A Quote by Rene Descartes

Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them.

Rene Descartes

Quote Topics

Absolute Acquire Could Employed Even Guiding Ingenuity Mastery Over Passions Souls Sufficient Them Those Training Weakest

Quote Author

Rene Descartes
French - Mathematician
March 31, 1596 - February 11, 1650

In order to exert influence over people, there were other things that could be used besides love. Knowledge seemed to be an equally strong force, perhaps even stronger. Whoever possessed knowledge not only had power over the changeable passions of people, but also power over their thinking, over their minds, hearts and souls.

Peter Prange

Those who would be employed in propagating the Gospel should be familiar with the doctrines he is to combat and the doctrines he is to teach, and acquire a complete knowledge both of the Sacred Scriptures and of these philosophical and mythological dogmas which form the souls of the Buddhist and Hindu Systems.

William Carey

Even though flowers fall, don't regret it. Even though weeds grow, don't hate them. Don't arouse the passions of attraction and repulsion, hating and loving. If only we don't arouse the passions, the falling of flowers and the growing of weeds as they are is manifest absolute reality.

Hakuun Yasutani

In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims. The truth of peace require that all-whether those governments which openly or secretly possess nuclear arms, or those planning to acquire them- agree to change their course by clear and firm decision and strive for a progressive and concerted nuclear disarmament. The resources which would be saved could then be employed in projects of development capable of benefiting all their people, especially the poor.

Pope Benedict XVI

Finally, in regard to those who possess the largest shares in the stock of worldly goods, could there, in your opinion, be any police so vigilant and effetive, for the protections of all the rights of person, property and character, as such a sound and comprehensive education and training, as our system of Common Schools could be made to impart; and would not the payment of a sufficient tax to make such education and training universal, be the cheapest means of self-protection and insurance?

Horace Mann

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He who has mastery over his incensive power has mastery also over the demons. But anyone who is a slave to it is a stranger to the ways of the Saviour, for as the Saviour enjoined us: 'Learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart: and you will find rest for your souls' (Mt. 11:29). Now if a man abstains from food and drink, but becomes incensed to wrath because of evil thoughts, he is like a ship sailing the open sea with a demon for a pilot.

Evagrius Ponticus

Those who enter the gates of heaven are not beings who have no passions or who have curbed the passions, but those who have cultivated an understanding of them.

William Blake

Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than others, but only those who have greater designs.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

There is no such thing as absolute cost of labour; it is all a matter of comparison. Every one gets the most which he can for his exertions; some can get little or nothing, because they have not sufficient strength, knowledge or ingenuity; others get much, because they have, comparatively speaking, a monopoly of certain powers.

William Stanley Jevons

To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions.

Mahatma Gandhi

Men are taught from childhood that they are weak and sinners. Teach them that they are all glorious children of immortality, even those who are the weakest in manifestation.

Swami Vivekananda

It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances, for we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.

Oswald Chambers

Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over time over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this.

Cecil Day-Lewis

Prisoners learn how to make do with less, and many of them want to take this ingenuity that they've learned to the outside ... but there's no training, nothing to prepare them for that.