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- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,273)
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- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,878)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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- 26-Oct-20 - De Officiis [On Duties; On Moral Duty; The Offices], Book 1, ch. 10 / sec. 33 (44 BC) [tr. Miller (1913)] | WIST on Heauton Timoroumenos [The Self-Tormentor], Act 4, sc. 5, l. 48 (l. 796).
- 24-Oct-20 - Daniel Onyirioha on The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, ch. 25 [tr. Stanhope].
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Quotations about boast
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
You know, that might be the answer — to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.
For the propaganda of totalitarian movements which precede and accompany totalitarian regimes is invariably as frank as it is mendacious, and would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones. The Nazis were “convinced that evil-doing in our time has a morbid force of attraction,” Bolshevik assurances inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary moral standards have become a mainstay of Communist propaganda, and experience has proven time and again that the propaganda value of evil deeds and general contempt for moral standards is independent of mere self-interest, supposedly the most powerful psychological factor in politics.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 3, ch. 1, sec. 1 (1951)
(Source)
Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of your-self.
[Voulez-vous qu’on croie du bien de vous? N’en dites point.]
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist and philosopher
Pensées, # 4 (1670)
Alt. trans.:
- "If you want people to think well of you, do not speak well of yourself."
- "Do you want people to think well of you? Don't say a word about it."
Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.
Joseph Roux (1834-1886) French Catholic priest
Meditations of a Parish Priest: Thoughts, Part 5 “Joy, Suffering, Fortune,” #22 (1886) [tr. Hapgood]
(Source)
Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for someone to complain to.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
The New York Evening Mail (15 Nov 1917)
A year later he wrote: "Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on." [In Defense of Women (1918)]
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
(Attributed)
Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, “I told you so.”George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Don Juan, Canto 19, st. 50 (1823)
Deeds are better things than words are,
Actions mightier than boastings.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
