Excellences Quotes & Sayings

To interest is the first duty of art; no other excellences will ever begin to compensate for failure in this. — C.S. Lewis

For there is no virtue, the honour and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people. For they only honour the valiant and admire the wise, while in addition they also love just men, and put entire trust and confidence in them. They fear the bold man, and mistrust the clever man, and moreover think them rather beholding to their natural complexion, than to any goodness of their will, for these excellences; they look upon valour as a certain natural strength of the mind, and wisdom as a constitutional acuteness; whereas a man has it in his power to be just, if he have but the will to be so, and therefore injustice is thought the most dishonourable, because it is least excusable. — Plutarch

Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence. — Samuel Johnson

A good taste in art feels the presence or the absence of merit; a just taste discriminates the degree
the poco piu and the poco meno. A good taste rejects faults; a just taste selects excellences. A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious. A good taste may be lowered or spoilt; a just taste can only go on refining more and more. — Anna Brownell Jameson

If he was not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet
a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences. — William Dean Howells

[F]ireworks had for her a direct and magical appeal. Their attraction was more complex than that of any other form of art. They had pattern and sequence, colour and sound, brilliance and mobility; they had suspense, surprise, and a faint hint of danger; above all, they had the supreme quality of transience, which puts the keenest edge on beauty and makes it touch some spring in the heart which more enduring excellences cannot reach. — Jan Struther

The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election ... They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided. — Alexander Hamilton

All religions promise a reward beyond this life in eternity for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head, of the understanding. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The Jihad of this age is to strive in upholding the word of Islam, to refute the objections of the opponents, to propagate the excellences of the Islamic faith, and to proclaim the truth of the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, throughout the world. This is Jihad till God Almighty brings about other conditions in the world. — Mirza Ghulam Ahmad

For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For
whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest. — Arthur Schopenhauer

It is one of the excellences of that best of all books, that instructions and warnings and cautions and promises suited to all persons, of every age, from children to old men and women, are to be found in it. And another of its excellences is that any person who is desirous of being made better and wiser and happier by it, may open it at almost any part, and not be disappointed of finding what he seeks. — George E. Sargent

He who fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities. — Samuel Johnson

While I recommend studying the art from artists, Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, and from which all excellences must originally flow. — Joshua Reynolds

We should allow others' excellences, to preserve a modest opinion of our own. — Isaac Barrow

Literature shrivels in a universal language, and an uprooted language rots before it dies. And it should be possible to lift the eyes above the cant of the 'language of Shakespeare'... sufficiently to realise the magnitude of the loss to humanity that the world-dominance of any one language now spoken would entail: no language has ever possessed but a small fraction of the varied excellences of human speech, and each language represents a different vision of life ... — J.R.R. Tolkien

[ ... ] the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it. — Rene Descartes

New Orleans jazz is a complex and embracing art form that began about the same time as the blues and encompassed many of its excellences. — Tim Cahill

The faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A woman can see a woman so clearly - faluts, excellences, details - all are so clear to her. — Richard Jefferies

I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the govenment of their affairs, rather than that this should be be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed. — Thomas Jefferson

Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.
The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life's strength: that page will teach you to write. — Annie Dillard

Intellect needs to be understood not as some kind of claim against the other human excellences for which a fatally high price has to be paid, but rather as a complement to them without which they cannot be fully consummated. — Richard Hofstadter

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance. — James Young

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire. — Joshua Reynolds

The five excellences include: calligraphy, painting, poetry, medicine, and t'ai chi chuan. — Cheng Man-ch'ing

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

So it's a strife here, in a way, between position - between the CEO and the top salesman; between the principal and the best teacher; between Miller Huggins, the manager, and Babe Ruth, the best baseball player who ever lived; between the person who can really do it, and the person who is in charge. Those are incommensurable excellences, and then and now they often come into conflict. So here - that is the rage within the rage, the conflict within the conflict, that Homer is interested in chronicling. — Timothy B. Shutt

We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world ... If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules. — William Hazlitt

All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding. — Arthur Schopenhauer

He took a large tablet of beet sugar (an equivalent quantity of ordinary lump sugar does equally well) and soaked it in Angostura Bitters and then rolled it in Cayenne pepper. This he put into a large glass which he filled up with champagne. The excellences of this drink defy description. — Evelyn Waugh