Quotes & Sayings About Paragon

As with Jack, the discriminating milieu of loneliness moved Hugh to raise the stakes of solitude, not from a wish to spare himself the sapping drudgery of a conventional, passionless marriage, but rather to gamble on the existence of a just goddess. Like Jack's, his core being was attuned solely to the enrapturing company of a scintillating paragon, to a woman who was indivisibly and alluringly noble. — Edward Cline

If an American is motoring on his own, he (the paragon of morality and chastity) will slow down and stop beside every solitary pretty female pedestrian, bare his teeth in a big smile, and tempt her into his car with a wild roll of the eyes. A lady who fails to appreciate his passion will qualify as an idiot who doesn't realise how lucky she is to have the opportunity of getting to know the owner of this 100-horse-power motor car. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

Today's Republican Party ... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance. — Thomas E. Mann

He stares at me, and then leans back in his chair. "He's ill, Jacob."
I say nothing.
"He's a paragon schnitzophonic."
"He's what?!"
"Paragon schnitzophonic," repeats Uncle Al.
"You mean paranoid schizophrenic?"
"Sure. Whatever. But the bottom line is he's mad as a hatter ... — Sara Gruen

I do believe in Christ, but I would not hold myself up as any paragon of virtue at all - far from it, really. — Michael Hintze

Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other. — Harry Browne

Enter Justine Putet, of whom it is now time to speak. Imagine a swarthy-looking, ill-tempered person, dried-up and of viperish disposition, with a bad complexion, an evil expression, a cruel tongue, defective internal economy, and (over all this) a layer of aggressive piety and loathsome suavity of speech. A paragon of virtue of a kind that filled you with dismay, for virtue in such a guise as this is detestable to behold, and in this instance it seemed to be inspired by a spirit of hatred and vengeance rather than by ordinary feelings of kindness. An energetic user of rosaries, a fervent petitioner at her prayers, but also an unbridled sower of calumny and clandestine panic. In a word, she was the scorpion of Clochemerle, but a scorpion disguised as a woman of genuine piety. — Gabriel Chevallier

What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger! the man in black laughed. — Stephen King

To be a social success, do not act pathetic, arrogant, or bored. Do not discuss your unhappy childhood, your visit to the dentist,the shortcomings of your cleaning woman, the state of your bowels, or your spouse's bad habits. You will be thought a paragon (or perhaps a monster) of good behavior. — Mason Cooley

I'm not saying I'm a paragon of virtue, but it's hard for me not to be honorable. — Wayne Rogers

You assume far too readily that man is a paragon of justice, forgetting, apparently, that he has a long and savage history. He has killed other animals not only for meat but for pleasure; he has enslaved his neighbors, murdered his opponents, and obtained the most unholy sadistical joy from the agony of others. It is not impossible that we shall, in the course of our travels, meet other intelligent creatures far more worthy than man to rule the universe. — A.E. Van Vogt

Of course, she wasn't entirely certain what kind of man she should like to encourage.
She knew she wanted someone respectable but not dull. Exciting but not dangerous. Strong but not overbearing. Loyal and trustworthy but not a lapdog. And this mythical paragon would love her without reservation for the rest of his days. In short, the man of her dreams would be very nearly perfect and probably did not exist.
Leo said something she didn't quite catch, but she smiled and nodded nonetheless. Perhaps he was right about lowering her standards if she did indeed wish to marry. — Victoria Alexander

I'm not on a mission. I'm not a paragon of health for anybody. I'm not going to run a marathon or model for 'Men's Health' or go on bike rides with Lance Armstrong. I'm not. Trust me. — Duff Goldman

Her mind, shaped so long before my own, was for me the equivalent of what had been offered me by the behaviour of the girls of the little gang along the sea-shore. Mme de Guermantes offered me, tamed and subdued by good manners, by respect for intellectual values, the energy and charm of a cruel little girl from one of the noble families around Combray, who from her childhood had ridden horses, sadistically tormented cats, gouged out the eyes of rabbits, and, while remaining a paragon of virtue, might equally well have been, some years back now, and so much did she share his dashing style, the most glamorous mistress of the Prince de Sagan. — Marcel Proust

Doremus was amazed, felt a little apologetic over his failure to have appreciated this new-found paragon, as he sat in American Legion Hall and heard Shad bellowing: "I don't pretend to be anything but a plain working-stiff, but there's forty million workers like me, and we know that Senator Windrip is the first statesman in years that thinks of what guys like us need before he thinks one doggone thing about politics. Come on, you bozos! The swell folks tell you to not be selfish! Walt Trowbridge tells you to not be selfish! Well, be selfish, and vote for the one man that's willing to give you something - give you something! - and not just grab off every cent and every hour of work that he can get! — Sinclair Lewis

He might not be here, but the day he misses an opportunity to party is the day Jocelyn Wildenstein is considered the paragon of beauty. — Danielle Esplin

I made my people understand the crucial difference between modesty and self-control. The modest person, I told them, will do nothing blameworthy in the light of day, but a true paragon of self-control - which we all should strive to be - avoids unworthy actions even in the deepest secrecy of his private life. — Xenophon

In some eras, self-control defines the paragon of a decent person: a grown-up, a person of dignity, a lady or a gentleman, a mensch. In others it is jeered at as uptight, prudish, stuffy, straitlaced, puritanical. Certainly the crime-prone 1960s were the recent era that most glorified the relaxation of self-control: Do your own thing, Let it all hang out, If it feels good do it, Take a walk on the wild side. — Steven Pinker

Perhaps we should rejoice that people's emotions aren't designed for the good of the group. Often the best way to benefit one's group is to displace, subjugate, or annihilate the group next door. Ants in a colony are closely related, and each is a paragon of unselfishness. That's why ants are one of the few kinds of animal that wage war and take slaves. When human leaders have manipulated or coerced people into submerging their interests into the group's, the outcomes are some of the history's worst atrocities. — Steven Pinker

He's paragon schnitzophonic." "He's what?!" "Paragon schnitzophonic," repeats Uncle Al. "You mean paranoid schizophrenic? — Sara Gruen

The blood-stain has been much admired by tourists and others, and cannot be removed." "That is all nonsense," cried Washington Otis; "Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent will clean it up in no time," and before the terrified housekeeper could interfere, he had fallen upon his knees, and was rapidly scouring the floor with a small stick of what looked like a black cosmetic. In a few moments no trace of the blood-stain could be seen. — Oscar Wilde

Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, everyone has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues. And what is the result? You all go over like ninepins - one after the other. — Oscar Wilde

He who, conscious of being strong, is content to be weak, he shall be the paragon of mankind. Being the paragon of mankind, Virtue will never desert him. He returns to the state of a little child. — Laozi

We can paint unrealistic pictures of the juggler
displaying her now as a problem-free paragon of glamour and now as a modern hag.Or we can see in the juggler a real person who strives to overcome the obstacles that nature and society put in her path and who does so with vigor and determination. — Faye J Crosby

"The Bush administration is a paragon of wisdom." — George Sanders

It was as if she was a dream, like London, which he could not entirely grasp and of which he was not worthy. He wanted to be part of it but had forgotten how. It seemed extraordinary and strange that this paragon among women had condescended to travel on his ship. In fact, she'd insisted upon it. Her presence was at once otherworldly and familiar, none of which explained why his brain ceased to function when he was in her company. — Sara Sheridan

He is intangible and invisible. But His work is more powerful than the most ferocious wind. The Spirit brings order out of chaos and beauty out of ugliness. He can transform a sin-blistered man into a paragon of virtue. The Spirit changes people. The Author of life is also the Transformer of life. — R.C. Sproul

I don't care if your the President of the United States, the Queen of England, the inventor of the microchip, a bankable movie star, or an ordinary Joe or Jill, you're no paragon in my book, but the same as a zebra or gazelle - a source of protein. In fact, I'd rather hunt you, because you're slow and feeble. — Philip Caputo

I've always been influenced by the human form. I'm a big fan of that Shakespeare quote. I tend to leave out the bad part of the paragon of animals quote, because I have this sort of Ayn Rand aesthetic. It was always one of those quotes that inspired me. — Zack Snyder

She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today's Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centered? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-year-old Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all of the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she always needed most. — David Nicholls

He who considers himself a paragon of wisdom is sure to commit some superlatively stupid act. — Johann Ludwig Tieck

Tonights is the first football game of the season West Paragon Dawgs versus East Paragon Dolphins - Cerberus guardiam of the underworld versus Flipper - go figure. — Addison Moore

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? — William Shakespeare

She did not respond, only clung harder to my embrace, and I held her with all the afflictions of a man torn by love. What a miracle she was, what a truly exquisite paragon of beauty and virtue so incredibly combined. And all perhaps wrenched from my grasp because of a war I had no real interest in nor knowledge of. In that moment I did not care who won, if only it would end and I could be with her. I would accept the whole responsibility of defeat if I had to, if only it meant a life with her by my side.
I just wanted her. Needed her. As simply and clearly as one needs food and oxygen and light, I needed her in my life.
And above us, flittering tranquilly in the trees above, the finches and skylarks continued to sing peacefully into the fading sun. — Jamie L. Harding

Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent — Oscar Wilde

My father has been to me a paragon of what actualizing philanthropic potential can be. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

THE CATER STREET HANGMAN CALLANDER SQUARE PARAGON WALK RESURRECTION ROW BLUEGATE FIELDS RUTLAND PLACE DEATH IN THE DEVIL'S ACRE CARDINGTON CRESCENT SILENCE IN HANOVER CLOSE BETHLEHEM ROAD HIGHGATE RISE BELGRAVE SQUARE FARRIERS' LANE THE HYDE PARK HEADSMAN TRAITORS GATE PENTECOST ALLEY ASHWORTH HALL BRUNSWICK GARDENS BEDFORD SQUARE HALF MOON STREET THE WHITECHAPEL CONSPIRACY SOUTHAMPTON ROW SEVEN DIALS LONG SPOON LANE BUCKINGHAM PALACE GARDENS — Anne Perry

Singapore is what your city could become if everyone obeyed the rules, did their jobs diligently, and just shut up. When your city gets to be this paragon of efficiency and discipline, would you still want to live there? Singapore is a model city, which is terrific if you happen to be a model human. — Jessica Zafra

She thinks you will succeed. But whether you will know you have succeeded, or if the success will be the one you would have chosen for yourself, well, those are things no one can say now. But she knows you will succeed at whatever you are meant to do."
p.613: Paragon to Brashen (about Mother) — Robin Hobb

There was a natural resource in the affective devotion to the saints and to Jesus, and a similar intensity of devotion inevitably became directed to the ordinary human.7 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the paragon of courtly love at the courts of Angers and Poitiers, was a grandchild of Guillaume, duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour. In many of Guillaume's love songs 'the vocabulary and emotional fervor hitherto ordinarily used to express man's love for God are transferred to the liturgical worship of woman, and vice versa.'8 The layering of Christian feeling and the new romantic spirit is also witnessed in the roman courtois, the epic stories filled with legendary material and hinged on figures of woman, mystery and quest. — Anthony Bartlett

Seeking more information, I walked through the market listening to the gossip and discovered that our new general, the man sent to quell the unrest in the east, was the second son of a provincial tax collector whose only claims to recognition were that he had commanded some legions in Britain in the heady, early days of the invasion, that his brother had once stood for consul, and that he had been a governor in some African province, where the locals had thrown turnips at him.
Despairing, I returned to the house, and that despair deepened later when Horgias came home with the news that our new paragon of martial virtue had until recently been hiding in Greece, in disgrace for having fallen asleep during one of Nero's recitals in the theatre. — M.C. Scott

He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice. — Voltaire

I think, for one, the LGBTQ community is just a paragon of leadership, of standing up and saying "these are our rights, and we deserve them." As a model of activism, it's so wonderful what the community has been able to achieve towards goals like marriage equality. — Jill Stein

July 15, 1991

Nita: My mother was a paragon of our neighborhood, People always come up to us with hugs, saying "You have the most wonderful mother." l'd think. "Don't you see what's going on in this house?" To this day, if somehow even in jest raises their hand to me, I will do this (raises hands to protect face and cowers) I cringe. Then they look at me like, what's your probem? You don't get that from a great childhood. — Sarah E. Olson

I'm sorry, he says. No two words were ever truer.
Still, she says nothing. Once a shield, now her taciturnity is brandished like a blade, carving away his sanity. She's the flaw in the paragon of life - the reason angels choose to dive to their downfalls in fiery comets of stardust. — Laura Kreitzer

I'm an entertainer. I don't go round saying I'm a paragon of virtue, so that is clearly not in the public interest. — Steve Coogan

Oh? Did you think he was some paragon of purity? I've seen him kill girls younger than you. I've seen him wind women up to crawl to his bed. — Elise Kova

Other Courtesies have been -
Other Courtesy may be -
We commend ourselves to thee
Paragon of Chivalry. — Emily Dickinson

I know you, Ruth Ann Carver. I know you better than you know yourself. You think you do things right. You think you're a paragon of right living. This is a self-told lie, one bolstered by your coddling parents and grandparents. — Carolyn Lee Adams

Compared to the typical Zim/Chomsky-spouting grad school clown, a trucker with a screaming eagle hat is a paragon of political nuance. — David Burge

Earnshaw was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point - one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed - they contrived in the end to reach it. — Emily Bronte

Mike Stanton is our preeminent aficionado and raconteur of Rhode Island's flamboyantly criminal political follies, and The Prince of Providence is the chronicle of a great American rogue, Mayor Buddy Cianci - a paragon of charisma and corruption. — Philip Gourevitch

It's a horrible idea that God, this paragon of wisdom and knowledge, power, couldn't think of a better way to forgive us our sins than to come down to Earth in his alter ego as his son and have himself hideously tortured and executed so that he could forgive himself. — Richard Dawkins

Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses! — William Makepeace Thackeray

Emma Morley wasn't such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgmental. Self-pitying, self righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most. — David Nicholls

Can you please stop talking so I can go back to enjoying Daniel Craig's outrageously good body?" "That's so gay," JP said. "I'm a girl," said the Duke. "It's not gay for me to be attracted to men. Now, if I said you had a hot body, that would be gay, because you're built like a lady." "Oh, burn," I said. The Duke raised her eyes at me and said, "Although JP's a freaking paragon of masculinity compared to you." I had no response to that. "Keun is at work," I said. "He gets paid double on Christmas Eve." "Oh, right," said JP. "I forgot that Waffle Houses are like Lindsay Lohan's legs: always open. — John Green

Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker then that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive-oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom. — Bertrand Russell

Me, myself, personally, I like to keep myself private. I have never said I am a paragon of virtue, a model of morality. I simply do what I do. — Steve Coogan