principle

Labour is the Father and active principle of Wealth, as lands are the Mother.

—Petty, Sir William

It takes up no falling cause; fights no uphill battle; advocatesnogreat principle; holdsout a helping hand to no oppressed or obscure individual. It is 'ever strong upon the stronger side'.

—Hazlitt,William

'Form follows profit' is the aesthetic principle of our times. Thus, design skill is measured today by the architect's ability to build the largest possible enclosure for the smallest investment in the quickest time.

—Rogers, Richard George Rogers, Baron

'To every Form of being is assigned,' Thus calmly spake the venerable Sage, 'An active Principle:öhowe'er removed From sense and observation, it subsists In all things, in all natures.'

—Wordsworth,William

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.

—Darwin, Charles Robert

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.

—Krutch,JosephWood

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

—Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supportshiskingon loyal principles and cuts off hishead on republican principles.

—Shaw, George Bernard

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please.

—Darwin, Charles Robert

To me the'female principle' is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power Lehmann-Haupt structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.

—Le Guin, Ursula ne¤  e Kroeber

L'homme n'est rien d'autre que ce qu'il se fait.Tel est le premier principe de l'existentialisme. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

—Sartre,Jean-Paul

The vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. 786 The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to producethe reverse of happiness.

—Mill,John Stuart

Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.

—Heffer, Simon

It is a commercial paper, a paper of business, and it is conducted on principles of trade and business. It floats with the tide: it sails with the stream. It has no other principle.

—Hazlitt,William

I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinctönobody is that. Doubtless some people say theyare, but this world isgrievously given to lying.

—Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing, sir.

—Shaw, George Bernard

On the principle laid down by Gilbert and Sullivan that when everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody; if everybody is abnormal, we don't need to worry about anybody.

—Hutchins, Robert M

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

We can do worse than remember the principle which both gives us a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our mindsöHold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.

—Butterfield, Sir Herbert

The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditionöa desire which†comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.

—Smith, Adam

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

—Burke, Edmund

DerTod ist das romantisierende Prinzip unsers Lebens. DerTod istödas Leben. Durch denTod wird das Leben verst a« rkt. Death is the romantic principle of Life. Death isölife. Through death life is intensified.

—Novalis pseudonym of  Friedrich von Hardenberg

People and provinces must not be bartered about from sovereign to sovereign as if they were chattels, or pawns in a game. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

—Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise isgone! it isgone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

—Burke, Edmund

I am a snob, not only in fact, but on principle.

—Shaw, George Bernard

I hate liberality. Nine times out of ten it is cowardiceöand the tenth time, lack of principle.

—Sidmouth, HenryAddington, 1stViscount