Themes

"You all very well know what deference I always pay, and ever will, to that part of the office of a jury which properly belongs to them. I never did, nor ever will, while I have the honour of executing the office of a judge attempt to control or influence the minds of a jury."

"But he instinctively expects his wage-earners to render him, not only obedience, but also personal deference. If the wage contract is a bargain of purchase and sale like any other, why is the workman expected to touch his hat to his employer..."

"One performed public duties, for which one was paid in full by deference; one was chaste, refusing to run away from one's husband with other men who for the most part did not ask one to do so, and who in any case had nothing to offer better than one’s own home."

"Your friends praise your abilities to the skies, submit to you in argument, and seem to have the greatest deference for you; but, though they may ask it, you never find them following your advice upon their own affairs; nor allowing you to manage your own, without thinking that you should follow theirs. Thus, in fact, they all think themselves wiser than you, whatever they may say."

"Defence, not defiance."

"Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the final word, precise "summing up", acknowledging their "poor power to add or detract", his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns."

"If there's one thing the international community should do, if only out of deference because he won the election, is to take seriously his arguments that coca products have a place in the international commodities market."

"The poaching, rick-burning, and cattle maiming of traditional English societies implies a less than universal internalization of deference."

"It is a satisfaction to find that his consideration for others, his respect for and deference to those deserving such treatment, his care of his own body and tongue, and even his reverence for his Maker, all were early inculcated in him by precepts which were the common practice in decent society the world over."

"The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right and wrong is the beginning of wisdom."

"The monarchy is a political referee, not a political player, and there is a lot of sense in choosing the referee by a different principle from the players. It lessens the danger that the referee might try to start playing... which I usually construct in terms of the way it institutionalises deference, can be expressed much more simply: it rots the brain. … This romancing about the royal family is, I fear, only a minor symptom of the softening of the brain of socialists ..."

"It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men."

"...something extremely valuable to dispense (his currency is the strangely intoxicating substance called publicity), and who is consequently treated with a deference quite out of proportion to his merits as a person."

"Great men always pay deference to greater."

"Deference to popular opinion is one great source of bad writing, and is all the more disastrous because the deference is paid to some purely hypothetical requirement."

"Arab world feel a sense of pride in shaking off decades of cowed passivity under dictatorships that ruled with no deference to popular wishes."

"...the dark emotions hiding in very human life, whereas in association with others one easily forgets, so easily evades this, is easily stopped in so many ways get the opportunity to begin afresh - thought alone, conceived with due deference, could, I believe, chastise many a man in our day who believes he has already attained the highest."

"And yet no approach to such unanimity is attainable unless some deference shall be paid to the will of the majority simply because it is the will of the majority. In this case the common end is the maintenance of the Union, and among the means to secure that end such will, through the election, is most clearly declared in favor of such constitutional amendment."

"If your civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men make mistakes."

"I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry."

"When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure."

"I respect the establishments of the Revolution, at least as much as those who are remarked for their deference to them to serve on occasion. I am sensible how much was done for liberty at the Revolution."

"The character of a gentleman [I take it] may be explained nearly thus: A blackguard is a fellow who does not care whom he offends; a clown is a blockhead who does not know when he offends; A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them."

"The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference."

"...and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union."

"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity."

"Deference is the instinctive respect which we pay to the great and good — the unconscious acknowledgment of the superiority or excellence of others."

"No one would dream of surrendering any practical security, for the advantages of which he is actually in possession, in deference of the a priori jurisprudence of a whole Academy of philosophers."

"Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness."

"Gentlemen, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color."

"The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts."

"Subjectively, social relations are more natural and egalitarian, and less marked by deference, submissiveness or snobbery, as one quickly discovers from the cab-driver, the barman, the air-hostess and the drug-store assistant."

"In a progressive country change is constant and the great question is not whether you should resists change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be a carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines."

"But I have never been able to love what was not lovable or hate what was not hateful, out of deference for some general principle."

"I desire to sever all connection with the Society of American Artists. In deference to some of its older members, who perhaps from sentimental motives requested me to reconsider my resignation last year, I shall explain... For the last three years my paintings have been rejected by you, one of them the Agnew portrait, a composition more important than any I have ever seen on your walls."

"...disdain of arrogance and self-righteousness, a preference for truculent independence over prudent deference and conformity - these were the feelings that shaped his outlook on life."

"The lover's proposals are, upon the same principle, made in writing direct to the parents themselves, and without the least deference to great men. Great men may make mistakes; and [as the book tries show], some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason."

"One dwells in suffering if one is without reverence and deference. Now what ascetic or brahmin can I honour and respect and dwell in dependence on?"

"With deference to all nations and followers of divine religions, we are asking if this atrocity is true, then why the people of the region should pay for it by occupation of Palestinian lands and unending suppression of Palestinian people, by homelessness of millions of Palestinians, by destruction of their cities and rural areas and agricultural lands."

"There are very many characteristics which go to make a model civil servant; prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, manly deference to superior officers."

"The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them."

"By telling a lie to the king, the first vizier was using love to promote a more compassionate outcome for both the captive and the king. The captive would have his life and the king would not have innocent blood on his hands."

"And especially above the heavens: for all gods are poets’ parables, poets’ prevarications. Verily, it always lifts us higher—specifically to the realm of the clouds, upon these we place our motly bastards and call them gods and overmen. Ah, how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become event! Ah, how weary I am of the poets."

"Priests moreover are all the more singular and unclassifiable in that they do not recognize themselves as such and are nearly always dupes of the most gross outward appearances — whether of the irony of some or the servile deference of others."

"Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their Sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are; but behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken off –- by all except the very young as being better than “mindless organisms."

"You are lions, you are souls, pur infinite and perfect. The might of the universe is within you. Why weepest though, my friend? There is no disease or misery for thee, but though art like the infinite sky; clouds of variuos colours come over it, play for a moment, then vanish. But the sky is ever the same eternal blue."

"George Orwell, otherwise temperamentally distant from Gandhi, saw exactly the tensed, pageant-like character of Gandhi’s life, and its status as a theatrical parable when he observed of Gandhi that ‘his whole life was a sort of pilgrimage in which every act was significant."

"The parable of those who spend their possessions for the sake of God is that of a grain out of which grow seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains: for God grants manifold increase unto whom He wills; and God is infinite, all-knowing. They who spend their possessions for the sake of God and do not thereafter mar their spending by stressing their own benevolence and hurting [the feelings of the needy] shall have their reward with their Sustainer, and no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve. A kind word and the veiling of another’s want is better than a charitable deed followed by hurt. O you who have attained to faith! Do not deprive your charitable deeds of all their worth by stressing your own benevolence and hurting [the feelings of the needy], as does he who spends his wealth only to be seen and praised by men, and believes not in God and the Last Day...Such as these shall have no gain whatever from all their [good] works: for God does not guide people who refuse to acknowledge the truth. And the parable of those who spend their possessions out of a longing to please God, and out of their own inner certainty, is that of a garden on high, fertile ground: a rainstorm smites it, and thereupon it brings forth its fruit twofold; and if no rainstorm smites it, soft rain [falls upon it]. And God sees all that you do."

"Sufi tradition of Islam frequently used parables to lay the ground work for teaching the basic principles of Islam to beginers. Dozens of parables are found in the Qura’n and hundreds of parables are known within the Sufi tradition of Islam. Parables were told and adapted many times for use in each successive generation. Parables were owned by the community and specific authorship of individual parables was unimportant."

"IT was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: God bless me!—but the Elephant Is very like a wall! The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried:"Ho!—what have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 't is mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear! The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a snake! “ The Fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee. "What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain," quoth he; "'T is clear enough the Elephant Is very like a tree!" The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan! “ The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant Is very like a rope!” And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! MORAL. So, oft in theologic wars The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim For preacher and monk the honored name! For, quarreling, each to his view they cling. Such folk see only one side of a thing."