Master Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Whoever you are, behold your master,
He is, or was, or has to be.

Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

Rabindranath Tagore

The stronger becomes master of the weaker, in so far as the latter cannot assert its degree of independence — here there is no mercy, no forbearance, even less a respect for "laws."

Friedrich Nietzsche

"Why is thy mind so entangled," said the Master [Virgil], "that thou slackenest thy pace? What is it to thee what they whisper there? Come after me and let the people talk. Stand like a firm tower that never shakes its top for blast of wind."

Dante Alighieri

Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them.

Theodor W. Adorno

What then? Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover.

Seneca the Younger

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. Again and again they have sent a man of great acuteness, a fine scholar, a fine forensic orator, and some master of the brawls has crunched him up in his hands like a bit of paper.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Jacques said that his master said that everything good or evil we encounter here below was written on high.

Ill fares the State where many masters rule; let one be lord, one king supreme.

In limitations he first shows himself the master,
And the law can only bring us freedom.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ah, monsieur, to live in the bosom of the sea! Only there can independence be found! There I recognize no master! There I am free!

Love is the master key that unlocks the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and most easily of all, the gate of fear.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.

Henry David Thoreau

The silent organ loudest chants
The master's requiem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.

A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master: these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.

Margaret Thatcher

Refrain to-night; And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence, the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either master the devil or throw him out With wondrous potency.

William Shakespeare

But you speak of Master Gandalf, as if he was in a story that had come to an end.' 'Yes, we do,' said Pippin sadly. 'The story seems to be going on, but I am afraid Gandalf has fallen out of it.

J. R. R. Tolkien