

“All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.”

Men Wells Christian Virtue Modern Dignity Ancient Sober Pagan Inquirers

Book:Letters, Addressed to His Wife

Source: Letters, Addressed to His Wife

“To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.”

Men Has Beens Made Country Virtue Modern Equal Blind Fortune Ancient Hated Comparison Blindness Preference

Book:The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Lives of the poets

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Lives of the poets

“Today's banalities apparently gain in profundity if one states that the wisdom of the past, for all its virtues, belongs to the past. The arrogance of those who come later preens itself with the notion that the past is dead and gone. The modern mind can no longer think thought, only can locate it in time and space. The activity of thinking decays to the passivity of classifying.”

Ifs Thinking Mind States Today Past Space Gone Virtue Modern Activity Gains Notion Arrogance Decay Time And Space Passivity Banality Profundity Classifying

Author:Russell Jacoby