Ezra Stiles Quotes
All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.
Quotes to Explore
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I do not believe in a God who maliciously or arbitrarily interferes in the personal affairs of mankind. My religion consists of an humble admiration for the vast power which manifests itself in that small part of the universe which our poor, weak minds can grasp!
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There is not one piece of cosmic dust that is outside the scope of God's sovereign providence.
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I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind.
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The mass of mankind are evidently slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.
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The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals. Those persons which have the greatest number of teeth are the longest lived; those which have them widely separated, smaller, and more scattered, are generally more short lived.
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Meanness is more ingrained in man's nature than Prodigality; the mass of mankind are avaricious rather than open-handed.
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All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
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Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of.
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Mankind led on by gods err all too easily.
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Mankind . . . possesses two supreme blessings. First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her there came the son of Semele, who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man. For filled with that good gift, suffering mankind forgets its grief; from it comes sleep; with it oblivion of the troubles of the day. There is no other medicine for misery.
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Nuptial love makes mankind; friendly love perfects it; but wanton love corrupts and debases it.
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In two weeks the sheeplike masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed, for the sake of the sordid ends of a few interested parties. Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering today.
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The conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semireligious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed.
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The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.
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To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
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'Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least.
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It is the law of love that rules mankind.
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Mankind in Amnesia has to do not only with the past, like my other books -- primarily it has to do with the future, a future not removed by thousands or tens of thousands of years, but the imminent future, on whose threshold we now stand.
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What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity had in general much better remain where it is.
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Most publishers, like most writers, are ruined by their successes.
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The duration of a couple's passion is in proportion to the woman's original resistance or to the obstacles that social hazards have placed in the way of her happiness.
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But there is no use in trying to engraft an opposite nature on one’s own. What I am, that I must be, except as God changes me into His own image. And everything brings me back to that, as my supreme desire. I see more and more that I must be myself what I want my children to be and that I cannot make myself over even for their sakes. This must be His work, and I wonder that it goes on so slowly, that all the disappointments, sorrows, sicknesses I have passed through have left me still selfish, still full of imperfections!
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All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.
