Top 100 Quotes About Maxims
#1. The maxims of Christian life, which should draw upon the truths of the Gospel, are always partially symbolic of the mind and temperament of those who teach them to us. The former, by their natural sweetness, show us the quality of God's mercy; the latter, by their harshness, show us God's justice.
Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...
#2. Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.
Robert Harris
#3. I remember confuting one of Westminster's favourite maxims, "better the devil you know than the devil you don't". In the annals of popular wisdom, this is one of the most cretinous sayings I have come across.
Coco Chanel
#4. The so-called Transcendentalists are not the only people who deal in Transcendentals. On the contrary, we seem to see that the Utilitarians,
the every-day world's people themselves, far transcend those inferior Transcendentalists by their own incomprehensible worldly maxims.
Herman Melville
#5. The same man who will quote from Benjamin Franklin on thrift for the house organ would be horrified if consumers took these maxims to heart and started putting more money into savings and less into installment purchases.
William H. Whyte
#6. Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an unrealized ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we Christians ourselves disregard.
Herman Melville
#7. History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.
Edward Gibbon
#8. I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.
Miguel De Cervantes
#9. Discipline our youth in early life in sound maxims of moral, political, and religious duties.
Noah Webster
#10. I like maxims that don't encourage behavior modification.
-Calvin
Bill Watterson
#11. There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.
Blaise Pascal
#12. History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims. It can illuminate the consequences of actions in comparable situations, yet each generation must discover for itself what situations are in fact comparable.
Henry A. Kissinger
#13. It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.
William James
#14. The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
W. Somerset Maugham
#16. All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor.
Samuel Johnson
#17. It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
Aristotle.
#18. One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.
Michael Tilson Thomas
#19. There are no guarantees in life. The simple twists of fate and the breaks of the game are the two maxims that define so much of the success and failure in life.
Bill Walton
#21. The faults of a brilliant writer are never dangerous on the long run; a thousand people read his work who would read no other; inquiry is directed to each of his doctrines; it is soon discovered what is sound and what is false; the sound become maxims, and the false beacons.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#23. Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.
Alexander Pushkin
#24. 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
#25. How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
Samuel Johnson
#26. All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.
Blaise Pascal
#27. False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera.
John Locke
#28. Do you resolve to do the right and to love the true, depend upon it you will get no assistance from this world. Of its maxims, nine out of ten are false, and the other one selfish; and even that which is selfish has a lie at the bottom of it.
Charles Spurgeon
#29. As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion ... if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me.
Amor Towles
#30. These things happen in threes,' said Milly in her way of uttering bits of folk-wisdom; she was spooning tea into the heated teapot. She always mixed tea with maxims.
Muriel Spark
#31. One of the maxims which the devil, in a late visit upon earth, left to his disciples, is, when once you are got up, to kick the stool from under you. In plain English, when you have made your fortune by the good offices of a friend, you are advised to discard him as soon as you can.
Henry Fielding
#32. They assembled together and dedicated these as the first-fruits of their love to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims which are on every tongue- 'know thyselP and 'Nothing overmuch.'
Plato
#33. With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#34. It is hardly possible not to suspect the truth of this doctrine of atonement, when we consider that the general maxims to which it may be reduced, are nowhere laid down, or asserted, in the Scriptures, but others quite contrary to them.
Joseph Priestley
#35. One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores.
Douglas Tallamy
#36. Irresponsibility, cowardice, personal vanity, whining and chaos are becoming the maxims of political action. There is a stink in Berlin - a huge one!
Edmund Stoiber
#37. At the moment when anyone begins to take philosophy seriously, all the world believes the opposite."
- Human, All Too Human, "Assorted Opinions and Maxims,
Friedrich Nietzsche
#38. Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.
Gottfried Leibniz
#39. My mother had all these maxims - like, classy girls never chew gum, never read comic books, never get their ears pierced, never get their hair dyed.
Jennifer Tilly
#40. Maxim 2:
A sergeant in motion outranks a lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on.
-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries
Howard Tayler
#41. Maxims are like lawyers who must need to see but one side of the case.
Gelett Burgess
#42. I am so far from thinking the maxims of Confucius and Jesus Christ to differ, that I think the plain and simple maxims of the former, will help to illustrate the more obscure ones of the latter, accommodated to the then way of speaking.
Matthew Tindal
#43. Children have almost an intuitive discernment between the maxims you bring forward for their use, and those by which you direct your own conduct.
Anna Letitia Barbauld
#44. Maxims were like neural shortcuts, like icons on a desktop that instantly connect you to a body of information.
Jules Evans
#45. My Son, these maxims make a rule An lump them ay thegither: The Rigid Righteous is a fool, The Rigid Wise anither.
Robert Burns
#46. All general maxims in politics ought to be established with great caution; and that irregular and extraordinary appearances are frequently discovered in the moral, as well as in the physical world
David Hume
#47. The young people who come to me in the hope of hearing me utter a few memorable maxims are quite disappointed. Aphorisms are not my forte, I say nothing but banalities ... I listen to them and they go away delighted.
Andre Gide
#48. Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.
Richard Whately
#49. In the maxims of the law, God is seen as the rewarder of perfect righteousness and the avenger of sin. But in Christ, His face shines out, full of grace and gentleness to poor, unworthy sinners.
John Calvin
#50. You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.
Eric Hoffer
#51. According to the maxims of universal toleration, the Romans protected a superstition which they despised.
Edward Gibbon
#52. Maxims for Revolutionists TITLES Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
Anonymous
#54. The Bible is not merely a book-it is a living power ... Nowhere as in the Bible can be found such a series of beautiful ideas and admirable maxims which pose before us like the battalions of a celestial army ... The soul can never go astray while it has this book for its guide.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#55. The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful.
Elizabeth Janeway
#56. The Oracle at Delphi contained three maxims emblematic of Greek life. "Know yourself." "Nothing in excess." and, "Offer a guarantee and disaster threatens.
Anthony Everitt
#57. Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true.
G.K. Chesterton
#58. I would fain coin wisdom, - mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. Would that I could denounce and banish from the language of men - as base money - the words by which they cheat and are cheated!
Joseph Joubert
#59. To attempt to enumerate the complicated variety of mischiefs in the whole system of the social economy, which proceed from a neglect of the maxims that uphold public credit, and justify the solicitude manifested by the House on this point, would be an improper intrusion on their time and patience.
Alexander Hamilton
#60. Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.
Friedrich Schiller
#61. The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant's economy is a coarse symbol of the soul's economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#62. Political economy is the science of free society. Its theory and its history alike establish this position. Its fundamental maxims, Laissez-faire and 'Pas trop gouverner' are at war with all kinds of slavery, for they in fact assert that individuals and peoples prosper most when governed least.
George Fitzhugh
#63. Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.
Jane Austen
#65. Tweets are not diseased rings of glitchy minds. They're epigrams, aphorisms, maxims, dictums, taglines, captions, slogans, and adages. Some are art, some are commercial; these are forms with integrity.
Virginia Heffernan
#66. Consequently he himself perceived that a knowledge of mankind would have availed him more than all the legal refinements and philosophical maxims in the world could do.
Nikolai Gogol
#67. The process is the goal," Kaden responded innocently, trying not to feel smug. It was about time one of those Shin maxims worked in his favor.
Brian Staveley
#68. Even hackneyed and commonplace maxims are to be used, if they suit one's purpose: just because they are commonplace, every one seems to agree with them, and therefore they are taken for truth.
Aristotle.
#69. Hey listen
I've proved a lot of things. That's how I pay my rent. Theories and little observations. A puckish remark now and then. Occasional maxims. It beats picking olives, but let's not get carried away.
Woody Allen
#70. When the Church obtained the direction of the civil power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had formerly inculcated; and, in the course of a few years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews and against the heretics.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
#71. I have done it," says my memory. "I cannot have done it," says my pride, refusing to budge. In the end - my memory yields. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, "Fourth Part: Maxims and Interludes
Jodi Picoult
#72. Maxims and aphorisms, let us remember that wisdom is the true salt of literature, and the books that are most nourishing are richly stored with it, and that is the main object to seek in reading books.
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley Of Blackburn
#73. The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.
James Madison
#74. To the young I should offer two maxims: Don't accept superficial solutions of difficult problems. It is better to do a little good than much harm. I should not offer anything more specific; every young person should decide on his or her own credo.
Bertrand Russell
#75. Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#76. Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.
Jacques Barzun
#77. It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.
Thomas Paine
#78. It is the penalty of fame that a man must ever keep rising. "Get a reputation, and then go to bed," is the absurdest of all maxims. "Keep up a reputation or go to bed, "would be nearer the truth.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#79. Maxims are often quoted by those who stand in more need of their application.
James Ellis
#80. Created sick, and then commanded to be well. This is one of the first, easiest, and most obvious of the satirical maxims that eventually lay waste to the illusion of faith.
Christopher Hitchens
#81. Hear the words of prudence, give heed unto her counsels, and store them in thine heart; her maxims are universal, and all the virtues lean upon her; she is the guide and the mistress of human life.
Akhenaton
#82. In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
Henry David Thoreau
#83. It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
#84. It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable.
Edmund Burke
#85. No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
William James
#86. The thing for me is, what if one returns to these maxims, these rather simplistic maxims "Be the change you want to see in the world." Because what canvas have we but the self for these kind of explorations, ultimately.
Russell Brand
#87. Christian obligation cannot be made to accord with a law of expediency. The Christian's maxims are, Do right because you are bound to do right. Do right though the heavens fall. There is a world of difference between You had better and You are bound to.
Francis Landey Patton
#88. What are the maxims of Democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue.
John Marshall
#89. In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
George Eliot
#90. No people require maxims so much as the American. The reason is obvious: the country is so vast, the people always going somewhere, from Oregon apple valley to boreal New England, that we do not know whether to be temperate orchards or sterile climate.
Edward Dahlberg
#91. The good old maxims of the Bible are applicable, and truly applicable to human affairs, and in this as in other things, we may say here that he who is not for us is against us; he would gathereth not with us scattereth.
Abraham Lincoln
#92. I have two maxims that I believe, dear girl. One, if you can control yourself, you can control others. Two, if you can control information, you can control others.
Patrick Ness
#94. Ralph Keyes calls quotation collectors "quotographers," the men and women who gather catchwords, watchwords, war words, winged words, maxims, mottos, sayings, and quips into books of a thousand pages. Through the centuries quotation collectors have saved quotations that would otherwise be lost.
Willis Regier
#95. Maxims are to the intellect what laws are to actions; they do not enlighten, but they guide and direct, and, although themselves blind, are protective.
Joseph Joubert
#96. Yes, yes, children must early be made to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom 'good maxims' have been instilled and impressed, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.
Max Stirner
#97. Search out the wisdom of nature, there is depth in all her doings; she seemeth prodigal of power, yet her rules are the maxims of frugality.
Martin Farquhar Tupper
#98. An Associated Press report called the President's antics 'Bible-thumping politics.' Clinton's message was decidedly religious and partisan, as was Governor's Cuomo's remarks as he 'also cited religious themes and maxims.' Why didn't the press, the ACLU, and People for the American Way cry foul?
Gary DeMar
#99. These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premisses of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premisses or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science.
Michael Polanyi
#100. The mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims ... to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.
George Eliot
