A Quote by Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Is there anything so wretched as to look at a man of fine abilities doing nothing?

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Quote Topics

Anything Doing Doing Nothing Fine Look Man Nothing Wretched

Quote Author

Edwin Hubbel Chapin
American - Priest
1814 - 1880

Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched; but it is being great to know that one is wretched.

Blaise Pascal

There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything." and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyways. Either way, nothing happens."

Yvon Chouinard

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Marcus Tullius Cicero

My success was the shock of recognition, probably, rather than the quality of the work. I mean, the quality may have been fine, but there's a lot of fine work out there. It was the fact that I was doing something that at that time, nobody else was doing, except for say, Mort Saul out in San Francisco on The Hungry Eye, and "Second City" was emerging out in Chicago. Nothing in print. It was basically happening in cabaret and nothing in fiction. And certainly nothing in New York in cartoons.

Jules Feiffer

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Blaise Pascal

A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man.

Victor Hugo

A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.

Khaled Hosseini

There is nothing fine about being a child: it is fine, when we are old, to look back to when we were children.

Cesare Pavese

...nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.

Seneca the Younger

The man of wisdom is devoid of ego even though he may appear to use it. His vacant or fasting mind is neither doing anything nor not doing anything. He is outside of volition, neither this nor that. He is everything and nothing.

Ramesh S Balsekar

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

Plautus

I am sympathetic to the general form of Aristotle's view: the exercise of complex and more inclusive abilities is not anything in itself that is or necessarily should be valued over simple and less inclusive abilities. Rather, value depends on what the abilities are and the ends to which they are put.

David Wong

One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.

Blaise Pascal

- You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.

Zadie Smith

When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

Blaise Pascal

Like a fine flower, beautiful to look at but without scent, fine words are fruitless in a man who does not act in accordance with them.