#poses

One of the tragedies of modern times is that people have come to believe that something said by someone in the past, perhaps for illustrative or provocation purposes, actually represents that person's beliefs at the time. ↗

— Idries Shah

#beliefs #believe #come #illustrative #in the past

But if anyone supposes that there was no commercial fraud in the Middle Ages, let him study the commercial legislation of England for that period, and his mind will be satisfied, if he has a mind to be satisfied and not only a fancy to run away with him. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#anyone #away #commercial #england #fancy

What we possess owns us, and we absolutely own nothing. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#posessions #quotes-to-live-by #death

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. ↗

— William H. Seward

#constitution #devotes #domain #higher #law

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#chains-of-events #commonplaces-of-existence #cross-purposes #fiction #on-fiction

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: … But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays. MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural? MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up. (Act I., lines 132-140) ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#pessimism #poses #nature

If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will use you for theirs. ↗

— Aesop

#men #own #purposes #theirs #use

Active creation is conceived as a transitive action in which there is always presupposed an object about which the agent is concerned; it is virtually but not formally transitive because it makes, not presupposes, an object. ↗

— William Ames

#action #active #agent #always #because

I produce the records. I don't hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will - for commercial purposes. ↗

— Tori Amos

#commercial #company #control #expensive #hand

Your great country is wonderful at stealing pieces of history and using it for its own purposes, so there didn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about it but the English were incredibly exercised about it. ↗

— Michael Apted

#anything #country #english #exercised #great