Essential Quotes

2422 Essential quotes by 1671 unique authors

In man's life, the absence of an essential component usually leads to the adoption of a substitute. The substitute is usually embraced with vehemence and… — Eric Hoffer
If one looks closely one sees that there is no essential difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not… — George Orwell
The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the… — Aristotle
It is essential... that discipline should not be practised like a rule imposed on oneself from the outside, but that it becomes an expression of… — Erich Fromm
The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The… — Wallace Stevens
Mercy stood in the cloud, with eye that wept Essential love. — Robert Pollok
The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government. — James Madison
It is essential..that you should form and adopt certain rules or principles, for the government of your own conduct and temper. Unless you have such… — John Quincy Adams
But I am not discouraged. I do not despair for our country. I believe tonight, as I always have, that the essential decency, compassion and… — Jimmy Carter
All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in… — Henri Matisse
The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything… — Henri Matisse
Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary. We must not permit anything to stand between us and the book that… — Jim Rohn
Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be… — Vincent Van Gogh
There are essential and inessential insanities... Inessential insanities get one in trouble with oneself. Essential insanities get one in trouble with others. It's always preferable… — Tom Robbins
Lacking many of the essential implements, it irritated me to be reduced to impotence in the face of artistic projects to which I had passionately… — Paul Gauguin
The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused. — Joseph Joubert
Every victory of man over man has in itself a taste of defeat.... There is no essential difference between the various human groups, creatures whose… — Freya Stark
It is essential that we understand people for who they are as individuals and not the public perception of them or their family and past. — Clement Freud
If you give a child something very complex to paint, such as a bouquet of flowers or a natural landscape, if he is very good,… — Robert Motherwell
It is precisely the way which is productive - this is the essential thing; becoming is more important than being... — Paul Klee
Novelty is seldom the essential... make a subject better from its intrinsic nature. — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Anxiety is essential to the human condition. The confrontation with anxiety can relieve us from boredom, sharpen the sensitivity and assure the presence of tension… — Rollo May
Spirit of Beauty, whose sweet impulses, flung like rose of dawn across the sea, alone can flush the exalted consciousness with shafts of sensible divinity-light… — Alan Seeger
I am a critic - as essential to the theatre as ants to a picnic. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz
It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations.… — Friedrich August von Hayek

Who Wrote These Essential Quotes

1,671 authors contributed a total of 2,422 Essential Quotes, led by these top contributors: