Censures Quotes & Sayings

The theorists theorize without ever getting their feet wet. — Morrissey

One wonders why there are so many women who follow Robespierre to his home, to the Jacobins, to the Cordeliers and to the Convention. It is because the French Revolution is a religion and Robespierre is one of its sects. He is a priest with his flock ... Robespierre preaches, Robespierre censures, he is furious, serious, melancholic and exalted with passion. He thunders against the rich and the great. He lives on little and has no physical needs. He has only one mission: to talk. And he talks all the time. — Nicolas De Caritat, Marquis De Condorcet

That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. — Thomas Hobbes

In their censures of luxury, the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial;89 and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to the expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator. — Edward Gibbon

Did I, my lines intend for public view,
How many censures, would their faults pursue,
Some would, because such words they do affect,
Cry they're insipid, empty, uncorrect.
And many, have attained, dull and untaught,
The name of wit, only by finding fault.
True judges, might condemn their want of wit,
And all might say, they're by a woman writ. — Anne Finch

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice. — Plato

To arrive at perfection, a man should have very sincere friends or inveterate enemies; because he would be made sensible of his good or ill conduct, either by the censures of the one or the admonitions of the other. — Diogenes

Remember that you are here for more than a bunch of flesh. — M.F. Moonzajer

Trust him little who praise all, him less who censures all and him least who is indifferent about all. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them. — Ronald Reagan

Public opinion takes no offense at the endeavors of farmers, workers, clerks, teachers, doctors, ministers, and people from many other callings to earn as much as they can. But it censures the capitalists and entrepreneurs for their greed. — Ludwig Von Mises

An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There has been an awful lot of time and money spent looking at the president over the last four years The American people saw through those investigations. They voted for the president. And despite all of this time and attention, nothing has turned up because the president and the first lady did nothing wrong. — George Stephanopoulos

God is one, and we shall not know him till our heart is one. A broken heart need not be distressed at this, for no heart is so whole in its seeking after God as a heart which is broken, whereof every fragment sighs and cries after the great Father's face. It is the divided heart which the doctrine of the text censures, and strange to say, in scriptural phraseology, a heart may be divided and not broken, and it may be broken but not divided; and yet again it may be broken and be whole, and it never can be whole until it is broken. When our whole heart seeks the holy God in Christ Jesus it has come to him of whom it is written, as many as touched Him were made perfectly whole. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If the fact that people make poor decisions is reason enough for the government to second-guess their decisions about dangerous activities such as smoking cigarettes and riding motorcycles, why on earth should the government let people make their own choices when it comes to such consequential matters as where to live, how much education to get, whom to marry, whether to have children, which job to take, or what religion to practice? — Jacob Sullum

Self-centered anger generates evil, but wrath at social injustice becomes the driving force for reform. Strong language that censures and combats a great evil often awakens adverse reactions from society, but this must not intimidate those who believe they are right. A lion is a lion because he roars. — Daisaku Ikeda

We all cry out that the world is corrupt,
and I fear too justly,
but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that itis our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement. — Laurence Sterne

It was much less dangerous for the disciples of Christ to neglect the observance of the moral duties, than to despise the censures and authority of their bishops. — Edward Gibbon

Man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart, and next to escape the censures of the world. If the last interfere with the first it should be entirely neglected. But if not, there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind than to see its own approbation seconded by the applause of the public. — Joseph Addison

A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic compliment. — Mark Twain

What is a miracle?
'Tis a reproach, 'Tis an implicit satire on mankind; And while it satisfies, it censures too. — Edward Young

O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
... Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'
How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,
That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.
- Shakespeare's Sonnet 148 — William Shakespeare

The world censures those who take up arms to defend their causes and calls on them to use nonviolent means in voicing their grievances. But when a people chooses the nonviolent path, it is all too often the case that hardly anyone pays attention. It is tragic that people have to suffer and die and the television cameras have to deliver the pictures to people's homes every day before the world at large admits there is a problem. — Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo

Everything happens for a reason. I believe in this at the highest level. — Mpho Koaho

A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude. — Joseph Addison

I believe actual violence scars children much more than violence in storybooks. — Robert Paul Weston

If I was lonely, if I was afraid of being alone, then why abandon myself? Why run to someone else looking to give myself the thing that only I could give? I wanted to escape myself because I felt empty, and the emptiness frightened me. But obviously, I was empty because I was always running out, running away. The only way to fill the emptiness was to remain, to take up residence in myself. — Norah Vincent

You can be sure that most of the high positions in the country would be empty if one were admitted only after an examination as severe as the one we painters must pass. — Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin

Horace appears in good humor while he censures, and therefore his censure has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment and not from passion. — Edward Young

Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power and should not be at all your concerns. — Epictetus

The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. — Thomas Jefferson

If God spares us as a father does his son, let us imitate God. It is natural for children to imitate their parents. Let us imitate God in this one thing: As God spares us, and passes by many failures, so let us be sparing in our censures of others; let us look upon the weaknesses and indiscretions of our brethren with ... a more tender, compassionate eye. How much God bears with us! — Thomas Watson