Browse 4503 quotes about Objects.
“A dandy is a clothes-wearing man--a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, person and purse is heroically consecrated to this one object--the wearing of clothes, wisely and well; so that, as others dress to live, he lives to dress.”
Source: The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle
“He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape.”
Source: Read for Your Life #18
“The object of all education is to make folks fit to live.”
Source: Little house in the Ozarks: a Laura Ingalls Wilder sampler : the rediscovered writings
“The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.”
“A large, branching, aged oak is perhaps the most venerable of all inanimate objects.”
Source: Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc
“Pity only on fresh objects stays, but with the tedious sight of woes decays.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of John Dryden (Illustrated)
“Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our will; and the understanding can no more be delighted with a lie than the will can choose an apparent evil.”
Source: Select essays on the belles lettres
“The dowry, not the wife, is the object of attraction.”
“All affectation; 'tis my perfect scorn;
Object of my implacable disgust.”
Source: The task, Table talk, and other poems: With critical observations of various authors on his genius and character, and notes, critical and illustrative
“In man or woman, but far most in man,
And most of all in man that ministers,
And serves the altar, in my soul I loathe
All affectation. 'Tis my perfect scorn:
Object of my implacable disgust.”
Source: The Poetical Works of William Cowper: With Life ; Six Engravings on Steel
“The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith; the successful man feels that the objects which he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.”
Source: On Sir Francis Burdett's motion for parliamentary reform.-On the conduct of the war.-On the cry of the Whigs for peace, 1810.-Army and navy reforms, 1810.-On the economical reformers, 1811.-On the state of the poor.-The principle of Mr. Malthus's essay on population.-The manufacturing system, 1812.-On the state of the poor.-On the accounts of England by foreign travellers and the state of public opinion, 1816.-On the state of public opinion and the political reformers, 1816.-v.2 A letter to Will
“When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.”
Source: Bowen's Court
“Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation.”
Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Poetical works. Dramas. The vicar of Wakefield
“Happy is it to place a daughter; yet it pains a father's heart when he delivers to another's house a child, the object of his tender care.”
Source: The Plays of Euripides
“The father's life is surrounded by mysterious prestige: the hours he spends in the home, the room where he works, the objects around him, his occupations, his habits, have a sacred character. It is he who feeds the family, is the one in charge and the head. Usually he works outside the home, and it is through him that the household communicates with the rest of the world: he is the embodiment of this adventurous, immense, difficult, and marvelous world; he is transcendence, he is God.”
“Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.”
Source: Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen: Richard I and the Abbot of Boxley. The Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. King Henry IV and Sir Arnold Savage. Southey and Porson. Oliver Cromwel and Walter Noble. Aeschines and Phocion. Queen Elizabeth and Cecil. King James I and Isaac Casaubon. Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor. General Kleber and some French officers. Bonaparte and the president of the senate. Bishop Burnet and Humphrey Hardcastle. Peter Leopold and the President Du
“Vast objects of remote altitude must be looked at a long while before they are ascertained. Ages are the telescope tubes that must be lengthened out for Shakespeare; and generations of men serve but a single witness to his claims.”
Source: The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor: Dialogues in verse : Gebir. Acts and scenes. Hellenics
“Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom light as well as immortality was brought into the world) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart--which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.”
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
“Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions
“The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.”
Source: Thoughts on Religion and Other Curious Subjects
“The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.”
Source: Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
“Hope does not necessarily have to take an object.”
“A garden is a kinetic work of art, not an object but a process, open-ended, biodegradable, nurturant, like all women's artistry. A garden is the best alternative therapy.”
“There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects and terrible; the latter on small ones and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us: in one case we are forced, in the other, we are flattered, into compliance.”
Source: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
“Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied, and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness and anxiety.”
Source: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
“The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.”
Source: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
“You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclining to superstition.”
Source: The Speeches of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke
“It is known that the taste--whatever it is--is improved exactly as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise.”
Source: The works of ... Edmund Burke [ed. by W. King and F. Laurence].
“First loves are not necessarily more foolish than others; but the chances are certainly against them. Proximity of time or place, a variety of accidental circumstances more than the essential merits of the object, often produce what is called first love.”
Source: Works
“But from the good health of the mind comes that which is dear to all and the object of prayer-happiness.”
“Reason was nowhere, time was an immovable object nailed high on the wall, except where the world kept shop.”
“Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.”
Source: A Heritage and its History
“Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.”
“The flatterer's object is to please in everything he does; whereas the true friend always does what is right, and so often gives pleasure, often pain, not wishing the latter, but not shunning it either, if he deems it best.”
Source: Plutarch's Morals: Ethical Essays
“A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.”
Source: Americans and Others
“Oh! grief is fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of its woe from every form and change around; it incorporates itself with all living nature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills all things, and, like light, it gives its own colors to all.”
Source: The last man, by the author of Frankenstein
“it is wiser to be conventionally immoral than unconventionally moral. It isn't the immorality they object to, but the originality.”
“The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest.”
Source: Gravity and Grace
“Nothing is more maddening than being questioned by the object of one's interest about the object of hers, should that object not be you.”
Source: Under the Net: A Novel
“There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill-will: a word--a look, which at one time would make no impression, at another time wounds the heart, and, like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)
“Kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire,
As summer clouds flash forth electric fire.”
Source: Poems
“Temperance keeps the senses clear and unembarrassed, and makes them seize the object with more keenness and satisfaction. It appears with life in the face, and decorum in the person; it gives you the command of your head, and secures your health, and preserves you in a condition for business.”
Source: Pearls of Great Price: or, Maxims, reflections, characters and thoughts, on miscellaneous subjects ... Selected from the works of the Rev. Jeremy Collier by the editor of
“The extent to which we take everyday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives.”
Source: Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea
“Writers and painters have a medium that can foster self-effacements. Actors haven't. An actor can't hide himself behind paper or canvas. If you're not there your art's not there. That's why we actors are often such self-centered objects.”
“For the first time in six or seven thousand years, many people of goodwill find themselves confused about art. They want to enjoy it because enjoying art is something they expect of themselves as civilized persons, but they're unsure how to do so. They aren't even sure which of the visible objects are art and which are furniture, clothes, hors d'oeuvres, or construction rubble, and whether a pile of dead and decomposing rats is deliberate art or just another pile of decomposing rats.”
Source: Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories
“External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty!”
Source: Journey to the Interior of the Earth
“You spend a good part of your adult life acquiring things: building a home, filling it with objects that please your eye and make you feel comfortable. Then you spend the last part of your life trying to figure out how to get rid of it all.”
“in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it.”
Source: Letters of Ayn Rand
“I don't pretend to any exemption from the general lot of parental delusion-I mean that like most other parents I see my child through an atmosphere which illuminates, magnifies, and at the same time refines the object to a degree that amounts to a delusion.”
Source: Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge
“The desire to be the object of public attention is weak, but the excessive dread of it is but a form of vanity and over-self-contemplativeness.”
Source: Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge