Quotes about Caprice

Writer, Poet, Lexicographer

They whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those who persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what they have promised.

Actions - Activity - Caprice - Design - Expectation - Imagination - Persistence - Value - Virtue

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Alexander Pushkin

Poet, Playwright, Novelist

Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane.

Brilliant - Caprice - Vanity

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Christopher Hitchens

Author, Columnist, Essayist, Orator, Journalist, Social Critic

The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.

Caprice

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John Adams

Former President of the United States

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

Caprice - Man - Morals - Security

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Virginia Woolf

Writer

The mind is the most capricious of insects — flitting, fluttering.

Caprice - Mindset

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Benjamin Disraeli

Former Prime Minister of the U.K.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Actions - Caprice - Happiness - Inspiration - Intelligence - Motivation

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Jonathan Swift

Writer, Poet, Cleric

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

Caprice

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Marcus Aurelius

Former Roman Emperor

Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space - and most of it uninhabited.

Caprice - Earth - Whole

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Samuel Johnson

Writer, Poet, Lexicographer

Whosoever shall look heedfully upon those who are eminent for their riches will not think their condition such as that he should hazard his quiet, and much less his virtue, to obtain it, for all that great wealth generally gives above a moderate fortune is more room for the freaks of caprice, and more privilege for ignorance and vice, a quicker succession of flatteries, and a larger circle of voluptuousness.

Caprice - Conditioning - Flattery - Fortune - Giving - Ignorance - Moderation - Privilege - Quiet - Rich - Thinking - Vices - Virtue - Wealth

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Alexander Hamilton

Economist, Lawyer, Military Commander, Founding Father of the United States

Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.

Caprice - Constitution - Dependence - Human - Liberty - Man - Security - Wellness

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Augustine of Hippo

Theologian, Philosopher

Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society.

Atheism - Caprice - Suppression

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Alan Cohen

Author

When faced with demanding situations, can you keep your heart as light as a feather? Can you laugh your way through challenges and maintain an attitude freer than fear? When confronted with upsets and the poisonous projections of others, can you remember that all is well? Do you know that you are a spiritual being, not subject to the whims and caprices of earthly tides?

Caprice - Challenge - Laughing - Poison - Projection - Remembering - Spiritual - Upset - Wellness

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David Hume

Philosopher, Historian, Economist, Essayist

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. ... his internal sentiments are more regulated by the personal characters of men, than by the accidental and capricious favors of fortune.

Caprice - Favor - Man - Politics - Wellness

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Warren Buffett

Business Magnate, Investor, Speaker

I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions.

Caprice - Parents - Reward - Teaching

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Fyodor Dostoevsky

Athlete, Novelist, Novelist

One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice-however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy-is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms... [an]will attain his object-that is, convince himself he is a man and not a piano-key!

Advantage - Caprice - Choice - Frenzy - Key - Man - Objectification - Pianist - Theory

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Samuel Johnson

Writer, Poet, Lexicographer

As every writer has his use, every writer ought to have his patrons; and since no man, however high he may now stand, can be certain that he shall not be soon thrown down from his elevation by criticism or caprice, the common interest of learning requires that her sons should cease from intestine hostilities, and, instead of sacrificing each other to malice and contempt, endeavour to avert persecution from the meanest of their fraternity.

Aversion - Caprice - Certainty - Contempt - Interest - Malice - Man - Sacrifice - Writing

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Honore de Balzac

Artist, Novelist, Novelist

Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it.

Caprice - Pleasure - Studying - Woman

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essayist, Lecturer, Philosopher, Poet

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

Caprice - Creativity - Feelings - Inspiration

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Mikhail Gorbachev

Writer, Statesman, Former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

History is a capricious creature. It depends on who writes it.

Caprice - Creativity - Dependence - Writing

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Benjamin Disraeli

Former Prime Minister of the U.K.

A man's fate is his own temper; and according to that will be his opinion as to the particular manner in which the course of events is regulated. A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance.

Belief - Caprice - Man

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