Top 100 Chiefly Quotes
#1. It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads.
Richard Leakey
#2. Persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.
Alexander Pope
#3. Such were the shepherds of Judea! In appearance, rough and savage as the gaunt dogs with them around the blaze; in fact, simple-minded, tender-hearted; effects in due, in part, to the primitive life they led, but chiefly to their constant care of things lovable and helpless.
Lew Wallace
#4. The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,
chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.
Henry David Thoreau
#5. I think the years I have spent in prison have been the most formative and important in my life because of the discipline, the sensations, but chiefly the opportunity to think clearly, to try to understand things.
Jawaharlal Nehru
#6. We must win the common people in every corner. This will be obtained chiefly by means of the schools, and by open, hearty behavior, show, condescension, popularity, and toleration of their prejudices, which we shall at leisure root out and dispel.
Adam Weishaupt
#7. If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.
Aristotle.
#8. We are passive receivers of the gift of salvation, but we are thereby rendered active worshipers in a life of thanksgiving that is exhibited chiefly in loving service to our neighbors.
Michael S. Horton
#9. He knew that conscience was chiefly fear of society: or fear of oneself. He was not afraid of himself. But he was quite consciously afraid of society, which he knew by instinct to be a malevolent, partly-insane beast.
D.H. Lawrence
#10. All the quantum physics experiments have occurred chiefly on the atomic scale and we are taught to believe that nature's laws are consistent.
Mitch Horowitz
#11. Praise never gives us much pleasure unless it concur with our own opinion, and extol us for those qualities in which we chiefly excel.
David Hume
#12. It is chiefly in New York that I feel induced to urge this, because New York is, by innumerable ties, connected with Europe - more connected than several parts of Europe itself.
Lajos Kossuth
#13. When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.
Gwendolyn Brooks
#14. When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.
Marianne Moore
#15. Learning chiefly in mathematical sciences can so swallow up and fix one's thought, as to possess it entirely for some time; but when that amusement is over, nature will return, and be where it was, being rather diverted than overcome by such speculations.
Gilbert Burnet
#16. When values are determined chiefly by the outlook, the resultant judgments are not subject to any mathematical controls and are almost inevitably carried to extremes.
Benjamin Graham
#17. Sombre thoughts and fancies often require a little real soil or substance to flourish in; they are the dark pine-trees which take root in, and frown over the rifts of the scathed and petrified heart, and are chiefly nourished by the rain of unavailing tears, and the vapors of fancy.
John Frederick Boyes
#18. for Roberts talks chiefly of God's love and of the great joy of living in obedience to that love.
Evan Roberts
#19. Vice and virtue chiefly imply the relation of our actions to men in this world; sin and holiness rather imply their relation to God and the other world.
Isaac Watts
#20. Each of us, desperately clutching his identity amid the impalatable onward pour of Time and Thought, finds only in art-and chiefly in written art- means to halt that ceaseless, cruel drift.
Christopher Morley
#21. The happiness which we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings ... The world in which a person lives shapes itself chiefly by the way in which he or she looks at it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#22. It is changes that are chiefly responsible for diseases, especially the greatest changes, the violent alterations both in the seasons and in other things. ( ... regimen and temperature, and one period of life to another.
Hippocrates
#23. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
William Ellery Channing
#24. Tom sang most of the time, but it was chiefly nonsense, or else perhaps a strange language unknown to the hobbits, an ancient language whose words were mainly those of wonder and delight.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#25. She had debated, in the frivolity of the beginning, whether to build a hole or a tower; a hole, because she was fond of hobbits, or a tower - well, a tower for many reasons, but chiefly because she liked spiral staircases.
Keri Hulme
#27. I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
Igor Stravinsky
#28. Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists; but if He had done so, we can scarcely imagine that He could have offered anything much better in the way of material.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
#29. Tis chiefly taste, or blunt, or gross, or fine,
Makes life insipid, bestial, or divine.
Better be born with taste to little rent
Than the dull monarch of a continent;
Without this bounty which the gods bestow,
Can Fortune make one favorite happy?
No.
John Armstrong
#30. Nor myrtle
which means chiefly love: and love
Is something awful which one dare not touch
So early o' mornings.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#31. Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion.
Richard John Neuhaus
#32. We [must] realize that our future lies chiefly in our own hands.
Paul Robeson
#33. There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks.
Neil Gaiman
#35. Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined.
Henry Home, Lord Kames
#36. Avid readers are enchanted by meaning, which is available chiefly in books.
Mason Cooley
#37. Ah! I--to you, Petrovitch, this--" It must be known that Akakiy Akakievitch expressed himself chiefly by prepositions, adverbs, and scraps of phrases which had no meaning whatever.
Nikolai Gogol
#38. The one book necessary to be understood by a divine, is the Bible; any others are to be read, chiefly, in order to understand that.
Francis Lockier
#39. The United States has means to wound Latin American countries deeply, chiefly by altering trade policies to cut imports in ways that would throw thousands out of work.
Stephen Kinzer
#40. We are hurtling towards self-destruction at an alarming rate thanks chiefly to an advertising and propaganda system that goads people from infancy towards apathy, isolation, passivity, helplessness and separation.
Noam Chomsky
#41. OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.
Ambrose Bierce
#42. She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring.
Zelda Fitzgerald
#43. Man is a thinking animal, a talking animal, a toolmaking animal, a building animal, a political animal, a fantasizing animal. But, in the twilight of a civilization he is chiefly a taxpaying animal.
Hugh MacLennan
#44. The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection are that a thing is your own and that it is your only one.
Aristotle.
#45. Now two punctilious envoys, Thine and Mine Embroil the earth about a fancied line; And, dwelling much on right and much on wrong, Prove how the right is chiefly with the strong.
Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux
#46. The years 1781 to 1793 are crucial for many reasons, but chiefly because they pose in an especially clear way the main problem of German philosophy for the next century. This is the old conflict between reason and faith which recurred during the pantheism controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn.
Frederick C. Beiser
#47. Pierre was for the first time at this meeting impressed by the endless multiplicity of men's minds, which leads to no truth being ever seen by two persons alike ... What Pierre chiefly desired was always to transmit his thought to another exactly as he conceived it himself.
Leo Tolstoy
#48. Why is it that water, so monotonous in its characteristics, should nevertheless possess a charm for every mind? I believe it is chiefly because it bears the impress of the Creator, which we feel neither the power of time or of man can efface or alter.
Sarah Josepha Hale
#49. An intelligent home differs from an unintelligent one chiefly in that the habits of life and intercourse which prevail are chosen, or at least colored, by the thought of their bearing upon the development of children.
John Dewey
#50. I think that his [Kurt Vonnegut's] appeal, though, will always be chiefly to adolescents. His sense of the world matches that of young people, who feel deeply life's absurdity.
Michael Dirda
#51. The more imagination the reader has ... the more he will do for himself. He will, at a mere hint from the author, flood wretched material with suggestion and never guess that he is himself chiefly making what he enjoys.
C.S. Lewis
#52. As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
#53. Besides, she has always a house full of people; and, though they are chiefly fools and coxcombs, yet there is some pleasure in cutting them up.
Fanny Burney
#54. All the masters tell us that the reality of life - which our noisy walking consciousness prevents us from hearing - speaks to us chiefly in silence.
Karlfried Graf Durckheim
#55. I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the "hot bread and sweet cakes;" and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.
Henry David Thoreau
#56. In reading some books we occupy ourselves chiefly with the thoughts of the author; in perusing others, exclusively with our own.
Edgar Allan Poe
#57. To make a fine gentleman, several trades are required, but chiefly a barber.
Oliver Goldsmith
#58. You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
#59. 'On earth the living have much to bear;' the difference is chiefly in the manner of bearing, and my manner of bearing is far from being the best.
Jane Welsh Carlyle
#60. The real power is not corporate; it is private. They choose not to have a name. It is a dynasty of banking families - Rothschild and Rockefeller being two - that operate chiefly out of London, in the boardrooms out of the city of London and the Bank of England, which they own.
Betty Dodson
#61. Weak and oppressed nations are fundamentally spiritual; strong nations are, as a rule, chiefly materialistic.
Ameen Rihani
#62. Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#63. The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#64. Chiefly, the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands, so why to look for excuses around.
Anonymous
#65. He had dulled his craving for verbal truth and cared chiefly for truth of mood.
E. M. Forster
#66. Discourses were chiefly either polemic arguments or explications of the peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all to me very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforced, their aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians than good
Benjamin Franklin
#67. All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.
John Ruskin
#68. Experiments upon vegetation give reason to believe that light combines with certain parts of vegetables, and that the green of their leaves, and the various colors of flowers, is chiefly owing to this combination.
Antoine Lavoisier
#69. The virtues which keep this world sweet and the faithfulness which keeps it steadfast are chiefly those of the average man. The danger of the two-talent man is that he will be content with mediocrity.
Walter Russell Bowie
#70. It has been my fate in a long life of production to be credited chiefly with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality so excellent in morals, so little satisfactory in art.
Margaret Oliphant
#71. What makes capitalism succeed is not chiefly its structure of incentives but its use of knowledge and experience.
George Gilder
#72. Women seemed to him to be in possession of all kinds of undesirable properties, chiefly madness.
Kate Atkinson
#73. Recalling an old magistrate's words to a young attorney, The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
Sam Ervin
#74. Hunting, like life, Hunter believes, consists chiefly of waiting.
Neil Gaiman
#75. Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.
Francis De Sales
#76. Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
Edgar Allan Poe
#78. It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands
Francis Bacon
#79. Will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear
Mary Shelley
#80. But where shall I find courage?' asked Frodo. 'That is what I chiefly need.' 'Courage is found in unlikely places,' said Gildor. 'Be of good hope! Sleep
J.R.R. Tolkien
#81. Southampton Row, however, is chiefly remarkable nowadays for the fact that you will always find a man there trying to sell a tortoise to a tailor.
Virginia Woolf
#82. The Highways of America are built chiefly of politics, whereas the proper material is crushed rock or concrete.
Carl G. Fisher
#83. Such indeed is the superior longevity of the fair females of Surinam, compared to that of the males (owing chiefly, as I said, to their excesses of all sorts) that I have frequently known wives who have buried four husbands, but never met a man in this country who had survived two wives.
John Gabriel Stedman
#84. Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.
Marilyn Monroe
#85. Where is Hollywood located? Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.
Erica Jong
#86. That which is chiefly the office of a general, to force the enemy into fighting when he finds himself the stronger, and to avoid being driven into it himself when he is the weaker...
Plutarch
#87. A man who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep, Frederic Goudy liked to say. If this wisdom needs updating, it is chiefly to add that a woman who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep as well .
Robert Bringhurst
#88. I have written 240 books on a wide variety of topics ... Some of it I based on education I received in my school, but most of it was backed by other ways of learning - chiefly in the books I obtained in the public library.
Isaac Asimov
#89. In this world things are beautiful only because they are not quite seen, or not perfectly understood. Poetry is precious chiefly because it suggests more than it declares.
Anthony Trollope
#90. But chiefly Thou, Whom soft-eyed Pity once led down from Heaven To bleed for man, to teach him how to live, And, oh! still harder lesson! how to die.
Beilby Porteus
#91. not sit while the wind went by. Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer?
Henry David Thoreau
#92. We clamor for equality chiefly in matters in which we ourselves cannot hope to obtain excellence.
Eric Hoffer
#93. But chiefly, no lies! No lies about there being a Santa Claus or about the world being full of noble and honorable people all eager to help each other and do good to each other. I'll tell her there are honor and goodness in the world, the same as there are diamonds and radium.
Marilyn Monroe
#94. It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration and chiefly excites our passions.
Edmund Burke
#95. Man's highest blessedness, In wisdom chiefly stands; And in the things that touch upon the Gods, 'Tis best in word or deed To shun unholy pride; Great words of boasting bring great punishments, And so to grey-haired age Teach wisdom at the last.
Sophocles
#97. Allen Ginsberg startled the audience at OutWrite, the gay literary conference, when he confessed he didn't worry about AIDS since his sex life consisted chiefly of giving blowjobs to straight college boys.
Christopher Bram
#98. I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.
William Shenstone
#99. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
Thomas Hardy
#100. The belief that personality is mysterious and irreducible has no scientific warrant, and is accepted chiefly because it is flattering to our human self esteem.
Bertrand Russell
