Quotes for All
The complaints of contemporary writes, who deplore the increase of luxury and deprevation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, … Read more
But [the Arabs’] friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of Persia. Edward Gibbon
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant. Edward Gibbon
Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. Fred Brooks
Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time. Fernand Braudel
How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts–I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if astranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious–insolent & whimsical I must appear!–one moment flighty and half mad,–the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole … Read more
Unconsciously, I fell in love with the small round sphere, with its amusing and capricious rebounds which sometimes play with me. Fabien Barthez
A man who has cured himself of all ridiculous prepossessions, and is fully, sincerely, and steadily convinced, from experience as well as philosophy, that the difference of fortune makes less difference in happiness than is vulgarly imagined; such a one does not measure out degrees of esteem according to the rent-rolls of his acquaintance. … … Read more
The concept known as bal tashchit–‘Do no destroy’–has a special significance in Jewish tradition…We are constantly being warned in our faith that the capricious, thoughtless, wasteful destruction of the elements and creatures of the earth is wrong…We should remind ourselves daily of our responsibility to all aspects of creation. David Geffen
Naturally, our own irrational demands strike us as having the force of needs, while other people’s needs strike us as capricious indulgences. Daphne Merkin