A Quote by Robert South

Folly enlarges men's desires while it lessens their capacities.

Robert South

Quote Topics

Capacities Desires Folly Men While

Quote Author

Robert South
English - Priest
1634 - 1716

If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is false to suggest that men must turn away from his desires in the interest of a higher duty. Men only responds to duty if he desires to do so. To understand men, you must understand their desires and the relative strength of those desires.

Bertrand Russell

Folly consists not in committing Folly, but in being incapable of concealing it. All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public. Reputation depends more on what is hidden than on what is seen. If you can’t be good, be careful.

Baltasar Gracian

It's important to me for the world to see black men in different capacities - capacities in which they're probably not used to seeing them.

Stephan James

Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supply'd.

Bernard de Mandeville

Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of control...They are changeable and fickle in their desires which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep rooted.

Aristotle

After the demands of the ego and its greed surrendered, the struggle for fulfillment of personal desires lessens; life takes on a new zest like a breath of fresh air.

Sivananda Radha Saraswati

Without doubt, ferocious and disordered men are much weaker than timid and ordered ones. For order chases fear from men and disorder lessens ferocity.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.

Isaac D'Israeli

The means employed by Nature to bring about the development of all the capacities of men is their antagonism in society, so far as this is, in the end, the cause of a lawful order among men.

Immanuel Kant

Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others-values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires.

Marya Mannes

Rebirth is inevitable so long as one has desires. It is like taking the soul from one pillow-case and putting it into another. Only one or two out of many men can be found who are free from all desires.

Sarada Devi

To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.

Samuel Johnson

As we advance in life the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts.

Sophie Swetchine

No man's body is as strong as his appetites, but Heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities.

John Tillotson

It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it's not so overwhelming.

Nicholas Sparks

A Quote by Robert South

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors