Affections Quotes

1. "To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature."
Author: Adam Smith

2. "We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves."
Author: Alain De Botton

3. "Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to."
Author: Alfred A. Montapert

4. "Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of passions and affections... nothing can or ought to be permanent but that which is perfect."
Author: Algernon Sidney

5. "People snare when I tell them that I'm an emotional prostitute. But after my rebuttal, they begin to realize that they are one too. Like me, they have pimped their emotions for the affections of another. Like me, they've gone through life tormented by the idea of living a happily ever after, not realizing that the ever after isn't so happy."
Author: Beatrice McClearn

6. "So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy."
Author: Bill Bryson

7. "Some women, it seemed, were entirely without guile and bestowed their affections with hardly a moment's conscious thought. Others set out to implement a campaign of military thoroughness, with branched contingency trees and fallback positions, all to 'catch' a desirable man. The word 'desirable' was the giveaway, she thought. The poor jerk wasn't actually desired, only 'desirable' - a plausible object of desire in the opinion of those others on whose account this whole sorry charade was performed. Most women, she thought, were somewhere in the middle, seeking to reconcile their passions with their perceived long-term advantage."
Author: Carl Sagan

8. "I have been deceived, before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless; and I am more interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, forever,on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them..."
Author: Charles Dickens

9. "The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, fore ever, on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them." As the old gentleman said this in a low voice: more to himself than to his companion: and as he remained silent for a short time afterwords: Oliver sat quite still."
Author: Charles Dickens

10. "What is meant by this term, 'the heart'? According to the general scriptural usage of the term, the heart means the centre of the personality. It does not merely mean the seat of the affections and the emotions."
Author: D. Martyn Lloyd Jones

11. "Society is a machine of machines, a system that runs on precondition, customs, rules and laws that are either expressed openly or maintained in the closet, one, like the one in the United States that is constantly changing to accommodate some variations of the machinated selves and its affections as in race, gender, sexual orientations etc which are also mostly preconditions of the machine. Again, I ask. Who are you?"
Author: Dew Platt

12. "Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His lordship."
Author: Elisabeth Elliot

13. "The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it."
Author: Evelyn Waugh

14. "Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly."
Author: Fernando Pessoa

15. "Woman has nothing but her affections,--and this makes her at once more loving and less loved."
Author: Florence Nightingale

16. "A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies."
Author: François René De Chateaubriand

17. "When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures."
Author: George Eliot

18. "After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope."
Author: George Eliot

19. "There is no sinfulness in the will and affections without some error in the understanding. All lusts which a natural man lives in, are lusts of ignorance."
Author: George Gillespie

20. "Being Latin parents makes us extremely expressive with our affections."
Author: Gloria Estefan

21. "He lingered at the door, and said, 'The Lion wants courage, the Tin Man a heart, and the Scarecrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do you want?'...She couldn't say forgiveness, not to Liir. She started to say 'a soldier,' to make fun of his mooning affections over the guys in uniform. But realizing even as she said it that he would be hurt, she caught herself halfway, and in the end what came out of her mouth surprised them both.She said, 'A soul-'He blinked at her."
Author: Gregory Maguire

22. "So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. An when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bides the soul be rid of it."
Author: Herman Melville

23. "There is much: recognition of the fact that human beings live indeterminate and incomplete lives; recognition of the power exerted over and upon us by our own habits and memories; recognition of the ways in which the world presses in on all of us, for it is an intractable place where many things go awry and go astray, where one may all-too-easily lose one's very self. The epistemological argument is framed by faith, but it stands on its own as an account of willing, nilling, memory, language, signs, affections, delight, the power and the limits of minds and bodies. To the extent that a prideful philosophy refuses to accept these, Augustine would argue, to that extent philosophy hates the human condition itself."
Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain

24. "God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose."
Author: John Piper

25. "The great danger of riches is that our affections will be carried away from God to His gifts."
Author: John Piper

26. "True Christian fortitude consists in strength of mind, through grace, exerted in two things; in ruling and suppressing the evil and unruly passions and affections of the mind; and in steadfastly and freely exerting and following good affections and dispositions, without being hindered by sinful fear or the opposition of enemies... Though Christian fortitude appears in withstanding and counteracting the enemies that are without us; yet it much more appears in resisting and suppressing the enemies that are within us; because they are our worst and strongest enemies and have greatest advantage against us. The strength of the good soldier of Jesus Christ appears in nothing more than in steadfastly maintaining the holy calm, meekness, sweetness, and benevolence of his mind, amidst all the storms, injuries, strange behaviour, and surprising acts and events of this evil and unreasonable world."
Author: Jonathan Edwards

27. "It does not answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend, as well as preaching, to give a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's hearts and affections. God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion in their remembrance, and setting them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already."
Author: Jonathan Edwards

28. "Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections."
Author: Joseph Butler

29. "Mom was bossy. Even in print I could hear her tone, smugly congratulating me on already earning the prince's affections-she had been informed that I was the only one to get gifts to send home-and telling me firmly to keep up whatever I was doing.Yeah, Mom, I'll just keep telling the prince that he has absolutely no shot with me and offend him as often as I can. Great plan.I was glad I'd saved May's for last."
Author: Kiera Cass

30. "George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were gay, just for starters. They didn't have a name for it, but their primary affections and intellectual attractions were all for other men."
Author: Larry Kramer

31. "Nuclear didn't describe families. How could it? Dry physics was not equal to that task. In the twentieth century we needed a biological metaphor, Darwinian in scope, to suggest the gnash and crash of carnivorous life in the family gene pool. But for the 21st century, the new century, I think the metaphors must be chemical. Molecular. In the molecular family people are connected without being bound. They spindle themselves around shared experiences and affections rather than splashing in the shared gene pool."
Author: Laura Kalpakian

32. "I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, ‘Tis all barren—and so it is; and so is all the world to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I declare, said I, clapping my hands chearily together, that was I in a desart, I would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections—If I could not do better, I would fasten them upon some sweet myrtle, or seek some melancholy cypress to connect myself to—I would court their shade, and greet them kindly for their protection—I would cut my name upon them, and swear they were the loveliest trees throughout the desert: if their leaves wither'd, I would teach myself to mourn, and when they rejoiced, I would rejoice along with them."
Author: Laurence Sterne

33. "A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat."
Author: Logan Pearsall Smith

34. "Womanhood is a wonderful thing. In womankind we find the mothers of the race.There is no man so great, nor none sunk so low, but once he lay a helpless, innocent babe in a woman's arms and was dependent on her love and care for his existence. It is woman who rocks the cradle of the world and holds the first affections of mankind. She possesses a power beyond that of a king on his throne....Womanhood stands for all that is pure and clean and noble. She who does not make the world better for having lived in it has failed to be all that a woman should be."
Author: Mabel Hale

35. "It is sad to see a woman sacrificing the ties of the affections even to do good."
Author: Maria Mitchell

36. "Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age."
Author: Matthew Simpson

37. "We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire."
Author: N.T. Wright

38. "It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object."
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

39. "By your dust, and by the dust of all the generations, I promise to continue, I promise to preserve! The jungle may advance, the bombs may fall again?but while I live, you live?and this dear city of our affections shall rise again?if only in my song! To remember and to sing: that is my vocation..."
Author: Nick Joaquín

40. "No, she can weather his disappointments if she has to, that isn't the problem, she can put up with anything as long as she feels he is solidly with her, but that is precisely what she doesn't feel anymore, and even if he seems content to glide along with her out of old habits, the reflex of old affections, she is becoming ever more certain, no, certain is probably too strong a word for it, she is becoming ever more willing to entertain the idea that he has stopped loving her."
Author: Paul Auster

41. "The American humorist sat on his couch suffering thoughts of her, trying to figure out how to win back her affections, wondering what had happened between them or just tumbling head-over-heels down into romantic oblivion where the image of a remembered kiss provokes bottomless despair and makes death seem like the right idea.He experienced the basics of love ended."
Author: Richard Brautigan

42. "A person doesn't know true hurt and suffering until they've felt the pain of falling in love with someone whose affections lie elsewhere."
Author: Rose Gordon

43. "When my sons arrived in the family, their legal status was not ambiguous at all. They were our kids. But their wants and affections were still atrophied by a year in the orphanage. They didn't know that flies on their faces were bad. They didn't know that a strange man feeding them their first scary gulps of solid food wasn't a torturer. Life in the cribs alone must have seemed to them like freedom. That's what I was missing about the biblical doctrine of adoption. Sure it's glorious in the long run. But it sure seems like hell in the short run. . . ."
Author: Russell Moore

44. "Such as thy words are such will thine affections be esteemed and such as thine affections will be thy deeds and such as thy deeds will be thy life ..."
Author: Socrates

45. "Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough good.By itself it makes that which is heavy light;and it bears evenly all that is uneven.It carries a burden which is no burden;it will not be kept back by anything low and mean;It desires to be free from all wordly affections,and not to be entangled by any outward prosperity,or by any adversity subdued.Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble,attempts what is above its strength,pleads no excuse of impossibility.It is therefore able to undertake all things,and it completes many things and warrants them to take effect,where he who does not love would faint and lie down.Though weary, it is not tired;though pressed it is not straightened;though alarmed, it is not confounded;but as a living flame it forces itself upwards and securely passes through all.Love is active and sincere, courageous, patient, faithful, prudent, and manly."
Author: Thomas à Kempis

46. "Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, government negatively by restraining our vices. Society encourages intercourse. Government creates distinctions."
Author: Thomas Paine

47. "The bare knowledge of God's will is inefficacious, it doth not better the heart. Knowledge alone is like a winter sun, which hath no heat or influence; it doth not warm the affections, or purify the conscience. Judas was a great luminary, he knew God's will, but he was a traitor."
Author: Thomas Watson

48. "The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,They scorn the best I can do to relate to them"
Author: Walt Whitman

49. "A woman's whole life is a history of the affections."
Author: Washington Irving

50. "We pick and choose who to love. We pick and choose who to hate. We pick and choose our friends and ignore those that invade our space.We pick and choose who should live. We pick and choose who should die. We pick and choose who we say hello to and ignore a dying loners cry. We pick and choose who to be real to. We pick and choose to be fake to. We pick and choose who is worthy of our affections or beneath us or we can relate to.We pick and choose our dreams. We pick and choose our destiny. We pick and choose what we think will bring out the best in me.We pick and choose to reach the pinnacle. We pick and choose because of our power of choice. We sometimes pick and choose while never really considering the consequences of our voice."
Author: Willis Robinson

Affections Quotes Pictures