Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.
--
Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding.Sydney Smith
You praise a man for having killed his enemy by means of an advantage; and by praising him for boldness you praise him for a sin against nature, because boldness leads to destruction.
Cyrano de Bergerac
No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.
James K. Polk
The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today.... We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.
Norman Mailer
To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work ... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is really worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
Miranda July
Smith, Sydney
Smith, Tommy
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