Themes

"I shall listen with great pleasure, for I too am not one to despise myths, and I am far from rejecting those that have the right tendency; indeed I am of the same opinion as you and your admired, or rather the universally admired, Plato."

"I believe that to have interfered as I have done—as I have always freely admitted I have done—in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right."

"I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest movement of his life has weakened."

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."

"What these thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who lays no foundations, who does not conquer, who does not predicate the capture of its environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate it, as the scientist does by his discoveries..."

"Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold."

"Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else."

"People like leaders who look like they are dominant, optimistic, friendly to their friends, and quick on the trigger when it comes to enemies. They like boldness and despise the appearance of timidity and protracted doubt."

"Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain."

"They despise the immediate as trivial; I know that it is trivial, but cherish rather than despise it — because everything, including infinity itself, is trivial."

"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."

"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."

"Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or 'surrender' as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from non-believers into the bargain."

"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."

"A traveller has a right to relate and embellish his adventures as he pleases, and it is very impolite to refuse that deference and applause they deserve."

"These are salient facts...in Muhammad’s career. He too, founded a great religion, there are those who write of this evidently lustful and rather shifty leader as though he were a man to put beside Jesus of Nazareth or Gautama or Mani. But it surely manifests he was a being of a commoner clay; he was vain egotistical, tyrannous, and self deceiver; and it would throw all our history out of proportion if, out of an insincere deference to the possible Moslem reader, we were to present him in any other light."

"The reasons Jesus taught in parables was to conceal his message from "those outside". Another reason why Jesus taught in parables appears to conflict with the first, for a second reason was to reveal and illustrate his message to both his followers and “those outside”."

"A parable is a form of teaching in which one thing is thrown beside another. Hence its radical idea is comparison."

"Every perfect life is a parable invented by God."

"Men are in the habit, when the truth is exhibited by the servants of God, of saying, All is mystery, they have spoken in parables, and, therefore, are not to be understood."

"A parable is a form of writing that tells a story about common everyday things within the range of every individual's experience, and at the same time draws a subtle analogy between the ordinary facts of the story and the deeper meaning which lies parallel to the facts. Literally, the word parable means, "a comparison."

"Jesus’ view of nature and life, which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables in fragments and hidden allusions, shows quite clearly that he understood this fact."

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

"So wide was Christ's view of truth, so extended His teaching, that every phase of nature was employed in illustrating truth. The scenes upon which the eye daily rests were all connected with some spiritual truth, so that nature is clothed with the parables of the Master."

"Jesus of Nazareth could have chosen simply to express Himself in moral precepts; but like a great poet He chose the form of the parable, wonderful short stories that entertained and clothed the moral precept in an eternal form. It is not sufficient to catch man's mind, you must also catch the imaginative faculties of his mind."

"But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples."

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

"And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand."

"Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."

"Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. And when his disciples asked him what the parable meant, he said “to you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables so that ‘seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear'."

"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."

"Where is he that is born king of the Jews? For Amalek he took up his parable, and said, Amalek was the first of the nations; the first and the most powerful of the neighbouring nations - but his latter end shall be that he perish for ever."

"And he looked on the Kenite, and took up his parable, and said, Strong is thy dwelling place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"...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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."