Top 100 Maxim Quotes
#1. Remember the maxim of the Romans which states that by union and counsel we can achieve anything.
Vincent De Paul
#2. An old advertising maxim says you've got to spell out the benefit of the benefit. In other words, people don't buy quarter-inch drill bits. They buy quarter-inch holes so they can hang their children's pictures.
Chip Heath
#3. It was long before I got at the maxim, that in reading an old mathematician you will not read his riddle unless you plough with his heifer; you must see with his light, if you want to know how much he saw.
Augustus De Morgan
#4. For as I like a man in whom there is something of the old, so I like a man in whom there is something of the young; and he who follows this maxim, in body will possibly be an old man but he will never be an old man in mind.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#5. It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.
Richard Steele
#6. Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.
Bertrand Russell
#7. Nothing could be more dangerous than following the popular maxim whereby it is the spirit of the law that must be consulted. This is an embankment that, once broken, gives way to a torrent of opinions.
Cesare Beccaria
#8. Much later I realized that Russian people, because of the poverty and squalor of their lives, love to amuse themselves with sorrow--to play with it like children, and are seldom ashamed of being unhappy.
Maxim Gorky
#9. The Queen drilled in her own mother's maxim that if you find something or somebody a bore, the fault lies in you.
Sally Bedell Smith
#10. A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny.
Umberto Eco
#11. You know how everyone - there's this maxim that we all become our mother or we all become our parents. And, generally, I really wouldn't mind becoming my mother. I really like her, so I wouldn't mind becoming her. But I definitely need to edit her.
Sarah Koenig
#12. He had a simple maxim for all competitive or adversarial situations: work out what the other party least wants you to do, and then do it. Relieving your feelings was fun, but the best course of action was to make things as difficult as possible for the person trying to make things difficult for you.
John Lanchester
#13. Maxim kept grudges like scars. They faded by degrees but always left a mark. Kell
V.E Schwab
#14. No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
William James
#15. Anger is like ice, and also quick to melt
Maxim Gorky
#16. Our existence has always and everywhere been tragic, but man has converted these numberless tragedies into works of art. I know of nothing more astonishing or more wonderful than this transformation.
Maxim Gorky
#17. For the years I spent working on it, 'Constellation' was the only novel I knew how to write, so maybe I still abided by the maxim? Regardless, I prefer the maxim: Write what you want to know, rather than what you already know.
Anthony Marra
#18. Seek joyfulness when you can, for seeking joy leads to an auspicious atmosphere.
Jonathan D. Spence
#20. This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!
Maxim Gorky
#21. The greatest maxim of all is that children should be brought up as simply and in as domestic a way as possible, and that (not interfering with their lessons) they should be as much as possible with their parents, and learn to place the greatest confidence in them in all things.
Queen Victoria
#22. The opposite is best. Whenever you're angry with someone, apply this maxim. I means doing the exact opposite of what your body's telling you to do. Believe me, it works miracles. Titus in Love in Lowercase
Francesc Miralles
#23. The meaning of life is basically to be the kind of person you would want to be around.
Alexei Maxim Russell
#24. When we're able to put most of our energy into developing our natural talents, extraordinary room for growth exists. So, a revision to the "You-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be" maxim might be more accurate: You cannot be anything you want to be - but you can be a lot more of who you already are.
Tom Rath
#25. Whatever is not nailed down is mine." This is the motto of the exploiter. "Whatever can be pried loose is not nailed down." This is the second maxim in a country where people are rich, caring little in their present prosperity what shall become of the future.
David Starr Jordan
#26. It is a maxim of ours to work in the service of the people, with the good pleasure of the pastors, and never to act contrary to their wishes. And, at the opening and closing of each mission, we get their blessing in a spirit of dependence.
Vincent De Paul
#27. You know, I'd love to do a Maxim shoot. But I'm not going to do it, because that's just stupid to do.
Christy Romano
#28. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.
Alexander Hamilton
#29. Processing the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing lumber.
Maxim Gorky
#30. It is a maxim of old that among themselves all things are common to friends.
Jean Racine
#31. It is my sincere desire that my research and hard work will help create a world where we all learn to walk this Earth, safe, enlightened and free from the perils of cruelty, ignorance, and all the other dark and sinister forces, which make assholes possible.
Alexei Maxim Russell
#32. It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes.
Maxim Gorky
#33. When one loves somebody everything is clear - where to go, what to do - it all takes care of itself and one doesn't have to ask anybody about anything.
Maxim Gorky
#34. Few people who know of the work of Langley, Lilienthal, Pilcher, Maxim and Chanute but will be inclined to believe that long before the year 2000 A.D., and very probably before 1950, a successful aeroplane will have soared and come home safe and sound.
H.G.Wells
#35. Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a general law of nature.
Immanuel Kant
#36. Ladies, just know that when you grow your hair too long, you got about two inches difference between really hot, sexy supermodel - religious fanatic. Hot Maxim cover girl everybody wants a mouth kiss - unhealthy faith in your lord. Soft, silky, shiny hair everyone wants to touch - one of 12 brides.
Iliza Shlesinger
#37. The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#38. What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.
Maxim Gorky
#39. There's a little book I'm thinking of writing - "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.
Maxim Gorky
#40. I understand that it is a maxim of law, that a poor plea may be a good plea to a bad declaration.
Abraham Lincoln
#41. When a woman gets married it is like jumping into a hole in the ice in the middle of winter: you do it once and you remember it the rest of your days.
Maxim Gorky
#42. We must hold as an irrefutable maxim that the difficulties we have with our neighbor arise more from our immortified moods than from anything else.
Vincent De Paul
#43. And, just as he had wished, none of us had ever forgotten the maxim which, he remembered, he had bequeathed us. Indeed, the fine Latin maxim "Even if all others do - I do not!" belonged to every truly free life.
Joachim Fest
#44. The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall.
Susan Sontag
#45. No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.
William Godwin
#46. I can do a 'Maxim' shoot and be super sexy, but I'm also just a 21-year-old girl, and I look 17 sometimes.
Julianna Guill
#47. It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
David Hume
#48. Only a philosopher would consider taking Oedipus as a model for a normal, unproblematic relation between an action and the maxim of the act.
Jerry A. Fodor
#49. A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Good maxims are the germs of all excellence; when firmly fixed on the memory, they nourish the will.
Joseph Joubert
#50. An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form.
Maxim Gorky
#51. Little notes, scrawled on half-sheets of paper, and letters, when he was away, page after page, intimate, their news. Her voice, echoing through the house, and down the garden, careless and familiar like the writing in the book.
And I had to call him Maxim.
Daphne Du Maurier
#53. It is a maxim that man and wife should never have it in their power to hang one another.
George Farquhar
#54. The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.
Maxim Gorky
#55. The higher goal a person pursues, the quicker his ability develops, and the more beneficial he will become to the society. I believe for sure that this is also a truth.
Maxim Gorky
#56. Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she's still virtuous; that's a maxim.
George Farquhar
#57. After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.
Richard Flanagan
#58. To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom no one will attempt to dispute.
James Buchanan
#60. Remember my unalterable maxim, When we love, we always have something to say.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#61. Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future
Maxim Gorky
#62. Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
Quintilian
#63. An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.
Richard Cecil
#64. [I]t is the maxim of the saints that when a matter has been decided in the presence of God after many prayers and the seeking of advice, we must reject and consider as a temptation whatever is suggested to the contrary.
Vincent De Paul
#65. Lord Nelson's maxim 'Never mind manoeuvres: always go straight at 'em.
Patrick O'Brian
#66. There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.
Lord Chesterfield
#67. You will not drown the truth in seas of blood
Maxim Gorky
#68. If the Company takes my advice, it will always be preserved through this maxim, for if we are good, we will not lack any, and if we are not, we already have too many houses anyway, and can hardly fill the few we have.
Vincent De Paul
#69. There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
James Madison
#70. Many contemporary authors drink more than they write.
Maxim Gorky
#71. Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.
John Quincy Adams
#72. I do subscribe to the maxim that generally comedy is like jazz. Either you get it or you don't. You can't learn it and you can't be taught it. I don't think that if you are not a funny person, you can fake it.
Edward Norton
#73. I do not approve the maxim which desires a man to know a little of everything. Superficial knowledge, knowledge without principles, is almost always useless and sometimes harmful knowledge.
Luc De Clapiers
#74. A maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely speculative; a "principle" carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#75. Jefferson went still further, and he introduced a maxim into the policy of the Union, which affirms that the Americans ought never to solicit any privileges from foreign nations, in order not to be obliged to grant similar privileges themselves.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#76. When work is a pleasure, life is a joy. When work is a duty, life is slavery!
Maxim Gorky
#77. Tim Irwin cites the maxim: If the leader didn't come to work today, everything would probably still get done; but if the people didn't come to work today, nothing would get done.
Richard Blackaby
#78. It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.
Mark Twain
#79. Everywhere, within man and without, there is devastation, instability, chaos, and evidence of some prolonged rout.
Maxim Gorky
#80. Even a bad man is better than a good book.
Maxim Gorky
#81. It has been said of the world's history hitherto that might makes right. It is for us and for our time to reverse the maxim, and to say that right makes might.
Abraham Lincoln
#82. Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#83. The first and highest law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est - this is the supreme practical maxim, this is the turning point of the world's History.
Ludwig Feuerbach
#84. Once there was a crow, it flew from the field to the hill, from hedge to hedge, and lived its life. then it died and rotted away. -what's the sense in it? there just ISN'T any!
Maxim Gorky
#85. Buy less, choose well: that's the maxim. Quality not quantity. That's the most environmentally friendly thing you can do.
Vivienne Westwood
#86. One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests ... The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.
Sidney Hook
#87. May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.
Immanuel Kant
#88. We have a maxim in the House of Commons, and written on the walls of our houses, that old ways are the safest and surest ways.
Edward Coke
#89. Emerson has said, "When half-gods go, the gods arrive." That is a very doubtful maxim. Better say, "When God arrives (and only then) the half-gods can remain." Left to themselves they either vanish or become demons.
C.S. Lewis
#90. What can you do by killing? Nothing. You kill one dog, the master buys another-that's all there is to it.
Maxim Gorky
#91. In this world, headwinds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim).
Herman Melville
#92. The Spider Hero lived his life by this maxim: He who possesses great power is burdened also with great responsibility. -
Michael Swanwick
#93. In fact, some have said that the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism illustrates the old maxim that religious freedom is the product of two equally pernicious fanaticisms, each cancelling the other out
Fareed Zakaria
#94. That part of the judicial law which
was typical of Christ's government
has ceased, but that part which is of
common and general equity remains
still in force. It is a common maxim:
those judgments which are common
and natural are moral and perpetual.
Samuel Bolton
#95. We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it.
Maxim Gorky
#96. When in doubt, tell the truth. That maxim I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. I did say, "When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more sagacity.
Mark Twain
#97. In preschool, I would plan out my show-and-tell every week to be funny and exciting. Then in first grade I wrote a play, and my classmates and I performed it as a puppet show.
Maxim Knight
#98. In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim - that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.
George Mason
#99. We all know the maxim "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." It's because we want the horse to drink that we become frustrated, because it's literally not in our power to accomplish the job we've set out to do for ourselves.
Steve Hagen
#100. What was the maxim? If you try to kill the king, make sure you do.
Steve Berry
