Magnanimous Quotes

Look you, there are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes, and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to leave them again as long as one lives. ~ Marcel Proust

It is one of my favorite thoughts that God manifests Himself to men in all the wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous men. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

I'll keep the girl out of trouble," Gray said, in what seemed to him a rather magnanimous gesture. "I'll watch out for her."
"Oh, I've no doubt you will. But who's going to watch out for you?"
Gray's nerves prickled. So, it wasn't the girl Joss was concerned about. No, he expected Gray to cock it all up.
"Right, Joss. I'm an unprincipled, lecherous bastard." He paused, waiting for his brother to argue otherwise.
He didn't.
Gray protested. "She's a governess, for the love of gold. Prim, proper, starched, dull." Soft, he thought in counterpoint. Delicate, sweet. Intriguing.
"Ah. So you'll dally with any chambermaid or serving wench who'll lift her skirts, but you'd draw the line at seducing a governess?"
"Yes. Have a look at me, man." Gray smoothed his brushed velvet lapel, then gestured upward at the banners trimming the freshly tarred rigging. "Look at this ship. I'm telling you, my libertine days are over. I've gone respectable."
"It's easy to change your coat. It's a great deal harder to change your ways. ~ Tessa Dare

Yoshino distinguishes covering from "conversion" (trying to become straight) and "passing" (staying in the closet), and points out that even after gay people come out, society exerts a "covering demand" on its minority members. I would argue that, by pleading for more magnanimous treatment of our opponents, gay thought leaders were unconsciously applying the covering demand to the LGBT equality movement as a whole. ~ Michelangelo Signorile

How magnanimous was a gesture if one were constantly aware of its magnanimity? ~ Laura Lippman

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave. ~ Albert Pike

Perhaps most surprising of all, the deposed and imprisoned King Henry was not murdered. This had been the fate of the two Plantagenet kings who had lost their crowns before him: Edward II died while in custody at Berkeley Castle in 1327, while Richard II was killed at Pontefract in 1400, the year following his deposition. Ironically, Henry's survival was perhaps a mark of his uniquely pitiful and ineffectual approach to kingship - for it was much harder to justify killing a man who had done nothing evil or tyrannical, but had earned his fate thanks to his dewy-eyed simplicity. Permitting Henry to remain alive was a bold decision that Edward IV would come to regret. But in 1465 it must have struck the king as a brave and magnanimous act. ~ Dan Jones

If the gentleman has ability, he is magnanimous, generous, tolerant, and straightforward, through which he opens the way to instruct others. ~ Xun Zi

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger
so it be done for love, and not forostentation
do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch and most magnanimous virtues! ~ Charles Dickens

Under a Certain Little Star"

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken.
May happiness not be angry if I take it for my own.
May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker.
My apologies to time for the multiplicity of the world overlooked
each second.
My apologies to an old love for treating the new one as the first.
Forgive me far-off wars for taking my flowers home.
Forgive me open wounds for pricking my finger.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the
abyss.
My apologies to those in railway stations for sleeping comfortably
at five in the morning.
Pardon me hounded hope for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me deserts for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
forever still and staring at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happened to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous to me.
Endure, O mystery of being that I might pull threads from your
veil.

Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and
woman.
I know that ~ Wisława Szymborska

Only the truly magnanimous and strong are capable of forgiving and loving. ~ Kim Dae-jung

Smile in the face of adversity, be contemptuous of danger, undaunted in defeat and magnanimous in victory. ~ Sumitro Djojohadikusumo

There is nothing magnanimous in bearing misfortunes with fortitude, when the whole world is looking on ... He who, without friends to encourage or even without hope to alleviate his misfortunes, can behave with tranquility and indifference, is truly great. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine. ~ William Lloyd Garrison

If you desire to be magnanimous, undertake nothing rashly, and fear nothing thou undertakest; fear nothing but infamy; dare anything but injury; the measure of magnanimity is neither to be rash nor timorous. ~ Francis Quarles

Why do men entertain this queer idea that what is sordid must always overthrow what is magnanimous; that there is some dim connection between brains and brutality, or that it does not matter if a man is dull so long as he is also mean? Why do they vaguely think of all chivalry as sentiment and all sentiment as weakness? They do it because they are, like all men, primarily inspired by religion. For them, as for all men, the first fact is their notion of the nature of things; their idea about what world they are living in. And it is their faith that the only ultimate thing is fear and therefore that the very heart of the world is evil. They believe that death is stronger than life, and therefore dead things must be stronger than living things; whether those dead things are gold and iron and machinery or rocks and rivers and forces of nature. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favor but to be ready to do kindness to others. ~ Aristotle.

Since then I have learned many things, and above all the way in which dinosaurs conquer. First I had believed that disappearing had been, for my brothers, the magnanimous acceptance of a defeat; now I knew that the more the dinosaurs disappear, the more they extend their dominion, and over forests far more vast than those that cover the continents: in the labyrinth of the survivor's thoughts. From the semidarkness of fears and doubts of now ignorant generations, the Dinosaurs continued to extend their necks, to raise their taloned hoofs, and when the last shadow of their image had been erased, their name went on, superimposed on all meanings, perpetuating their presence in relations among living beings. Now, when the name too had been erased, they would become one thing with the mute and anonymous molds of thought, through which thoughts take on form and substance: by the New Ones, and by those who would come after the New Ones, and those who would come even after them. ~ Italo Calvino

The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego-your need to posses and control-and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous-lar ge souled. ~ Sam Keen

Many scientific disciplines begin by not observing any sort of vital spark or consciousness in material events and proceed to deny that these things exist in living things, including themselves. Because consciousness does not fit into their mechanistic schemes they declare it illusory. Magicians make exactly the reverse argument. Observing consciousness in themselves and animals, they are magnanimous enough to extend it to all things to some degree - trees, amulets, planetary bodies, and all. This is a far more respectful and generous attitude than that of religions, most of whom won't even give animals a soul. ~ Peter J. Carroll

But what is worship? thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and earth - pagans and all included - can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship? - to do the will of God - that is worship. And what is the will of God? - to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me - that is the will of God. ~ Herman Melville

Highly esteemed dear Professor Franck,
In these days in which by your magnanimous decision you show the world where the insane oppression of the Jews leads to, I as one of your students would not like to be missing among those who declare their sincere thanks and unlimited veneration to you, and who especially now are filled with the highest admiration by your present step and the reason given by you, and who at the same time are filled with horror that such a thing is necessary.
I am at a loss for words to express what both my wife and I always and especially now feel for you. Please remember us to your wife and chidlren and accept our sincere greetings. ~ Gerhard Herzberg

People have this dream of being unreachable. They build a name for themselves and then finally fulfill their dream of "being more important." Which just shows they were born from down below. Because when you're born from up above, your dreams have nowhere to go but downwards! And you dream of doing things in order to meet people, to know them, to understand the smallest importances! ~ C. JoyBell C.

You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What does magnanimity look like applied to daily life? How can you be magnanimous every day? Well, it looks like resisting the urge to take offense in other people's lives and in their words or actions (people are not fashioned for your feelings); it looks like not having to launch an emotional reaction to every perceived action or inaction (you are not just a tall toddler with inferiority issues); it looks like letting people go more easily than they thought you could (you have time for more important things other than their tactics); It looks like treading lightly but thundering gently. That's magnanimous. ~ C. JoyBell C.

You will always have to live with yourself, and it is to your best interest to see that you have good company - a clean, pure, straight, honest, upright, generous, magnanimous companion. ~ Orison Swett Marden

He's in the right, he's in the right!" she muttered; "of course he always is in the right, he is a Christian, he is magnanimous! Yes, a mean, horrid man! And no one but I understands or will understand it, and I cannot explain it. They say he's a religious, moral, honest, and wise man, but they do not see what I have seen. They do not know how for eight years he has been smothering my life, smothering everything that was alive in me, that he never once thought I was a live woman, in need of love. They do not know how at every step he hurt me and remained self-satisfied. Have I not tried to love him, tried to love my son when I could no longer love my husband? But the time came when I understood that I could no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, and cannot be blamed because God made me so, that I want to love and to live." … "And he knows it all; knows that I cannot repent of breathing, of loving, knows that nothing but lies and deception can come of this arrangement, but he wants to continue to torture me. I know him; I know that he swims and delights in falsehood as a fish in water. But no! I will not give him that pleasure, come what will. I will break this web of lies in which he wishes to entangle me. Anything is better than lies and deception! ~ Leo Tolstoy

No leader did more for his country than Winston Churchill. Brave, magnanimous, traditional, he was like a king-general from Britain's heroic past. His gigantic qualities set him apart from ordinary humanity; there seemed no danger he feared, no effort too great for his limitless energies. ~ Gretchen Rubin

Don't teach me how to live. I'm wicked now. I have money. But I'm magnanimous. I'll give you twenty rubles and three days to sack the city! I'm like Suvorov! Plunder the city, Kisa! Have fun! ~ Ilya Ilf

It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men – so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two agnostics. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Did you see the mailman while doing your rounds yesterday?"
Curran's face turned carefully blank. "Yes, I did."
"Did you do anything to scare him?"
"I was perfectly friendly."
"Mhm." Please continue with your nice story. Non-judgemental.
"He was putting things into the mailbox. I was passing by and I said, 'Hello, nice night.' And then I smiled. He jumped into his truck and slammed the door."
"Rude!" Julie volunteered.
"I let it pass," Curran said. "We're new to the neighborhood."
The former Beast Lord, a kind and magnanimous neighbor. "So you sneaked up behind him, startled him by speaking, and when he turned around and saw a six-hundred pound talking lion, you showed him your teeth?"
"I don't think that's what happened," Curran said.
"That's exactly what happened, Your Furriness." I laughed. ~ Ilona Andrews

Without fail, he always signed off on these letters with love and he always included Whiskey and Bess in the list of individuals sending this love my way. At the time it made me laugh, it made me embarrassed, but as soon as I softened, as soon as I matured back into his son, I came to appreciate what he was saying
an endearing and magnanimous reminder of how family will always be the sum of its individual members, be they human or animal. ~ Nick Trout

The root of all inauthentic manifestations of being-with-others is the attitude of self-concern. It is in this state of mind that, either consciously or unconsciously, we reduce the central aim of all value and meaning to the accomplishment of the welfare of ourselves alone. This attitude can operate very deviously even in the person who outwardly appears to be thoroughly altruistic. Despite all magnanimous commitments and generous deeds, it silently measures the ultimate worth of these things in terms of the personal satisfaction that results from them. It is the root of inauthentic being-with because it is primarily responsible in preventing our essential being-with-others from full and genuine expression. ~ Stephen Batchelor

Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance. ~ Eric Hoffer

Harrington never worked in a place like this, a system where 'underbudgeting' is designed to arbitrarily keep costs down while acting as a defense against public attack. The city and state thus appear magnanimous, politicians fair-minded regulators of the public good . . . until the closed cases lead to starvation, child abuse and suicides at rates so great they arouse the public's conscience. Then it all starts again - bigger budgets, closer supervision, more MSW programs . . . while the poor are blamed because according to our Puritan tradition of self-reliance those too weak or stupid to contribute get pushed aside, deserve not to survive ~ Philip Schultz

Why not?" she said, "and take note of what I am about to say to you. Never feel secure with the woman you love, for there are more dangers in woman's nature than you imagine. Women are neither as good as their admirers and defenders maintain, nor as bad as their enemies make them out to be. Woman's character is characterlessness. The best woman will momentarily go down into the mire, and the worst unexpectedly rises to deeds of greatness and goodness and puts to shame those that despise her. No woman is so good or so bad, but that at any moment she is capable of the most diabolical as well as of the most divine, of the filthiest as well as of the purest, thoughts, emotions, and actions. In spite of all the advances of civilization, woman has remained as she came out of the hand of nature. She has the nature of a savage, who is faithful or faithless, magnanimous or cruel, according to the impulse that dominates at the moment. Throughout history it has always been a serious deep culture which has produced moral character. Man even when he is selfish or evil always follows principles, woman never follows anything but impulses. Don't ever forget that, and never feel secure with the woman you love. ~ Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

O Holy Spirit, give me a simple heart which will not retire within itself to savor its own sorrows, a heart magnanimous in giving itself, easily moved to compassion, a faithful, generous heart, which does not forget any favor received nor hold resentment for any injuries done to it. ~ Leonce De Grandmaison

Men are more compassionate/(nobler)/magnanimous/generous than God; for men forgive their dead, but God does not. ~ Mark Twain

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it. ~ Cheryl Strayed

FLUELLEN-
Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you the town's name where Alexander the Pig was born!
GOWER-
Alexander the Great.
FLUELLEN-
Why, I pray you, is not pig great? the pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase
is a little variations. ~ William Shakespeare

Probably drove in from Mission Hills, feeling magnanimous about setting foot north of the river. ~ Gillian Flynn

He was sprightly and uncommonly good looking, with a quiet, magnanimous confidence that attracted people. He was my hero, too, and I listened to him. He gave me lots of wise advice. He told me to put myself in win-win situations, and that, "You have to know what you want, and you have to get it, ~ Aspen Matis

We must not let the actions or words of others determine our responses. Magnanimous people make the choice to respond to the indignities of others based upon their own principles and their own value system rather than their moods or anger. ~ Stephen Covey

Wretched am I, says one, that this has befallen me. Nay, say you, happy I, who, tho' this has befallen me, can still remain without sorrow, neither broken by the present, nor dreading the future. The like might have befallen any one; but every one could not have remained thus undejected. Why should the event be called a misfortune, rather than this strength of mind a felicity? But, can you call that a misfortune, to a man, which does not frustrate the intention of his nature? Can that frustrate the intention of it, or hinder it to attain its end, which is not contrary to the will or purpose of his nature; What is this will or purpose? Sure you have learned it. Doth this event hinder you to be just, magnanimous, temperate, prudent, cautious of rash assent, free from error, possessed of a sense of honour and modesty, and of true liberty; or from meriting those other characters, which whoever enjoys, hath all his nature requires, as its proper perfection? And then, upon every occasion of sorrow, remember the maxim, that this event is not a misfortune, but the bearing it courageously is a great felicity. ~ Marcus Aurelius

And as the Moon eclipsed,
sulking in envy, he wailed to the Earth
"I wonder how you could never see,
My deep Love for you - illuminating, beautifying your world when the
Sun leaves you hurled...

But despite it all,
you still revolve around the Sun,
who shuns you here in the dark,
half the run."

The Earth confessed with teary eyes
still retaining a smile
"It is not the Sun that leaves me,
It is me who turns away, blocking his light.
But yet his love for me is far more magnanimous,
for he lights you up to render me luminous."

Cosmic Love ~ Drishti Bablani

I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me. ~ George Eliot

You two start on home, Daisy,' said Tom. 'In Mr Gatsby's car.'
She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.
'Go on. He won't annoy you. I think he realises that his presumptuous little flirtation is over. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

He is not prone to remember evils, since it is proper to a magnanimous person not to nurse memories, especially not of evils, but to overlook them.

He does not speak evil even of his enemies, except when he responds to their wanton aggression.

He especially avoids laments or entreaties about necessities or small matters. ~ Aristotle On The Megalopsychos

Friendship is not chosen, he said, it happens, who knows why, like love. And I haven't bestowed anything on you, but on myself; I respect men who remain magnanimous even in their misfortune. ~ Mesa Selimovic

It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. ~ George Washington

Very well."
"Say it."
"Say what?"
"Say my name. Say, 'Very well, Dorian.'"
She rolled her eyes. "If it pleases Your Magnanimous Holiness, I shall call you by your first name. ~ Sarah J. Maas

There is an indissoluble union between a magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity. ~ George Washington

Without virtue, it is hard to bear the results of good fortune suitably. Those who lack virtue become arrogant and wantonly aggressive when they have these other goods. They think less of everyone else, and do whatever they please. They do this because they are imitating the magnanimous person though they are not really like him. ~ Aristotle On The Megalopsychos

I kiss her back. Because. . .well, she's so present. So alive. So magnanimous. And when she is kissing me, all the death of the last week disappears. ~ Courtney C. Stevens

Monologue At 3 AM"

Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,

than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom. ~ Sylvia Plath

What a skeletal wreck of man this is.
Translucent flesh and feeble bones,
the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes.
Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear.
When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a
laundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now.
We all have a little sin that needs venting,
virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are ripped
from the branches of office, do you know where your post entails?
Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve?
When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned.
For the rest of us, there is always Sunday.
The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath,
so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book.
To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers.
A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life and
counting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube,
and hope you get a taste.
WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR?
WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON? SHUT UP!
I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we?

Say, your me, and I'm you, and they all watch the things we do,
and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs,
haven't felt like this in years.
The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go, ~ Stone Sour

Maybe it was tact that made Benjamin sigh. He didn't roll his eyes or look pained, which was pretty damn magnanimous of him. ~ Lili St. Crow

And of the sixth day yet remained
There wanted yet the master work, the end
Of all yet done: a creature who not prone
And brute as other creatures but endued
With sanctity of reason might erect
His stature and, upright with front serene,
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends, thither with heart and voice and eyes
Directed in devotion to adore
And worship God supreme who made him chief
Of all His works. ~ John Milton

We can do anything, or almost, but how balanced, magnanimous, and modest one has to be to do anything! And also how patient. It is as true in the arts as anywhere else. ~ May Sarton

As a teacher, Kurt Vonnegut was easy, magnanimous. He didn't try to make his students into little Kurt Vonneguts. He respected material unlike his own and was startlingly humble about what he did. ("I write with a big black crayon," he would write to me later, "while you're more of an impressionist. I don't think you have it in you to be crude.") In his workshop sessions, things always seemed a little looser, a little kinder, a little funnier. ~ Gail Godwin

Be magnanimous.
Be majestic.
Be magnificent.
Be magnetic. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

They're talking as if nothing's happened, Soledad said to herself, and the jealousy ran from her ears into her heart, where it settled into her aorta and reshaped itself as longing and desire, the kind of want that makes one capable of poor but magnanimous decisions. ~ Derek Palacio

When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or supplication. Such conduct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as both obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstances! How different is virtue, clothed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness. ~ Washington Irving

The real you, the inner you, is pure, very pure. It's loving and it's magnanimous. It understands. It has patience. It is tolerant-it will wait forever while your ego trots all over everywhere trying to figure life out. It is pleasing to remember that back home there is a friend who's waiting for you to stop being silly, who's waiting to welcome you with open arms if and when you show up. ~ Stuart Wilde

Don't hate me for wanting to change the way things are. I believe in you, Callum. You can change the world, I know you can. But not like this, I'm not trying to be magnanimous or patronizing. I genuinely want to help but ... ~ Malorie Blackman

Be not querulous, be Content with little, be kind, be free; avoid all superfluity, all vain prattling; be magnanimous. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Magnanimous of you.'
His mouth twitched. 'Mmm. Use more words like that, please. Schoolmistress words. Long, impressive ones.' He'd made the last three words sound like an innuendo. ~ Julie Anne Long

I feel like most people aren't either/or, they're both/and. You're both magnanimous and petty. You're both kind and cruel. You're never just one thing. ~ Greta Gerwig

If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it. ~ Epictetus

It seems to me more than ever that I am a victim of introspection. If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen. I am possessive about time alone... ~ Sylvia Plath

If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen. ~ Sylvia Plath

It is a great shame for anyone to listen to the accusation that Islam is a lie and that Muhammad was a fabricator and a deceiver. We saw that he remained steadfast upon his principles, with firm determination; kind and generous, compassionate, pious, virtuous, with real manhood, hardworking and sincere. Besides all these qualities, he was lenient with others, tolerant, kind, cheerful and praiseworthy and perhaps he would joke and tease his companions. He was just, truthful, smart, pure, magnanimous and present-minded; his face was radiant as if he had lights within him to illuminate the darkest of nights; he was a great man by nature who was not educated in a school nor nurtured by a teacher as he was not in need of any of this. ~ Thomas Carlyle

It is a worthy quest to not simply develop a sense of identity, but become the magnanimous version of the self. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for a fault from a woman you love. From one you love especially, however greatly you may have been in fault. For a woman--devil only knows what to make of a woman: I know something about them, anyway. But try acknowledging you are in fault to a woman. Say, "I am sorry, forgive me," and a shower of reproaches will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and directly, she'll humble you to the dust, bring forward things that have never happened, recall everything, forget nothing, add something of her own, and only then forgive you. And even the best, the best of them do it. She'll scrape up all the scrapings and load them on your head. They are ready to flay you alive, I tell you, every one of them, all these angels without whom we cannot live! I tell you plainly and openly, dear boy, every decent man ought to be under some woman's thumb. That's my conviction--not conviction, but feeling. A man ought to be magnanimous, and it's no disgrace to a man! No disgrace to a hero, not even a Caesar! But don't ever beg her pardon all the same for anything... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She rolled her eyes. "If it pleases Your Magnanimous Holiness, I shall call you by your first name." " 'Magnanimous Holiness'? Oh, I like that one." A ghost of a smile appeared on her face, and Dorian looked down at the book. ~ Sarah J. Maas