Person Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Strange is this alien despotism of Sleep which takes two persons lying in each other's arms & separates them leagues, continents,asunder.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If one of these fires of unusual shape have made its appearance, everybody is eager to know what it is. Blind to all other celestial bodies, each asks about the newcomer; one is not quite sure whether to admire or to fear it. Persons there are who seek to inspire terror by forecasting its grave import.

Seneca the Younger

It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

Henry David Thoreau

Many foolish persons, wanderers from other parts, have the vain fashion of graving their names and the obscure places whence they come, upon its stones, which is silly and marketh the doer for a fool.

In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.

The facilities for advanced education must be evened out and multiplied. No one who can take advantage of a higher education should be denied this chance. You cannot conduct a modern community except with an adequate supply of persons upon whose education, whether humane, technical, or scientific, much time and money have been spent.

Winston Churchill

Most persons think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a small state.... To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.

In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tis said that persons living on annuities Are longer lived than others.

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources.

Henry David Thoreau

History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they know not what they should do.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.

Henry David Thoreau

Only in Christ can men and women find answers to the ultimate questions that trouble them. Only in Christ can they fully understand their dignity as persons created and loved by God.

Pope John Paul II

As the sense of smell is so intimately connected with that of taste, it is not surprising that an excessively bad odour should excite wretching or vomitting in some persons.

I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom; and soI am content to live.

Henry David Thoreau

The scenes and events of long ago, and the persons who took part in them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it always seems defective.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Nor need it cause surprise that things disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.

The persons and property of our citizens are entitled to the protection of our government in all places where they may lawfully go.

Thomas Jefferson

With each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air. It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian, than with persons in the house.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In strict science, all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining forthe metaphysical foundation of this elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson