Top 100 Retains Quotes
#1. The beautiful always retains the freshness of novelty, while the astonishing soon grow tiresome.
August Bournonville
#2. Although there still lingered in his mind a faint and unperfect recollection of the events of the preceding night; just as the brain retains on waking in the morning the dim and misty outline of a dream.
Alexandre Dumas
#3. And yet, protest it if we will,
Some corner of the mind retains
The medieval man, who still
Keeps watch upon those starry skeins
And drives us out of doors at night
To gaze at anagrams of light.
Adrienne Rich
#4. Priestly celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel, and retains its value undiminished even in our time when the outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such profound changes.
Pope Paul VI
#5. Happy the Man, who void of Cares and Strife,
In Silken, or in Leathern Purse retains
A Splendid Shilling: He nor hears with Pain
New Oysters cry'd, nor sighs for chearful Ale
John Phillips
#6. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earnedin the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.
Henry David Thoreau
#7. There is no reader so parochial as the one who reads none but this morning's books. Books are not rolls, to be devoured only when they are hot and fresh. A good book retains its interior heat and will warm a generation yet unborn.
Clifton Fadiman
#8. I've known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them ... to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don't ask quarters.
Horton Foote
#9. Oh, what peril attaches to sin willfully committed! For it is so difficult for man to bring himself to penance, and without penitence guilt remains and will ever remain, so long as man retains unchanged the will to sin, or is intent upon committing it.
Catherine Of Genoa
#10. The balanced adult retains an inner child. The secret is to know when to put him away.
Anthony North
#11. The waters are in motion, but the moon retains its serenity.
D.T. Suzuki
#12. One who loves God retains this humility at all times, not with weariness and struggle, but with pleasure and gladness.
Walter Hilton
#13. BECAUSE CATHOLICISM IS TRUE, The papacy was established by Christ, has endured, and retains the authority entrusted to it by Christ, even to this day.
Tim Staples
#14. When a people holds onto its language, it holds onto a semblance of freedom, like a man who holds onto his independence when he retains his own way of thinking. Language is the thought of a people.
Jose Rizal
#15. You are not what you seem - you're a Sylph - you leave and the air retains your image - you haunt me ...
John Geddes
#16. He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.
Jules Verne
#17. The truth is, I don't sketch much at all. I have a very visual/spatial brain that retains a lot of information about maps, directions, positioning, and details, so I usually prefer working out those issues on the page itself.
Nate Powell
#18. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascinationfor all educated Americans.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#19. The alcoholic retains the ability to condemn his addiction and advise those not subject to it to avoid succumbing to the liquid poison. But the cocaine addict likes proselytizing; thus, instead of constituting a tangible warning, every victim of the drug acts as a source of infection.
Pitigrilli
#20. Apology may be scorned, but it retains its inherent value.
John Kador
#21. Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing - not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence - which is limited only by existence.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#22. All officers of the Intelligence Community, and especially its most senior officer, must conduct themselves in a manner that earns and retains the public trust. The American people are uncomfortable with government activities that do not take place in the open, subject to public scrutiny and review.
Dennis C. Blair
#23. The silver-leaved birch retains in its old age a soft bark; there are some such men.
Berthold Auerbach
#24. Happy the man who gains sagacity in youth, but thrice happy he who retains the fervour of youth in age.
Dagobert D. Runes
#25. But the fact is, Mr. Chairman, for all the challenges the Postal Service of the 21st century faces, it still retains its traditional place as a key cog in how American businesses conduct their affairs and how Americans all across this land communicate.
John M. McHugh
#26. I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.
Rachel Cusk
#27. The underlying intellectual argument for seeking to tax economic rents retains its force.
Mervyn King
#28. Melody is the single most important thing to any song, period. I don't care what anybody says, it trumps everything. Not because that's my opinion but because I think it's actually indisputable fact. The human brain retains melody easier than it retains words. It's that simple.
Ryan Tedder
#29. Perhaps, however, music retains a survival role in adults in that it allows the 'practice' of feeling emotions without having to risk the consequences of acting on these emotions.
Isabelle Peretz
#30. Existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing - not even a memory.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#31. Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust.
Thomas Jefferson
#32. Of all the great forces which have formed the past, none has disappeared more effectively, or when recalled retains less of its once compelling force, than the power of the spoken word.
R.W. Southern
#33. When any of our faculties retains
a strong impression of delight or pain,
the soul will wholly concentrate on that,
neglecting any other power it has;
and thus, when something seen
or heard secures the soul in stringent grip,
time moves and yet we do not notice it.
Dante Alighieri
#34. A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses its quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.
Hannah Arendt
#35. If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it.
Sigmund Freud
#36. Who else but a lover retains the ability to wound the other person with such passion, such precision? And who else but that lover has the capacity to heal what he or she has done?
A. Manette Ansay
#37. the Christian view that this is a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been.
C.S. Lewis
#39. Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#40. In many cases, ignorance is a good thing : the mind retains its freedom of investigation and does not stray along roads that lead nowhither, suggested by one's reading. I have experienced this once again ... Yes, ignorance can have its advantages; the new is found far from the beaten track.
Jean-Henri Fabre
#41. Now that photography is a digital medium, the ghost of painting is coming to haunt it: photography no longer retains a sense of truth. I think that's great, because it frees photography from factuality, the same way photography freed painting from factuality in the mid-nineteenth century.
Vik Muniz
#42. He who always hopes for the best becomes old, deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst becomes old prematurely; but he who has faith, retains eternal youth.
Soren Kierkegaard
#43. If Portland can truly have a true comics show that doesn't become a media show but retains its focus on comics, I think it's going to serve the city well. If this becomes a big show, it's going to bring in a lot of money for the city.
Greg Rucka
#44. The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.
Alexander Von Humboldt
#45. Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.
Will Self
#46. As a piece of rope, when burnt, retains its form, but cannot serve to bind, so is the ego which is burnt by the fire of supreme Knowledge.
Ramakrishna
#47. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity.
Mary Shelley
#48. You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.
Hilary Mantel
#49. A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
William Zinsser
#50. I always pan-fry sprouts - it retains texture and enhances flavour.
Yotam Ottolenghi
#51. Waking from any fever dream, one retains, above all, impressions seared into memory.
Joshua Oppenheimer
#52. For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the swarming nations are now in full career.
John Lothrop Motley
#53. Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession.
Andre Breton
#54. Einstein is notmerely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted.
Havelock Ellis
#55. You feel better when you're eating food that retains nutritional value.
Amber Heard
#56. The destiny of the human race is to widen the gap separating it from the lower races of animals. Any code of morality which retains its permanence and authority after the conditions of existence which gave rise to it have changed, works against this upward progress of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#58. For I have learnt for a fact that nothing so effectively obtains, retains and regains grace, as that we should always be found not high-minded before God, but filled with holy fear.
Bernard Of Clairvaux
#59. I bear no grudges. I have a mind that retains nothing.
Bette Midler
#60. A custom-tailored suit retains a certain dignity about it.
Vincent Piazza
#61. You're gorgeous, Gabriel. You always were, you know."
"Nature's cruelty - the fallen angel retains his beauty. But I'm ugly on the inside.
Sylvain Reynard
#62. If George W. Bush is given a second term, and retains a Republican Congress and a compliant federal judiciary, he and his allies are likely to embark on a campaign of political retribution the likes of which we haven't seen since Richard Nixon.
Paul Begala
#63. An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Pliny The Younger
#64. When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter.
Terri Apter
#65. The fundamental assumption that the United States retains the right and obligation to intervene in the Third World in any way it ultimately deems necessary, including military, remains an article of faith among the people who guide both political parties.
Gabriel Kolko
#66. One cannot blame an organization that picks up an occasional black sheep, one only takes exception if it retains an accumulation of them.
Dion Fortune
#67. Words created divergencies between beings, because their precise meanings put an opinion around the idea. Music only retains the highest and purest substance of the idea, since it has the privilege of expressing all, whilst excluding nothing.
Nadia Boulanger
#68. T is true,t is certain; man though dead retains, Part of himself: the immortal mind remains.
Alexander Pope
#69. Sectarian priests cry out concerning me, and ask, "Why is it this babbler gains so many followers, and retains them?" I answer, It is because I possess the principle of love. All I can offer the world is a good heart and a good hand.
Joseph Smith Jr.
#70. It is among the less privileged groups relatively new to leisure and consumption that the zest for possessions retains something of its pristine energy.
David Riesman
#71. An individual cannot be considered entirely sane if he is wholly ignorant of scientific method and structure of nature and so retains primitive semantic reactions.
Alfred Korzybski
#72. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.
Sun Tzu
#73. When one has love for God, one doesn't feel any physical attraction to wife, children, relatives and friends. One retains only compassion for them.
Ramakrishna
#74. The eye - which sees all objects reversed - retains the images for some time.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#76. Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.
Rosa Luxemburg
#77. The heart that once has been bathed in love's pure fountain retains the pulse of youth forever.
Walter Savage Landor
#78. The word 'western' usually refers to movies, of course, but there is a literary tradition of the same name that pre-dates the moving picture and retains its vitality yet.
Clive Sinclair
#80. Free love may try to dissolve, and the concubinate to desecrate, the holiest tie, as it pleases; but, for the vast majority of our race, marriage remains the foundation of human society and the family retains its position as the primordial sphere in sociology.
Abraham Kuyper
#81. For most baseball fans, maybe oldest is always best. We love baseball because it seizes and retains the past, like the snowy village inside a glass paperweight.
Donald Hall
#82. There is no reason to assume that gender also ought to remain as two. The presumption of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it.
Judith Butler
#83. Just as a lamp waved in darkness creates a figure of light in the air, which remains for as long as the lamp repeats its motion exactly, so the universe retains its shape by repetition: the universe is Time's body.
John Crowley
#84. How very satisfactory those discussions must be, where each party retains their own opinion!
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#85. The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust.
George Bellows
#86. When you say, "I fucked up," the action retains its meaning, its sordid origin, its obscenity, and its poetry. Poetry is quite compatible with obscenity.
Charles Baxter
#87. He who retains unchangeable in his heart the rule of the truth which he received by means of baptism will doubtless recognise the names, the expressions, and the parables taken from the Scriptures [by the gnostics], but will by no means acknowledge the blasphemous use which these men make of them.
Irenaeus Of Lyons
#88. And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject.
John Locke
#89. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of the rules.
Iain M. Banks
#90. Mysterious in the light of day, nature retains her veil, despite our clamours: That which she does not willingly display cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws and hammers.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#91. My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects. Desist therefore, and tell us what you desire and propose.
C.S. Lewis
#92. The one who fights back retains his dignity and his self-respect.
Jeff Cooper
#93. The world of Manhattan is small and tightly knit, and the man on top retains a certain humility. He knows how far and fast he can fall by looking at the guy across the street. The view from the $250,000 apartment covers a lot of ground, most of it condemned.
Herb Caen
#94. Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.
Charlotte Bronte
#95. Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#96. Even if (as I myself believe) almost all Hegel's doctrines are false, he still retains an importance which is not merely historical, as the best representative of a certain kind of philosophy which, in others, is less coherent and less comprehensive.
Bertrand Russell
#97. Her full name is Eva Morelli Stein Hathaway. She retains her surnames not because they define her, but because she defines them; that is, except for the first--Morelli. Ironically it is the one she's least familiar with...
Maryann D'Agincourt
#98. Fortunately for the human race, pain, however piercing, is not a lasting emotion. The recollection of happiness lingers, but the consciousness never retains for long the first thrust of tragic loss. The details of daily life crowd in upon the mind.
Wallis Simpson
#100. Preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy.
George Orwell
