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No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.
Sep 10, 2025
Modesty was designed by Providence as a guard to virtue, and that it might be always at hand it is wrought into the mechanism of the body. It is likewise proportioned to the occasions of life, and strongest in youth when passion is so too.
If geniuses can sometimes make mistakes, cannot the rest of us on occasion be geniuses?
Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class, or, on special occasions, for the working class. Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the door handles still intact.
The poem might come to you as you're preparing to teach a lecture, right? And when you say, "no" to that occasion, that poem is gone.
The first time, I usually skim off the outer layer and end up with photographs that are fairly obvious. The second time, I have to look a little deeper. The images get more interesting. The third time it is even more challenging and on each subsequent occasion, the images should get stronger, but it takes more effort to get them.
I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.
Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.
I believe that we have to lift the voice without fear and simply go forward, because in a lot of other occasions, we got tired, we have lowered the arms and simply let everything happen.
Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
If you can’t lead and you can’t deliver, then your own personal political philosophy is pretty much irrelevant, there have been far too many occasions over the last four years where the House has been ineffective.
Ultimate peace begins within; when we find peace within there will be no more conflict, nor more occasion for war.
I feel if some kid has sat down and felt I'm important enough to write two pages of words to and take up a lot of his valuable time, then he deserves a few words back, or even a phone call as I have done on a few occasions.
I don't wear dresses all the time - it's nice to save those moments for certain occasions and to make it feel extra special.
Ideally you do want people to treat you professionally in return, but not everyone necessarily does that. This acting job - it pays very well and you get to live a wonderful lifestyle, but it's something that I love doing, so I want to work with other people who enjoy it as well ... Maybe if I met the Queen I'd be nervous, though I'd probably be more nervous about doing things the right way because it's a very formal occasion.
MONARCH, n. A person engaged in reigning. Formerly the monarch ruled, as the derivation of the word attests, and as many subjects have had occasion to learn.
I look at the occasion, and this was one of the biggest so far in my career. It was a bit of a gamble, but I spotted Casillas off his line before the cross came in. It was a header, but a lobbed header -- a great goal.
It's in Macbeth: "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon." I seldom have occasion to pull it out, but it's ready and waiting!
In the homes of many Western Christians, hours are sometimes spent listening to worldly music. In our homes loud music can also be heard, but it is only to cover the talk about the gospel and the underground work so that neighbors may not overhear it and inform the secret police. How underground Christians rejoice on those rare occasions when they meet a serious Christian from the West!
Naked need is the occasion for God's giving, not a need adorned with the clean, elegant robes of respectability and good works.
I was used on a number of occasions by the United States and China as a conduit. For instance, I was up there talking with the Chinese leadership and they said to me that they were a bit concerned that the Americans had a misunderstanding about their relationship with the Soviets. There was some suggestion that there was a rapprochement developing between China and the Soviets, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
If a community of people wears white on a mournful occasion and another dresses in black, then one community would like white and dislike black and the other would like black and dislike white. Moreover, this attitude leaves a physical effect on the cells as well as on the genes in the body.
A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
I do think trying to live each day as a bunch of moral occasions, did I live up to what I would hope, and, if I didn't, what can I do tomorrow to be a little better, I do think we can improve. We get better at life as we get older.
... as we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony [Abbott] and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.
Wine makes every meal an occasion.
There are a good many pious people who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china, only using it on holy occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in working-day wear.
He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.
Imagine a State occasion where the Queen is wearing trainers with her tiara because she thinks it will make people like her better, more folksy. It's unthinkable. But that's patently the thought process Gordon Brown (or his spin doctor) went through before the Prime Minister appeared on the world stage in Beijing without his suit and tie.
The world awaits Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Olympics, an occasion which will bring into the global spotlight the dramatic advances China is making in enhancing the quality of life for its people.
There are occasions when I've had beef, but I generally tend to avoid it, as a nod towards my parents' culture.
But I have a problem with the term 'light'. I never in my life knew what to do with that. I know that people have mentioned on some occasions that 'Richter is all about light', and that 'the paintings have a special light', and I never knew what they were talking about. I was never interested in light. Light is there and you turn it on or you turn it off, with sun or without sun. I don't know what the 'problematic of light' is. I take it as a metaphor for a different quality, which is similarly difficult to describe. Good.
It doesn't really exist, this Frat Pack. We run into each other on occasions and we all like each other's films, I guess, but there isn't some big funny restaurant or bar where we all hang out. At least, if there is, they haven't invited me.
Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.
One code prevails in the family; another, on the street; a third, in the workshop or store; a fourth, in the religious association. As a person passes from one of the environments to another, he is subjected to antagonistic pulls, and is in danger of being split into a being having different standards of judgment and emotion for different occasions. This danger imposes upon the school a steadying and integrating office.
The truffle is not a positive aphrodisiac, but it can upon occasion make women tenderer and men more apt to love.
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.
So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.
As an animal lover and as a sometime-meat-eater, I've read so much about the emotional sophistication of pigs and cows and sheep that I do think twice when I do still eat them on occasion.
American women often fall into the trap of, "Oh, these are my weekend clothes. These are my work clothes. This is what I wear at night." It's so old-fashioned. The French are not afraid of their luxury. Americans can be so puritanical and think, "That's my special-occasion bag." Whereas, for a French woman, it's her everyday bag.
I was fortunate enough to be one of those stories where I was scouted on the street by somebody and actually refused to go to the agency, and was approached on different occasions and finally kind of caved and said, 'OK, I'll try it and see what happens.
Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.
When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain.
Again, after his fall, God gave him an occasion to repent and to receive mercy but he kept his stiff-neck held high. He came to him and said "Adam, Where are you?" instead of saying "What glory you have left and what dishonor you have arrived at?" After that, He asked him "Why did you sin? Why did you transgress the commandment?" By asking these questions, He wanted to give him the opportunity to say, "Forgive me." However, he did not ask for forgiveness. There was no humility, there was no repentance, but indeed the opposite.
The frequency with which a man experiences lust depends upon his own physical condition, whereas the occasion which rouse such feelings in him depend upon the social conventions to which he is accustomed
None so nearly disposed to scoffing at religion as those who have accustomed themselves to swear on trifling occasions.
No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable. ... Cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible: avoiding occasions of expence (and) avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt ... not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear.
It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands
The spirit of God, like the sun, always gives all its light at once. The spirit of man resembles the pale moon, which has its phases, its absences and its returns, its lucidity and its spots, its fullness and its disappearance, which borrows all its light from the rays of the sun, and which still dares to intercept them on occasion.