Top 63 Very Apt Quotes
#1. There's a very apt saying in show business: "If you don't go over budget in Paris, you're either very rich or very sick. "
Bob Hope
#3. When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.
Adam Smith
#4. The ideal is the flower-garden of the mind, and very apt to run to weeds unless carefully tended.
Margaret Oliphant
#5. Dejection of spirits, which may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed ... When I can find no other occupation, I think; and when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme.
William Cowper
#6. When debtors once have borrowed all we have to lend, they are very apt to grow shy of their creditors' company.
John Vanbrugh
#7. He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think that he knows enough.
John Powell
#8. By affliction prayer is quickened, for our prayers are very apt to grow languid and formal in a time of ease.
John Newton
#9. The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.
Adam Smith
#10. As a good horse is not very apt to jump over a bank, if left to guide himself, I let mine pick his own way.
Buffalo Bill
#11. Human beings say, "It never rains but it pours." This is not very apt, for it frequently does rain without pouring. The rabbits' proverb is better expressed. They say, "One cloud feels lonely": and indeed it is true that the sky will soon be overcast.
Richard Adams
#12. A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.
Samuel Johnson
#13. People do not always understand the motives of sublime conduct, and when they are astonished they are very apt to think they ought to be alarmed. The truth is none are fit judges of greatness but those who are capable of it.
Jane Porter
#14. Ambition is a passion, at once strong and insidious, and is very apt to cheat a man out of his happiness and his true respectability of character
Edward Bates
#15. In War, the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consquence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and depondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#16. There is a glare about worldly success which is very apt to dazzle men's eyes.
Augustus William Hare
#17. For the decisions of our will are often so directly opposed to the decisions of our emotions, that, if we are in the habit of considering our emotions as the test, we shall be very apt to feel like hypocrites in declaring those things to be real which our will alone has decided.
Hannah Whitall Smith
#18. Someone called actors 'sculptors in snow.' Very apt. In the end, it's all nothing.
Vincent Price
#19. Vanity is a confounded donkey, very apt to put his head between his legs, and chuck us over; but pride is a fine horse, that will carry us over the ground, and enable us to distance our fellow-travelers.
Frederick Marryat
#20. The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.
Charles Caleb Colton
#21. When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
Logan Pearsall Smith
#22. The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#23. When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only - What a crib from Rochefoucauld!
Ouida
#24. Prejudice is a house-plant which is very apt to wilt if you take it out-of-doors among folks.
Josh Billings
#25. MR. CALHOUN. Never, never. MR. WEBSTER. What he means he is very apt to say. MR. CALHOUN. Always, always. MR. WEBSTER. And I honor him for it.
Robert A. Caro
#26. Youth has a quickness of apprehension, which it is very apt to mistake for an acuteness of penetration.
Hannah More
#27. but her patience was perhaps tired out, for this is a virtue which is very apt to be fatigued by exercise. Mrs
Henry Fielding
#28. You will think me rhapsodizing; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.
Jane Austen
#29. Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Bertrand Russell
#30. Professional is an apt definition for me, professional slouch, that is. I can be very professional at seeming to do work, but the real work is trying to do as little as possible, without getting caught by Trip or any nosey busybodies.
J.C. Patrick
#31. Many a gentleman had likened his first meeting with her to downing a very strong cognac when one was expecting to imbibe fruit juice - that is to say, startling and apt to leave one with a distinct burning sensation. No,
Gail Carriger
#32. A human being in a neurotic state might very well be compared to a bewitched person, for people caught in a neurosis are apt to behave in a manner uncongenial and destructive towards themselves as well as others.
Marie-Louise Von Franz
#33. It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.
E. Nesbit
#34. For tolerance (and you must remember this when you grow older), is of very recent origin and even the people of our own so-called "modern world" are apt to be tolerant only upon such matters as do not interest them very much.
Hendrik Willem Van Loon
#35. When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.
Henry Ward Beecher
#36. Gravity is of the very essence of imposture; it does not only mistake other things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake itself.
Anthony Ashley Cooper
#37. We cannot speak loudly or angrily at such times; we are not apt to be eager about mere worldly things, for our very awe at our quickened sense of the nearness of the invisible world, makes us calm and serene about the petty trifles of today.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#38. Historians are apt to judge war ministers less by the victories achieved under their direction than by the political results which flowed from them. Judged by that standard, I am not sure that I shall be held to have done very well.
Winston Churchill
#39. We are apt to be very pert at censuring others, where we will not endure advice.
William Penn
#40. Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.
Anthony Trollope
#41. Let us look at our own shortcomings and leave other people's alone; for those who live carefully ordered lives are apt to be shocked at everything and we might well learn very important lessons from the persons who shock us. Our
Teresa Of Avila
#42. Once the hag got upset she was apt to go downhill very fast and remember things like she was an orphan. People are often orphans when they are eighty-two, but it is true that when you have no mother or father you can feel very lonely at any age.
Eva Ibbotson
#43. Children who were very truly pious in a Catholic childhood are apt to retain a nostalgia for the absolute.
Sonia Orwell
#44. If we are but sure the end is right, we are too apt to gallop over all bounds to compass it; not considering the lawful ends may be very unlawfully attained.
William Penn
#45. A jury is more apt to be unbiased and independent than a court, but they very seldom stand up against strong public clamor. Judges naturally believe the defendant is guilty.
Clarence Darrow
#46. Malice and hatred are very fretting and vexatious, and apt to make our minds sore and uneasy; but he that can moderate these affections will find ease in his mind.
John Tillotson
#47. Writers can get very angry when an actor says, "I don't know, I don't feel very comfortable with this line." Sometimes though, you're working with a writer for whom that is simply not apt - like Harold Pinter.
Helen Mirren
#48. I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil.
Benjamin Franklin
#49. The very people who shudder over the cruelty of the hunter are apt to forget that slaughter, in the grimmest sense of the word, is a process they entrust daily to the butcher; and that unlike the game of the forests, even the dumbest creatures of the slaughterhouse know what is in store for them.
Lewis Mumford
#50. We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#51. The problem is to appreciate differences in the basic premises of thought and in the very methods of thinking, and these are so often overlooked that our interpretations of Chinese philosophy are apt to be a projection of characteristically Western ideas into Chinese terminology.
Alan W. Watts
#52. A mind that is very selective to forms ... is apt to use its images metaphorically, to exploit their possible significance for the conception of remote or intangible ideas.
Susanne Katherina Langer
#53. It is the still, yellow kind of afternoon when one is apt to get stuck in a dream if one sits very quiet
Dodie Smith
#54. Standardization of our educational systems is apt to stamp out individualism and defeat the very ends of education by leveling the product down rather than up.
Harvey Cushing
#55. It is certain, indeed, that the sacred writers were apt to make great allowances for people with empty stomachs, and though I am well aware that the present profane ones think this very reprehensible, I venture to agree with the sacred writers.
James Payn
#56. In the very desire for help one is apt to forget that the objective should be to enable the individual to stand on his own feet.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#57. The plain truth is that I knew better but went to Everest anyway. And in doing so I was a party to the death of good people, which is something that is apt to remain on my conscience for a very long time.
Jon Krakauer
#58. He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum
Ken Kesey
#59. 'Tis very great pity that they who are so apt to over-rate themselves in smaller matters, shou'd, where it most concerns them to know, and stand upon their Value, be so insensible of their own worth.
Mary Astell
#60. Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#61. Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to bereave the student of themanly contemplation of the whole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#62. Daniel was very like a child in all the parts of his character. He was strongly affected by whatever was present, and apt to forget the absent. He acted on impulse, and too often had reason to be sorry for it; but he hated his sorrow too much to let it teach him wisdom for the future.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#63. Human life very much resembles a game of chess: for, as in the latter, while a gamester is too attentive to secure himself very strongly on one side of the board, he is apt to leave an unguarded opening on the other, so doth it often happen in life.
Henry Fielding